Mental Toughness

 Loading ...When I was practicing law, there was a guy who must have been in his early 40s who had broken with reality.  I think he really might have gone insane.  He desperately wanted to get ahead in the firm and worked extremely hard.  He was the sort of guy who was working 18-hour days, sometimes more, sleeping on the floor of his office and so forth.  I have no idea how long he had been doing this, but it had obviously taken its toll on him.

There is no doubt that the guy was making the law firm a ton of money working so hard.  However, he just did not have the presence, or personality, to fit in well enough to ever make partner in the law firm.  He was always tired.  He spoke very loudly and did not seem to realize how loudly he was speaking.  He had huge glasses that were frosted and made it difficult to see his eyes when he spoke.  He’d drop papers because his reflexes were off because he was so tired.  His hair was rarely combed. There was something wrong with him.  He needed to take some time off—but I do not think he ever did.

I remember sitting in a partner’s office in my firm one day when this guy came in to talk about something.  The guy’s skin was pale, he was characteristically talking way too loud, he had not shaved for days, and he was swaying on his feet.  It was clear he was probably having a nervous breakdown from working so hard.  When the guy left the partner’s office, I looked at the partner as if to say “this guy is really working way too hard,” and the partner looked up to me and said:

“No one here is ever going to tell him not to work so hard.  I’m just surprised he hasn’t figured out he has no future here.”

I remember thinking about this for some time and reflecting on it repeatedly over the years.  As time went by, I saw this firm become more and more successful and I wondered if this attitude had anything to do with it.  Here was a guy killing himself for nothing and no one was going to tell him it did not make a difference.  No one was going to tell him this because he was making them money.

A few years after I left that law firm, I read a news story about the guy who had been working too hard. He had been arrested in a hotel room in an FBI sting.  He had solicited what he thought was a 14-year-old girl over the Internet to meet him in a hotel room for sex and had gone to the hotel room to meet her.  He managed to keep the story quiet for some time and, incredibly, represented himself in court.  Eventually, news of the arrest got out and he ended up losing his job.

A few years after his arrest, I picked up the LA Times one morning and read another story.  This time he was under suspicion for having thrown his wife off a boat during a cruise.  The couple had taken a cruise to attempt to reconcile (they were going through a divorce after his arrest in the FBI sting). The wife had disappeared in the middle of the night and was found dead a few days later.

When most people look at something like this occurring, their immediate reaction is that there must be something terribly wrong with the person who committed these crimes.  To some extent this is true, but I also believe that most people’s capacity for evil can be exacerbated by the environment they are in.  Here, I think that this guy was partially set off by the legal profession and being in an environment that pushed him to work harder and harder and never rewarded him for his effort.  At some point, he had a break from reality.  Perhaps he sought relief through meeting young girls.  Perhaps he blamed his problems on his wife.  I have no idea what was going through this guy’s mind, but it must have been awful for him.

A stronger man would have had the mental toughness to leave the job and do something else.  Instead, this guy was being dominated by an organization with more mental toughness than he had.

Something that few people realize is that the quality of a company and organization is based on its ability to manage people who are not contributing to the bottom line.  The quality of an organization is also often based on the ability of that organization to get the people working for it to work harder and harder.  Money does not care about your feelings—to produce it people will do whatever they feel they need to do.  People will rob, kill, and hurt others in its pursuit.  In its more “dignified” form, people will set up companies to make money and push the people inside them to work as hard as possible.  They will go after competitors and do whatever it takes to succeed.

Capitalism is tough business, and in some companies people will be made to work in ways that are against their best interests.  Employers can be cold blooded and so are many of the people running companies.  This is a trait that is encouraged and is often responsible for keeping the company running through thick and thin.

Companies that survive for the longest and continually prosper are ultimately not all that nurturing: If you do not produce then the company will eventually get rid of you.  Generally you will find that the longer a company has been around, the more clear-cut its management is and the better the management is at getting rid of people who are not directly contributing to the bottom line.  Find a company that has been around longer than a few decades and you will always see this.

Performance reviews occur like clockwork.  During performance reviews people are regularly asked to leave.  People are pushed to perform more and more.  The atmosphere is often brutal in most established companies.  Perhaps it needs to be—this is the nature of capitalism and survival of the fittest.

A short time ago, I was at a company giving a presentation.  After the presentation I was sitting with one of the top five people in the company.  There must have been two hundred people working in the office of the company where I was presenting.  It was a Monday or a Tuesday.

“No one knows this, but we’re shutting down this entire office on Thursday,” the guy told me calmly.  “It’s not public, so don’t say anything yet.”

I was quite astonished by this.  This was a successful company.  At the same time, this is also the way business works.

The brutality of the most successful companies and organizations is no different from the brutality of the most successful people in business. Several years ago, I started noticing that the most successful people in business (and in many other professions) shared similar traits.  For example, you might be in negotiations with them about one thing or another and say:

“I can’t do the work for you for that price.  I will lose money.”

They’d calmly respond: “Sometimes you just need to take a loss.”

In reality, these sorts of people have no interest in your needs or concerns.  They are 100% out for themselves and have a psychology that is such that they will use you up to the maximum extent they can.  They often do not care about others.

All around these people you will find one person or another who is upset or aggrieved by being taken advantage of, ripped off, or cheated in one form or another by some sort of clever trick or business tactic pulled by the person: The most successful people I know of in business have legions of people who will attest to their cheapness, brutal negotiation strategy, ability to intimidate, litigiousness, and more.

There are limits to success in business.  Most businesspeople are happy making a decent living.  Others want more.  Still others want even more. What I have seen, time and time again, is that the higher you move up in the pecking order, the more brutal and savage businesspeople will become and the more you will find people around them who are angry with these people for one thing or another.

These sorts of people drive others (like the guy I used to work with) insane.  They intimidate their way through life and leave lots of wreckage in their wake. They give other people heart attacks.  They cause divorces.  They drive people to substance abuse.  These people create many, many problems for others because nothing stands in their way.

I live in Malibu, California, and am neighbors with lots of extremely wealthy people.  If I do a Google search for just about any of these neighbors, I will find tons of negative stuff from all over.  Some of these people even have hate sites dedicated to them.  They are all very nice in person, and on a personal level they do not seem that bad.  But if you were to go by what others are saying about these people, you probably would never want to talk with them.  In business, these people seem downright terrifying.  And they are.  When you are doing business with them, they usually win and they have no interest in your concerns or needs.

I remember a few decades ago watching an interview with Donald Trump.  Trump had just sold Merv Griffin a hotel resort.  Griffin paid Trump a massive amount of money for the resort.  The show was about how Trump had ripped off Griffin.  Trump was bragging in the interview about how he was smarter than Griffin and was able to trick him into paying a higher price than he should have.

“I have no idea why he paid so much.  It was not worth anywhere near what he paid,” Trump proudly told the interviewer.  ”Maybe he is stupid, or maybe I have a good smile.”

This is how it is when you deal with people like Trump.  There is no fairness to any of the dealings.  It is like two animals meeting in the wilderness and one killing the other.  One person does not look out for the other at all.  Trump is a predator and he does not want to be your friend or help you. And you find that attitude throughout businesses.

In my experience, most of what occurs in life and in our careers is a mental game.  Your success has to do with how hard you work and how effective you are; however, ultimately everything that happens to you and whether or not you reach your full potential is going to be a factor of how you run your mind and your mental toughness.  Having this “killer instinct” and being ruthless is something that gets companies and a lot of people ahead.  In fact, you can look at your place in the world as someone who is either being dominated by those with mental toughness, or dominating those who do not have it.  What else is a leader than someone with mental toughness?

Over the years, I have read a lot of books about peak performance and high-level success.  Some of these books have been very good. There are books that link success in business to diet and exercise.  There are other books that link success to marketing.  Still other books link success to interpersonal skills.  In all of my studies of this, though, I think there is one thing that stands out above and beyond everything else in terms of what makes someone successful: How mentally tough a person is.

When you have a goal, it is generally just not enough to have the goal.  You need to believe in your goal.  If you do not believe in yourself and you do not believe in your goal, then you are undermining yourself and others—and you will fail.  This is what happens to most people.  Most people and their goals end up getting undermined—either by themselves or others—and they fail.  Most people do not have the mental toughness to accomplish their goals.

Companies that are focused, and people that are focused, often seem cold blooded.  I think there is a lot of truth to this.  This focus backed up by mental toughness is often mistaken for being cold blooded.  A more important idea, I think, is that nothing gets in the way of the most focused companies and individuals because of their mental toughness.

If you believe in what you are doing and yourself—and you have extreme mental toughness–then you will not fail at practically anything you do.  Having supreme mental toughness changes everything.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

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Related posts: Mental ChemistrySecrets of Mental SupremacyMental EfficiencyPractical Mental InfluenceThe Dore Lectures on Mental ScienceThe Edinburgh Lectures on Mental ScienceSummary When I was practicing law, there was a guy who must have been in his early 40s who had broken with reality.  I think he really might have gone insane.  He desperately wanted to get ahead in the firm and worked extremely hard.  He was the sort of guy who was working 18-hour days, sometimes [...]

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Planning for success-transform your working environment

You are now in your workspace? Look around you. What do you see? The objects, images, and memories that you surround uplifting? Do you like every thing that you see? Do you have a sense of well-being when you get your work area, or does it make you cringe? If you see piles of clutter, unfinished and things you need to determine but not around it, you can be sure that your physical workspace is in the way of your success!

Whether you are a customer service Rep., manager, supervisor, assembly line worker or business owner, your work area a powerful message about you-it's a constant antenna broadcasting words, feelings and States of spirit to others, and most importantly, be yourself. We pay attention to what we wear, what we say and do ... but we are often too busy to pay attention to the look and feel of our offices, our offices, our work environment.

Here are a few tips to help you to transform your work environment and begin to pave the way for your success:

Physical space, correlates with creativity, productivity and mental space. Get rid of anything that you haven't used in 6 months. Get rid of something that is beautiful decorative but makes you feel when you look at it. Make space by getting rid of any-thing that could hold you back even just on the basis of its occupying space.

Surround yourself with memories of your goal, your passion, the reasons why you enjoy the work you do. Dun post inspiring, motivating, positive images you think of possibilities and what you do well. Yes, this can contain photos of loved ones and pets, but limited to not more than 3 photos; else begins to feel and look like junk. It distracts others, and it leads you--or you are aware of it or not.

Keep your workspace clean and free of dust and debris. You are in the habit of eating at your desk (TSK tsk!), ignore food immediately once you're done.

Use of lighting, fans, artwork, live round-who plants a harmonious space that reminds you of qualities that you are growing in yourself and in your career.

If the person you most admire suddenly walk to your Office, would you feel good about your space?

Less is always more. In case of doubt, get rid of it. You create room for something better, prettier, more powerful that speaks to you.

Your workspace is not the right place for things that you cannot view or fit into your home. It is not the right place to get your personal views or your hobbies.

Here is a simple first exercise:

Identify some of your workspace, you can get rid of possessions, give away or donate. Have them right away. Resist the urge to fill the space with something else for two full weeks. Comment here and let us know what happens in your career. Then, if you absolutely space with something else, you must fill in that it is something you will love to watch, that speaks of your intention and positive objectives, and that is to educate and inspiring for you and others.

Readers, what do you do to manage your work environment more positive?

Adrilia V. Pedersen is a professional trainer, speaker and consultant experienced in customer service, marketing and publishing. It has helped companies in the US, Mexico and Canada to develop multicultural marketing initiatives, train and motivate staff and succeed through shared values. She inspires people and businesses to grow and unfold their highest potential. Her blog can be found at http://www.adriliavpedersen.com/blog

Goal setting success-children, Shamu and you

Think back to when your children first ran. I'm not talking about when they are still in two stages between the Bank and the coffee table-the coffee table and the bank did. No, I'm talking about the first time they turned away from the coffee table and ran clear on the living room to you in the comfort of your home. Remember that day? There is a pretty good chance that the first few times they tried, they did not make it without falling down.

So let's see if this is how you commented: "I can't believe how awkward you are! I had you made it out to be a professional ballerina and you can't even about the lousy living room! What a loser. If you ever try again, you will in the really big problems! "

Oh, that's not what you say? Well, what if you had? How long would it have taken your children to learn how to walk? I bet you would still be some teenagers crawling around.

So what's the point? It is this: most people talking to themselves that way all the time. They are constantly drop themselves beaten and itself, every time they make a mistake. And the more they do it, the smaller the chance to try again-get up back again. Failure is not about fall-it's about not getting back.

Have you ever been to Sea World and looked Shamu the killer whale jumping out of the water and on the rope ten feet into the air? It's quite a sight. Hopefully you sat in the front row and got soaked as we did! Have you ever wondered how they got Shamu to do that? Aren't you suppose they went in the middle of the ocean, stretched a rope between two ships 10 metres over the water and then waited for a killer whale to jump on it and said: "that's it, him sign up!"
No, what it has done in the pool Shamu, stretched a rope, a few metres from the bottom of the pool and when the rope Shamu swam about, he got a reward. So, they increased it a few more meters and when he swam on the rope he got a reward. They continued to do so until the rope on the surface and then a foot over the surface, than three metres, then four, then five feet feet ... was until it was finally ten metres over the water. Now I would like to say that people much smarter than whales are-but we are learning the same way whales you and the same way, children learn how to walk-one step at a time. Yes, we will fall, we occasionally will fail. But instead of beaten on yourself, give yourself a break, get up back and try again.

Unfortunately, too many peoples negative self-talk their failure-oriented behavior will perpetuate. Does this sound like you when you mess up? "I knew it. I always they mess up. I Never get something good. I do not know who I'm trying to crazy-I will never be successful. I've never been successful up to now. Why in the world I think it would be different this time? I've never done anything of significance. Everyone I know thinks that I will never amount to anything. They are right. It is never change. Who I am trying to get the child. I am such a joke. It is pointless to keep trying. "

Or if someone is not the phone call, you say to yourself: "they obviously do not want to talk to me. In fact, they're probably mad at me and not even if I do not more. I am apparently not important enough for them to take a few bad minutes from their schedule to pick up the phone. Everything and everyone is always more important than I do. I am such a loser who that I can't even my supposed friends to get me back. "

Sounds pretty toxic right? Our constantly negative self-talk is a constant repetition and reconfirmation of the things we don't want to or life. It is virtually impossible for us to change if we don't change our self-talk.

Last note: If your friends with you the way you talk to you, hang around them?

For more resources on this and related topics, go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com

For a free subscription to the newsletter of Rick Seymour, "target bars" (tips, tricks, and insights to reach your goals), go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com mathematician, Aerospace Engineer, entrepreneur, Business Owner, Management Consultant, author, Professional Speaker and author of several training curriculum. Rick Seymour understands and covers a wide range of both private and public organizations and the people they makeup. He has most of the Fortune 100 companies consulted. Rick is called the "Velvet hammer". He teaches powerful ideas and concepts in a way that people readily accept their need to change and grow. Rick believes that "If behaviour-not the training! Rick s Training Expertise: Self-Motivation and goal setting wellness and sport nutrition High-integrity sales/Permission marketing communications & people skills for Techies effective Team Building/how to lead a team Succeeding as a first-time professional control skills for additional funds go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com

Extraordinary Events Often Give Us the Most Important Lessons

 Loading ...I believe that God and the universe have a way of letting us know that certain things  we learn and are told at various times in our lives have more importance than others. I had an evening like this not too long ago.

Some time ago, and after several conversations, I received an offer to merge one of the companies I run into another company. The offer contained innumerable conditions and other fine print I did not understand.

Luckily, I knew that when someone offers you a business opportunity—but with tons of conditions attached to it—it is always a good idea to seek legal advice. To make sure that I responded to this offer appropriately, I decided to call one of the best attorneys I know who handles this sort of thing. I spoke to his secretary and made an appointment to go see him and some of his distinguished partners in his Beverly Hills office.

Because I was going to meet such fancy attorneys, I put on a suit and tie and made sure that my shoes were well polished. The appointment had been set for 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I gave myself around ninety minutes to get across town to Beverly Hills for the meeting. To prepare, I had written up a list of questions and had redlined the offer I had received. I figured I was in for a serious meeting in a conference room inside a quiet law firm with a bunch of uptight attorneys and I wanted everything to go smoothly. This was going to be a very important meeting for me that would help determine the course of my career.

About sixty minutes into the drive to Beverly Hills, my car phone rang. It was the attorney I was scheduled to meet:

“We’re at the Wolfgang Puck Steakhouse sitting outside on the terrace,” he told me. “Can you meet there instead?”

A few minutes later, on a warm late summer day, I pulled up in front of the steakhouse and valet parked my car. Since it was late afternoon, there was no one whatsoever in the restaurant. I made my way back to the terrace area and saw the attorney and two of his colleagues engaged in loud conversation and laughing. Scattered in front of the attorneys were at least ten empty drink glasses. The guys had obviously been drinking a lot.

An 18-year-old girl was seated next to the attorneys. She had come up to their table while walking down the street. She was raising money for her volleyball team, and to my astonishment each of the attorneys at the table had just given her $50. When I sat down they asked to me to join in:

“Give her a donation!” one of the attorneys shouted at me. “It’s a good cause! Women’s volleyball!”

Against my better judgment, I pulled out my credit card and gave her $50. The attorneys assured me that I probably had enjoyed watching 18-year-old girls jumping up and down before playing volleyball and now it was “time to pay”! I understood right then and there that this was going to be no normal attorney meeting.

A few minutes later the girl had disappeared and the attorneys and I were all sitting at the table. They were ready to give me some advice. They offered me a drink, and not wanting to feel out of place, I ordered a glass of wine. When I placed my order, the waiter said something to me I will never forget:

“Would you like to make that a double?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Yes, these guys always order doubles—double glasses of wine, double martinis, and so forth. Would you like me to make your glass of wine a double?”

“Sure,” I said, still wanting to fit in.

I watched as the bartender went to the bar and poured more than half a bottle of wine into a large cup. It was the largest glass of wine I have ever seen. In fact, there was so much wine in the glass that some of it spilled over the top as the waiter carried it to me.

For the next fifteen minutes or so the attorneys gave me drunken advice while alternately whistling and hooting at various women walking by on the street. These guys were really something.

The benefit of the sort of advice I was receiving, though, was that it was completely uncensored. The attorneys were so loaded at this point that they had no interest in trying to talk me into doing business with them, and they explained to me in very simple terms how I would end up getting screwed if I went into the deal. They told me a few horror stories, and as their subconscious unburdened itself to me, I realized that I would be best off not taking the offer I had been presented with. They told me that I should walk away from the deal—despite the fact that if they had worked on it, their fee would have been around $250,000.

After all the business talk was over, I chatted with the attorneys about their personal lives. They all had children and were married. They seemed like pretty happy guys. At some point in the conversation, we stopped speaking for at least a minute or two. We sat there quietly until someone said: “This is boring. We need some girls.”

One of the attorneys picked up his cell phone and to my astonishment had a conversation that as I recall went something like this: “I’d like a blond and is the girl you sent last time available for my friend? She is? Great! Send her too. We’re outside at the Wolfgang Puck Steakhouse.”

I was not sure what any of this was about, but I certainly had my suspicions.

Within fifteen minutes of the phone call, a black Mercedes stopped in front of the steakhouse and out popped two gorgeous women. They walked right up to our table and sat down. Immediately they started chatting with everyone at the table about the weather, sports, all sorts of things. The women were incredible conversationalists.

Shortly thereafter, the group of us decided to walk over to a martini bar and then to the Peninsula Hotel. A $300 drink bill arrived and one of the attorneys charged it on his credit card without thinking.

When we got to the martini bar one of the attorneys started kissing one of the girls we were with. Another attorney seemed to be holding hands with the other girl. We chit-chatted for a while about unimportant things, like the taste of the martinis and “how cool” Beverly Hills was because you could walk to various bars. Then, after thirty minutes or so, we arrived at the bar of the Peninsula Hotel. Here, another girl who had been called was waiting for one of the other attorneys in our group. The bar was dark and there were a variety of couches and other places for us to sit and get comfortable. It was a relatively mellow experience. It was probably only around 6:30 or so at this point, but I started ordering Diet Cokes.

By about 7:00, the attorney I came to see had passed out on a couch and was sleeping, the other attorneys appeared to be kissing and getting ready to get rooms with the women who were there, and I decided it was time for me to leave. I walked about a half mile back to my car, got in, and started driving home.

I was on the freeway for about thirty-five minutes when all of a sudden a light came on in my Porsche (the car had less than 500 miles on it). The light said “TYRE!!”

For some reason, my car had not been set up to display warnings in English. Instead, all of the warnings were in German. I could not figure out how to set the language to English and usually just ignored the warnings. Hence, pondering the bizarre evening I had had with the attorneys, I was not bothered by the “TYRE!!” warning that kept flashing in red on my screen. The car seemed to be running just fine and I had no worries whatsoever about it.

After a few more miles at 60 mph on the freeway, I started to hear some noise. It was very, very loud and appeared to be coming from the vicinity of my front bumper. I decided I needed to get off the freeway immediately. It was then that I realized there was probably an issue with my tire. I exited the freeway and stopped immediately in front of the only business that was open: A “gentleman’s club.”

I got out of the car and looked at it. The entire rear tire was shredded. It had ripped off the rear bumper and had done some other damage to the body of the car. Indeed, the metal on the wheel had shredded as well. The car was not drivable by any means.

I picked up my cell phone and realized that the battery was dead. I looked around me. The only possible place where I could make a call was inside the gentleman’s club. I did not know why my evening kept coming back to “fallen women,” but I decided that I would just go with it.

I went to the door of the strip bar and explained what had happened with my car. I told them I needed to use their phone. A large bouncer at the door explained that I was welcome to come in and use the phone, but only if I paid the $20 cover. I did not have much of a choice. I gave him $20, went in, and called AAA on the payphone. They explained that a car would be there within an hour.

The gentleman’s club was fairly empty and besides myself there were only a few other people inside. Nevertheless, a woman was dancing, and after every few songs a new woman would come up on stage.

Feeling somewhat guilty and creepy being in a strip club alone, I decided to take a seat at the bar (which was not facing the dancers) and order a soda. Within a few minutes of my sitting down, one of the strippers sat next to me and asked if I would buy her a drink as well. She ordered a soda, and for the next ten minutes or so, we chatted. She was from Iowa and in Los Angeles to become an actor. Her father was an accountant and her mother a homemaker.

The bill for the sodas came and it was $18!

I gave the bartender $20.

Since we had finished our drinks, I did not think there was much more to talk about with the stripper. I told her about the incident with my car and how puzzled I was that the tire had simply disintegrated. She feigned interest.

“Would you like a private lap dance?” she asked.  “It’s only $20 per song.”

Since I had already spent $40 for nothing more than a Diet Coke and had a wife and two daughters at home, much less had been involved in watching prostitutes ply their trade in Beverly Hills all evening, I did not have much interest in a lap dance. I told her I had no interest and that I was angry I had already spent $40 for essentially nothing.

For the next few minutes she tried in several ways to talk me into a dance, saying if I got two dances she would give me one for free. But I still wasn’t interested. A few moments later she came back with the bouncer:

“If you are not going to buy dances then you are going to have to leave,” he told me very firmly.

“I already paid $20 to get in here and bought her a Diet Coke for $9,” I told him.

Despite my protests, the bouncer insisted I leave since I was not paying for dances. A few moments later the bouncer and I were standing out by the sidewalk making small talk while waiting for my tow truck to show up. The bouncer was actually a pretty nice guy. I am not sure why he had to kick me out. I probably would have ordered at least another $9 soda.

A flatbed truck showed up ten minutes later to pick up my car. I got in the front seat of the truck, and we drove for approximately one hour on the freeway back to my house in Malibu. We rode in silence.

The driveway at my house in Malibu is probably 100 feet off the street, and it is also quite narrow. When we got to the top of the driveway, the tow truck driver asked me to get out and help guide him.

I did not realize that the tow truck cab is something like three feet off the ground.

I opened the door of the tow truck and stepped out and just fell and rolled at least fifty feet down the driveway. I hit my head at some point and it started bleeding. After I recovered myself, I stumbled into the house. My wife screamed when she saw all the blood coming from my head, and she started washing it off. I told her about my evening and then went to bed. I was exhausted.

In the morning, I went to inspect the Porsche. Thankfully, the insurance company paid for the thousands of dollars of damage that was done. My head healed within a few weeks.

Considering the way the evening had been going, I felt like I had gotten off quite easily. I also feel like I got some of the better advice I have ever received from an attorney. I am making no judgments about morality, sex, drinking, and what you have. I do know, however, that the attorney I met that day played no games with me and told me the exact truth about my situation. I also believe that God intervened and probably provided me with one of the more memorable evenings of my life in order to make sure I learned and remembered the lesson the attorney gave me well into my future.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

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Related posts: One of the Most Significant Lessons I Have Ever Learned About WorkLove Your Work And The People Who Give It To You10 Powerful Lessons from a Turkish Rug TraderGive People What They WantYour Career is More Important to You Than AnyoneDo and Give More Than is Expected of YouSummary I believe that God and the universe have a way of letting us know that certain things  we learn and are told at various times in our lives have more importance than others. I had an evening like this not too long ago. Some time ago, and after several conversations, I received an offer to [...]

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Mike Tyson, Distractions, Your Career and Life

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I saw the most interesting documentary on Mike Tyson recently, James Toback’s Tyson. A review of the film in Time Magazine relates:

At first he was a variation on the proverbial 97-pound weakling: an overweight street kid from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. He got beaten up regularly by the local toughs—”Very few of them,” he says, “are functioning adults right now”—who lured him into street crime. As a 12-year-old in a detention home he was discovered by Cus d’Amato, who had trained and managed Floyd Patterson to the heavyweight boxing title in the ’50s. Cus saw potential in this soft-spoken junior thug, and Mike went along with the program because “I was afraid of being physically humiliated in the streets again.”

In d’Amato, Tyson found the father he never had. “He broke me down and rebuilt me,” Tyson says of his coach, who adopted him, raised him with the d’Amato family in the Catskills and gave the boy focus and purpose as a boxer. Tyson was an apt pupil: he obsessively studied old films of boxing legends, learned the spiritual side of the warrior mentality and, he says, “restrained myself from having sex for about five years.” He tore through the amateur ranks, knocking out one opponent in a record eight seconds, and was heavyweight champ before he was 21. (His mentor died just before the big fight.) Those victories helped him realize that “I don’t have to worry about anyone bullying me again.” http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1893622-1,00.html

The most interesting thing to me about the documentary was listening to Tyson talk about how d’Amato trained him to become a boxer. Instead of defining boxing to Tyson as a mere physical conquest, the coach taught him that boxing was a spiritual conquest. As Tyson trained with d’Amato, the coach would constantly drop suggestions to him on how to increase his self-confidence and his self image as he boxed. These suggestions would be short little blurbs about how Tyson was the best, the strongest, and so forth. I found this part of the movie completely fascinating because d’Amato was changing Tyson’s self-image and the messages that Tyson was hearing in his mind. Instead of hearing “you are a poor thug from the Bronx”, Tyson began hearing other messages about how he was a champion and how great he was.

One of my favorite d’Amato quotes is, “The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.” One of the biggest distractions that most of us face comes not from others, but from ourselves. Most people out there are continually questioning themselves on what they are capable of. They do not believe they are smart; they do not believe they are attractive; they do not believe they are clever; they do not believe they have the ability to achieve the things they want to achieve; they do not believe they are going to be promoted; they do not believe they are going to get the job; they do not believe they are going to make the sale; they do not believe other people will like them; they simply do not believe in themselves. Many of us are cowards. We run away from what we are actually capable of.

What do you believe? If you are constantly distracted by your insecurities and your doubts, you are never going to get where you want to go. It just will not happen, because you will not allow it to. If you are not confident and at peace with who you are, the negative voices inside your head will keep you distracted. The miracle of what d’Amato accomplished with Tyson was that he was able to change the voices inside of Tyson’s head from being distractions that were keeping him down and holding him back, to whispers of encouragement that drove him forward to become a champion.

If d’Amato could do this with Tyson, couldn’t we all do this with the voices in our heads?

Some time ago, I was at a retreat. All those in attendance were broken up into groups of ten or eleven people each, and were asked to go find certain items that were placed throughout an obstacle course, as a group, and then get back to the base camp as quickly as possible.

“Do not worry about anything except finding the items, staying together, and returning to base camp,” we were told.

Our group was set loose, along with six or seven other groups, on a piece of land that was no larger than the size of a football field. As we foraged along, various leaders who were supposed to be acting as guides (and were not participating in the scavenger hunt), began appearing on the obstacle course telling us they had found something and to come look at it, others pretended to be injured, others pretended to want to tell us a secret about another group, and some requested we approach them to get some piece of advice.

What should have taken each group less than 10 minutes to accomplish, instead ended up taking around 30 minutes, because everyone kept getting distracted.

Several times our group forgot the basic idea that what we needed to do was to gather up a few things and return to the base. Instead, we became incredibly distracted by the things going on around us. Every group did.

The lesson of this exercise was that the more you get distracted, the less you will be able to reach your goals. You simply cannot make the most of your career and life when you constantly allow yourself to get distracted from what you are trying to achieve.

One of the most important things you can do is look away from the things that

distract you from becoming a better person,distract you from doing better in your job,distract you from being healthy,distract you from succeeding,distract you from being happy,distract you from achieving your goals,distract you from being the person you are capable of.

Often in the movies you will see a scene in which kids who are growing up in a bad neighborhood are pressured by the other kids in the neighborhood to join a gang, or to participate in some kind of negative activity. The kids always face the challenge of having to walk by a group of thugs and not give in to peer pressure. In the movie Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood, for example, a young Vietnamese boy was being pressured to join a gang. Often these types of characters go on to become great musicians, athletes, and so forth. As an audience, we find ourselves rooting for the underdog to find his way out of the darkness, and to achieve success. This is the attraction of the Tyson documentary as well.

This particular character resonates with us because the people who are able to resist the distractions around them are able to become something better. The ability to resist distractions is incredibly important–more important than many people realize. The better you are at resisting distractions, the better you will do in your career and life.

If you had an enemy who were trying to distract you from achieving a goal, this enemy would do everything within their power to distract you. The enemy would tell you that you could not do it, that you are not good enough. They would point out every single weakness you had, distracting your mind with these negative ideas, all to undermine your confidence and to diminish your concept of what you are capable of achieving. If someone around you were constantly telling you how bad you were, how ineffective you were, and how little you are capable of achieving, you would probably consider the person an enemy–especially if they were repeating this nonsense several times a day. In addition, this is probably not the sort of thing any of us would ever do to another person and, if we did, we would probably consider ourselves horrible people. However, isn’t this what we all do with ourselves constantly? Don’t we all spend a lot of our days questioning what we are capable of, and distracting ourselves from meeting our goals?

You will never reach your goals in life if you are distracted by others, or by yourself. The only message you need to focus on is the one about how good and capable you are. Create your goal and a game plan, and then fill your mind with the right messages. Do not listen to or concern yourself with negativity or things that distract you. Keep looking ahead. Fill your mind with positive and hopeful messages that will drive you forward to your success.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

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Related posts: Ferraris Crashing Into Poles and the Importance of Focus in Your Life and CareerThe Pygmalion Effect and Setting Incredible Expectations for Your Career and LifeThe Power of Resistance in Your Career and LifeThe Inner Voices, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Your LifeCriticism, Your Career, and Your LifeThe Milgram Experiment, Submission to Authority, Your Life, and CareerSummary In this article Harrison explains how it is important not to get distracted by your insecurities and your doubts. If you do that you will never get success. It just will not happen, because you will not allow it to happen. If you are not confident and at peace with who you are, the negative voices inside your head will keep you distracted. You will never reach your goals in life if you are distracted by others, or by yourself. The only message you need to focus on is the one about how good and capable you are. Create your goal and a game plan, and then fill your mind with the right messages. Do not listen to or concern yourself with negativity or things that distract you. Keep looking ahead. Fill your mind with positive and hopeful messages that will drive you forward to your success.

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Goal setting success-# 4 misconception that you stop

There are four areas of limiting beliefs that many people have to deal with before they can begin to see "success" in their lives and achieve their goals. Here they are:

1. it is wrong to "choose".

2. There is something inherently wrong with money. Poverty and humility go hand in hand.

3. unconditional love and every kind of keyword performance expectation ' are incompatible and contradictory.

4. Reward someone proportionally to their performance is contrary to the idea that we treat all people equally.

This article will deal with the fourth misconception that behavior, potential is limited and as a result, success.

Misconception # 4-royale someone proportionally to their performance is contrary to the fact that we are equal to treat all people.

Rewards are a problem that many people seem to have a challenge with. Not only whether people should be rewarded for their performance, but the rewards are commensurate with their performance? (As opposed to the idea that we should all be equally rewarded because unconditional love.) There are some old verses on the topic:

"Big are your purposes and mighty your deeds. Your eyes are opened to all the ways of men; your reward everyone according to his conduct, and if his deeds deserve. "

"Surely you reward each person according to what he has done."

"I am looking for the heart and the spirit, to reward a man according to his behavior, examine what his deeds deserve."

"The unbeliever will be fully reimbursed for their ways, and the good man rewarded for his."

"Behold, I come quickly! My reward is with me, and I will to everyone according to what he has done.

"The man who plants and the man who waters have one goal, and each according to his own work will be rewarded."

It should be clear that God not only rewarding, but he is proportional to our actions, our achievements and our behavior rewards. Why should we think that there are different for us? We know that God loves us unconditionally, but will our rewards are commensurate with our performance. " Why should we think that a different set of rules for us and our relationships?

We should expect people to be performed and to reward them accordingly. If they fail to fulfil their potential, I still love them unconditionally-of course! I have to reward them for their lack of performance-no! And we should be able to acknowledge that rewards and unconditional love are distinct and separate. In reality, love is much more than that and many other than that.

There is another old verse that says, "love is patient, love is kind. It does not jealous, does not boast, and is not proud. It's not rude, it's not selfish, it is not easy angry, it keeps no record of abuses. Love is not enjoy evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always patient. Love never fails. " This does not describe a feeling. It describes how we are to behave to someone we profess to love. For many years I had it backwards. I wouldn't treat them with love, if I don't "feel" loving. What I discovered (to let in some cases) was that when you make a decision for the treatment of someone in a loving way, the feelings of love. The behavior precedes the feelings, not vice versa.

But, unfortunately, most people think that to love is to reward. But this verse, doesn't say a thing about rewards. A gift or reward can be an expression of love, but it's not love-just like a reward for a certain behavior, or performance condition is not love.

For additional resources on this topic, go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com

For a free subscription to the newsletter of Rick Seymour, "target bars" (tips, tricks, and insights to reach your goals), go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com mathematician, Aerospace Engineer, entrepreneur, Business Owner, Management Consultant, author, Professional Speaker and author of several training curriculum. Rick Seymour understands and covers a wide range of both private and public organizations and the people they makeup. He has most of the Fortune 100 companies consulted. Rick is called the "Velvet hammer". He teaches powerful ideas and concepts in a way that people readily accept their need to change and grow. Rick believes that "If behaviour-not the training! Rick s Training Expertise: Self-Motivation and goal setting wellness and sport nutrition High-integrity sales/Permission marketing communications & people skills for Techies effective Team Building/how to lead a team Succeeding as a first-time professional control skills for additional funds go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com

Once You Achieve Success, Savor and Enjoy it to the Fullest

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I have certain habits and ways of thinking about the world, which are the right ways, at least for me:

If I make a friend, I do everything within my power to keep the friendship going and to stay close to the person.If I get a book, I always read and insure I understand the contents.If I start something, I always make sure that I finish it.I like to exercise, and every time I purchase a piece of exercise equipment, I read the manual and I use the equipment every day, or every other day, just as the manufacturer recommends I should.If I purchase a car, I take care of the car and make sure it is always in the best condition possible; I do everything within my power to maintain it properly.If I purchase a pair of really good shoes, I wear them and keep resoling them until the shoes simply cannot take it anymore.

I want to enjoy everyone I know, everything I buy, and every idea I come into contact with to the fullest. I feel that we need to really appreciate what we have to the absolute fullest.

Yesterday, I had the most remarkable experience. A few years ago, I was taking private pilot lessons and was very close to getting my pilot’s license–and then I stopped. It has been at the back of my mind for some time that I have not completed this training, and that I need to do something about it. Accordingly, I drove to the airport to sign up for classes and complete my training.

If you dream of doing something, you should never stop close to the finish line. This is what most people do. You should always push through and hit your goal.

The Camarillo Airport is a small airport that is about a 25-minute drive from where I live in Malibu. It is sort of in the middle of nowhere and is about 25 miles from civilization on all sides. I have always loved going to airports and walking around them, and this airport was no exception.

The Camarillo Airport is not a commercial airport. It is mainly for people who own airplanes and fly for recreation. Since I live on the beach, there are lots of airplanes towing banners that constantly buzz by my house advertising beer, new movies coming out and so forth, to the people sitting out on the beach. All of these airplanes seem to originate from the vicinity of the Camarillo airport.

The flight school is right next to an “executive” airport hangar. So, I decided to go inside the hangar and look around. There was a woman in an office next to the hangar and she gave me a tour of the hangar. I spoke with the woman at some length about the airport. She told me that people like the airport because it is low-key, and people do not see them coming and going. She said lots of stars and very important business people fly in and out of the airport regularly because it is more private, away from the “buzz” of Los Angeles.

When I got inside the hangar, I was amazed. I saw a collection of around 25 airplanes that cost about $3,000,000 each. I could not believe there was a collection of these airplanes right there. In addition, there were several jets, some of which were quite large.

“Whose airplanes are these?” I asked.

“They are various people’s airplanes. Most of the people fly them rarely. That floatplane right there belongs to Kenny G. He likes to fly out of here and go landing on lakes.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“I do not either,” she said.

“Can you charter them?” I asked.

“Not these airplanes. These are owned by private people. Some of them have their own pilots, who they hire whenever they travel, though.”

As I looked around, I saw what is essentially a huge parking lot of multimillion-dollar airplanes that are very rarely used. It seemed amazing to me that so many people had these dreams of flying, yet their airplanes were grounded and hardly ever used. I wondered how many hangars like this one must exist throughout the world, wherein peoples’ once magnificent dreams of flying sit parked and waiting.

One of the most important things you can do is to go after your dreams. Your dream could be something materialistic like owning an airplane or a boat, or it could be spending your time (or life) with a certain person. What happens, however, when someone achieves his or her dream? Regardless of how your life has gone, I am sure there are many dreams you have already accomplished. But, once you achieve your goals, what then?

What you see with airplanes, you also see with people who buy large boats. I grew up spending a lot of my childhood in marinas around Detroit because my stepfather operated a boat business. People would make all of this money and would purchase an expensive boat, and then end up taking it out only a few times a year–or less. It never made any sense to me. Why would someone spend all of this money on a boat if they had no plans on using it? I imagine the person dreamed of owning the boat for some time and was very excited about it. Then they got the boat, and forgot about the fun they could have with it. As the dream of owning a boat was fulfilled, the boat somehow became less interesting or desirable to the person who bought it.

We have all had the experience of starting on the road to fulfilling our dreams. To me, the airplanes I saw at the Camarillo Airport represented people who pursued their dreams and ended up reaching them. There are people who do everything they can to reach a goal, to get somewhere that they think is going to make them happy, and then when they get there, they do not appreciate it. They are not happy because their lives have not really changed the way they had hoped it would after achieving their dream.

While all people do not live out their dreams by accumulating boats and airplanes, some do exactly the same thing with people. People dream of being close to another person, and often fulfill this goal. A marriage is a perfect example of two people coming together due to what is, in most cases, a dream one or (hopefully) both of them had.

Someone told me recently that each year 5% of the adult population gets married. However, despite this percentage of people getting married, more than half of these people end up getting divorced. What happened to their dream? When I see couples fighting and deeply unhappy with each other, it really depresses me, because I know that neither person’s dreams are being fulfilled any longer. Over some time, the peoples’ wishes to spend their lives together, suddenly falls by the wayside.

Several years ago, my wife and I were driving someplace with a couple who, a few years previously, had appeared to be deeply in love. The story of how they met and how their relationship developed had been a real source of inspiration to me when I had first heard it several years before. The man had dreamed of being with the woman for a long time and had sought her out for quite a while before she had agreed to go out with him. Soon they were married, but within a few years everything had seemed to change. The man had forgotten what his wife had once represented to him, or at least he was forgetting this more than he should have been.

We were sitting in the back seat and the man was driving. The man was saying things to the woman like:

“If you do not shut up, you stupid bitch, so help me god I am going to smack you!” He sounded extremely serious and determined in his tone.

The woman was crying and shouting various insults to fuel her husband’s fury. There are certain fights that couples have, that, when you witness them, they are at a level far beyond “normal behavior”, and you may accurately estimate that, as a result, the couple will thereafter divorce, or be spending several unhappy years together. This was one of those fights.

I did not get involved, but the fight disturbed me to quite a degree, especially since I knew how important both the man and woman were to each other. Nevertheless, they seemed to be in the process of throwing away their dreams. Couples often end up doing a lot of damage to their dreams and lives together. Usually this happens as a result of taking each other for granted, and the people within the couple decide to just throw it all away.

When you see boats, exotic planes and people who are the product of someone’s dream, suddenly being ignored and treated poorly, it is very sad. It is as if people reach a point where they do not appreciate what they have accomplished and the fact that they have fulfilled their dreams. If you fulfill your dreams, nothing is more important than being incredibly grateful for what you have done, and enjoying the results. The person with the airplane should be getting out and enjoying the airplane. The person with the boat should be enjoying the boat. The person with the friend or spouse they one day dreamed of having, should enjoy his or her partner, and be eternally grateful.

There is no use in having a goal or a dream if you do not enjoy and nurture the result when you finally achieve it. Simply put, if you achieve something, you should make the most of it. Far too many people reach a goal and then stop caring. This is the worst thing you can do, because deep down you will never appreciate any goal you attain in the future.

Never allow your dreams, goals, and aspirations to sit on the sidelines. Cherish these things while you seek them, and also once you attain them. You need to enjoy what you have now in order to live your life to the fullest.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

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Related posts: You Need to Have Desire to Achieve Your GoalsYou Need to Enjoy What You Are DoingYour Success is a Product of the Procedures You FollowA Success Turn Around Formula That WorksYour Ability to be Free Will Determine Your SuccessPlan for Success–Not FailureSummary In this article Harrison discusses the importance of cherishing your dreams. Never allow your dreams, goals and aspirations to sit on the sidelines. Cherish these things while you seek them, and also once you attain them. If you dream of doing something, you should never stop close to the finish line. This is what most people do. You should always push through and hit your goal. There is no use in having a goal or a dream if you do not enjoy and nurture the result when you finally achieve it. Simply put, if you achieve something, you should make the most of it. Far too many people reach a goal and then stop caring. This is the worst thing you can do, because deep down you will never appreciate any goal you attain in the future.

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