I’m here for a 3-day network marketing conference which wrapped up this morning. The whole conference was fabulous and being here with a dozen team members from both Winnipeg and Toronto made it even better. We had some disorganization with hotel bookings and ended up spread out around town but that was okay, we’ll get it right at the next one.

While there was lots of good training and inspirational moments, what I want to draw attention to today is the message provided by the keynote speaker, Chris Widener. I have to admit that although I read a lot of personal development and leadership material, I’ve never read any of his stuff (although that’s about to change). His core message was that we need to stop conforming to the patterns of the world and instead transform ourselves from the inside out to achieve the success we deserve. Obviously I’m not explaining this concept nearly as well as he did, but I’ll leave it to you to learn more.

He explained that the typical pattern is to go to school, follow the rules, get good grades and if we do well, get a good job. I see this pattern reinforced by the school system daily (via my kids). He then went on to explain why that’s crap! (my words, not his) He explained how success starts from the inside; how it’s vitally important that you internalize your success. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to externalize it no matter how hard you work or how lucky you get. As examples, he pointed to the celebrities who achieve massive material success only to end up in rehab within a few years. Or how about the lottery winners who are broke within months. Even something simple like the folks who lose weight only to gain it back shortly after. In all these examples, the key problem is that the person’s internal belief about themselves doesn’t match with their external reality and like a thermostat, reality brings them back to their set point. This concept isn’t exclusive to Chris Widener nor even new to me but something in the way he presented it seemed to resonate.

I had previously wondered if its possible for someone that hasn’t had a “tragedy” occur to make the transformation to a truly successful/free lifestyle (if you’re happy with the typical patterns of society then good for you, enjoy). Most folks I talked to said “no, you need something to push you over the edge before you’ll change.” I’ll be honest, I neither liked that answer nor really agreed with it. I figured that might make it easier but wasn’t absolutely required. I still believe that but I suspect it’s a lot harder than I first thought to shed the shackles of conformity and truly transform your internal beliefs without a catalyst of some sort.

I’m beginning to think I may have been inadvertently sabotaging myself all these years because I have (had?) internalized the typical societal pattern at a subconscious level even though I feel drawn to something more. As long as I hold a deep-seated internal belief that I’m doing the “right” thing, I’ll never actually be able to make anything else work for me. I can’t say for certain that the wonderful experiences this weekend have totally uprooted that internal belief. However, combined with all the other “unusual” things going on, I do know that I’m closer than I’ve been in a long time to making a transformational change!

As the journey continues, I am getting more and more excited about where things may go. I’m starting to believe that truly anything is possible! What does your dream life look?

I had the good fortune to see Robert Kiyosaki speak live this past weekend. Having read Rich Dad Poor Dad, I was curious to hear what he had to say. For those who haven’t read the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad is a great look into the mindsets that employees hold compared to the mindsets of entrepreneurs. However, the few times I’ve read the book, I’ve had a nagging sense of something missing. While the advice is sound, there didn’t seem to be enough “proof” that it was real. There was not enough background to justify what is said.

Let me tell you, seeing Mr. Kiyosaki live filled in the missing pieces from the book. Hearing him speak for a few hours, it became clear that he really does know what he’s talking about and he truly lives what he teaches. Bearing in mind that the book was written in the late ’90s, it makes sense that he would leave out some of the more interesting details of his financial education. I suspect that had he put it all in, his book wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as it is despite the core message being sound.

Robert Kiyosaki’s current tour is promoting his latest book Why “A” Students Work for “C” Students and Why “B” Students Work for the Government: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Education for Parents. I haven’t read the book yet, but the premise behind the book was the focus of the event and let me tell you, it was quite enlightening.

Basically, he spoke about how academic success not only doesn’t translate into financial success but how the mindset and attitudes that help one be successful academically actually oppose the mindset and attitudes that enable financial success. As someone who has been academically successful most of my life (for example, I received the Gold Medal for academic achievement in my last session at college), I find it truly scary that my core beliefs and behaviours are sabotaging my attempts at financial success. I realize that it’s going to take a lot of work to reverse the damage done by our education system.

Some of the ideas that stood out for me are:

1. Academia enforces working alone (don’t cheat!), while business requires teamwork and discussion
2. Academia punishes failure, while business encourages failure as a learning mechanism
3. Academia encourages a sense of entitlement, while business rewards those who take charge and create their own fortunes
4. Academia emphasizes individual effort, while business leverages other peoples’ time and money

I have been working on transforming these and other skills from academic to financial in my quest to take my success to a whole new level. In many cases, I have found it extremely difficult to practice some of these skills and I realize now that my background has actually rejected the abilities and attitudes needed, not just ignored them. Let me be clear (as Mr. Kiyosaki was) that academic skills are important, they just don’t lead to financial success. In any case, it appears I have plenty to work on in the coming months.

Mr. Kiyosaki also talked a bit about history. He focused on the 1971 change to the US Currency system from the Gold Standard to Fiat Currency. I won’t go into this here but if you don’t know what that’s all about, I highly recommend you learn more. His point was that our current economic system is degrading and increasingly relying on the taxes paid by the typical employee to keep it afloat. Unfortunately, the US government is doing little to fix the situation so it’s only going to get worse. Now as a Canadian, I can take pride in the idea that we’re not as bad, but in reality, I’m astute enough to know that if the US economy tanks, the Canadian economy will take a major hit too. With the potential for a catastrophic economic collapse looming on the horizon, I feel it is imperative that I create the necessary financial situation to ensure the safety of myself and my family.

Overall, I highly recommend seeing Robert Kiyosaki live. If you are serious about having a better life for yourself and your family, then it’s worth your time and money. Just do it!

- Dave

Image courtesy of a454 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Many people dream of a life filled with success. Of having all their needs met with extra leftover. Of doing what they want, when they want. Of being all that they can be. Of reaching and exceeding their potential.

The personal development scene has an abundance of examples demonstrating how someone overcame great adversity and became wildly successful. Almost every book begins with something like “I was broke and alone in my bachelor apartment crying into my bowl of instant noodles wondering if I’d even see tomorrow.” These scenarios make for great stories. And I applaud those who have succeeded after falling hard!

But what about the rest of us? What about those of us that bought into societies’ promise of a good life if we go to school, get a job, start a family and work hard for a few decades? How come this promise leads us to a life of mediocrity instead of the success we so desire?

Sure, we may have some degree of success. We may be moderately happy with our circumstances. But more often than not, we long for more. We sense in our soul that we were made for greatness and we’re just not doing it!

The motivational best-sellers are full of advice on how to reach our goals. How to push past the hard parts and get it done. I have read many of these books and I’m sure I’ll read many more as they do help. But as I read, I find myself wondering if the only road to success starts with a catastrophic failure. Do you have to risk losing it all to find the inner fire that drives you to succeed despite the odds?

I believe there is another way. A path to success that can be taken without risking everything. Without endangering my family or throwing away all I’ve accomplished so far. I intend to find this path, walk this path and reveal this path to everyone who wants the same thing.

Stay tuned, the journey begins…

- Dave

What do you do when you’re efficiency is approaching 90% and you’re still not getting the results you want? Or what if you have examined a particular area of your life, possibly tracking everything you do to get an accurate, objective picture of where your money and time is going, and there’s just no more wiggle room left? In a previous post I explored the possibility of doing things differently as a way to make progress. To a certain extent, that helps. In fact, part of my efficiency gain is a direct result of changing how I do things. But alas, that only takes you so far.

So, what’s next?

Originally, I thought I didn’t have an answer, but after some quiet reflection, I realized I do have some idea. I believe the key is to keep making little, incremental improvements and taking the actions you know will move you closer to your goals. In fact, I have found that having taken care of the little things, and savored the easy wins, it’s that much easier to know what you should be doing. Instead of being mired in minutiae, you can place your focus on what’s important.

Now, it’s easy to get impatient (which is one of the things I’m struggling with) but if you can hold in your mind a clear picture of the end result you are striving for, you will eventually get there. In The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy explains that little changes, done consistently, add up to big effects over time. I truly believe that’s the answer; patience and incremental improvement. Darren Hardy does a way better job of explaining this than I ever will so head over to the book’s website and download the free chapter. It explains in detail what I’ve only scratched the surface of here (and when you’re done reading the first chapter, buy the book, the rest of it is even better!).

Only time will tell if this strategy truly works, but the time will pass anyway (as I know all too well) so I figure it’s worth my while to try and make things better.

- Dave

It occurred to me today that it would be easy to just say “I failed” and give up. Accept my mundane life and stop striving for anything better. But as anyone who’s read anything in the Personal Development sphere knows, that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

So what is the right thing to do? Well, after a year of spinning my wheels, I know a whole bunch of things that don’t work. If I want to see different results, I need to do different things this time. Actually, that’s not quite correct. What I really need is to do things differently…

I think I was on the right track last year. And don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t really a wasted year since I did learn a lot. I also have another child who brings me insane amounts of joy and on the health side, I’m now lighter than I’ve been in 25 years (my entire adult life and then some). Still, I think things could be better. Should be better.

Hmmm, I had this post mostly written in my head earlier in the day but now I seem to have lost most of it. At least the good parts. All that’s left is some vague ramblings and a quasi pity party. Ah well, I’m going to post this anyway because the one thing I do remember is that the biggest thing I need to do differently is to take action! I’ve become really bad for thinking things to death and trying to plan for every possible problem along the way. That doesn’t work. In fact, the areas of my life where I have experienced growth are the areas where I took action instead of “planning” (which is really just procrastinating once you have the basic plan sketched out).

So, stay tuned for more thoughts. After all, taking action includes posting regularly (at least for me it does). If you’re at all interested in the tech work I do, head on over to my tech blog and if you’re interested in online business opportunities such as internet/affiliate marketing and info product creation/sales, you can check out my newly created onlinebiz blog.

- Dave

The book itself is written as a tale of one man’s mentorship in the the Lead Without a Title philosophy. We are taken through a day of discovery as the main character and his mentor meet with four teachers. Each teacher reveals one of the core principles of the philosophy along with the corresponding set of rules. Initially, I was a bit disappointed in the story. It seemed a bit contrived and shallow. However, as I progressed through the book, I found myself thoroughly engaged in the story and felt strong emotion in the final pages as the story concluded.

I typically avoid parable style development books but I’ve been following Robin Sharma’s work for a while now and I felt he’d have something good to say. I was *not* disappointed. Although the book is just under 200 pages, I found it to be a quick, enjoyable read. Having previously practiced some of the advice given, I can definitely atest to it’s effectiveness. For me, this reminder of habits lost is most welcome.

If you spend alot of time reading traditional personal development books, The Leader Who Had No Title provides a refreshing change of pace. Conversely, if you’re new to the personal development world, this book will make for a good entry point. Either way, the advice is solid and putting the rules into practice *will* make your life better.

- Dave

It’s sad to realize that so many people in society today have few, if any, really close friends. We live our lives on autopilot, going through the motions, doing what’s expected of us. Never taking the time to truly connect with the people around us. I can relate. I’ve been through this. In a sense I’m still going through this, at least some of the time.

There are those who’ve embraced online interactions as a replacement for face-to-face relationships. This does help fill the void but it’s not the same. Sure there are advantages. It’s easier to find like-minded people when you have a much larger pool to draw from. But our current technology only allows shallow facsimiles of true communication. In person interaction is such a high bandwidth channel encompassing all the senses, both known and yet to be discovered, that we can’t even come close to duplicating it. Maybe someday, but not today.

Despite being blessed with a good group of friends that have held together across five work areas in three different companies, I still feel the pain of loneliness from time to time. As we age, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to our friends. People change, times change, life goes on and people once close to you drift away as their interests and activities take them in different directions from yours. You find yourself trying to connect with people you see rarely and with whom you only have a tenuous commonality. Dare I say this is a curse of modern society?

I have no answers here, only observations. And a depressing awareness that I too, share this curse with the masses. It’s easy to wallow in self-pity or drown oneself in busyness in a vain attempt to forget. Maybe it’d be best to just accept this current state of affairs and find solace in the few relationships remaining. Embrace the fleeting interactions with neighbours and coworkers brought about by proximity. Celebrate the fleeting moments of true connection that occur oh so rarely and cherish the memories of the truly wonderful events of our lives, as few as they may be. I don’t know…

We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. – Orson Welles

- Dave

As part of my planning process I wrote down all my goals on the whiteboard in my home office and then arranged them into primary and secondary. Since I see my whiteboard as soon as I walk into my office, it’s a constant reminder of what I should be focusing on and since all but one of my primary goals are lifestyle based (ie: they’re part of my daily life), it’s been really easy to focus on what needs to be done instead of getting sidetracked with browsing, email, twitter and video games. Because of this focus, I finally completed some coding that I’ve been putting off for months (for no good reason). The lifestyle goals have been working out well too. There has been many instances where I would have done things differently if I wasn’t focused on a singular goal in that area.

I really feel like I’m making good progress towards accomplishing the things I’ve identified as most important. As a bonus, I’ve also been able to make some progress on some of my secondary goals since I seem to be more effective. I think it’s because I spend less time deciding what to do and more time doing. I’ll definitely keep using this system!

Changing Beliefs

And now for something completely different. I had considered making this a separate post but I’m not fond of numerous tiny posts so I’m adding it in here. A recent article by Steve Pavlina on the Lefkoe Method resulted in me trying out Morty’s process. At first, I thought That was neat, I guess I feel a little better, but over the past few days I’ve really noticed a change in my belief patterns. It seems I never realized the distinction between rationally thinking one way while emotionally believing something else. It has definitely made a difference in my life. I suggest you spend an hour and go try it out. It’s free, you just have to “sign up”. Standard traffic building technique which I’m sure most of you are aware of.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you do try the Lefkoe Method, let me know how it works out.

- Dave

Clearly, when I consider everything, that’s way too many. But I actually want to accomplish all this stuff so what could I do? Sure, I could put some of those goals on hold but I’m a big believer in at least trying to lead a balanced life and putting a subset of goals on hold would cause me to become majorly unbalanced.

Two Tiers for Clarity

I decided to use a two tier system of goals instead. Basically, I’ve picked one or two primary goals from each of the major areas of my life: Family, Health, Personal/Spiritual, Career/Financial, Recreation and Social. This list is a little different from what most people use but it works for me. The four streams I mentioned earlier focused primarily on Personal/Spiritual and Career/Financial and it’s in those areas that I have also specified secondary goals resulting in a two tier system. What that means for me is when deciding between two (or more) activities that work towards a goal, I can easily determine which is more important by whether it advances a primary goal or a secondary goal.

For the most part, I now have one goal per area except in a couple areas where it would be counter-productive to choose one over the other. For example, in the family area, I think it would be bad to focus on the relationships with my children over the relationship with my spouse or vice versa. Those two goals need to be on equal footing. I suppose I could combine those goals into one simple goal of working on relationships with all my family members but each aspect requires different actions and I find it easier to balance them if I think of them separately.

Does It Work?

I’ve only recently re-examined my goals and re-prioritized them so I don’t know how this is going to work out in the long run but I’ve already seen some positive effects. Last night, instead of getting flustered by all the career goals I have and deciding to work on goals in a totally different area (which happens way too often), I focused on building my tech career. To that end, I set up another blog to deal specifically and only with technology related material. In the past I’ve waffled over whether to write about tech stuff here or maybe start another blog or just not write about it at all. By picking just one of the career/financial streams, I have been able to focus on the actions that will allow me to accomplish that particular goal more quickly.

Your Turn

If you’ve been having trouble getting focused, I suggest you give some thought to which goals in any particular area are the most important to you and/or provide the most value and work on those first. How do you handle too many goals? What other strategies have you found useful?

- Dave

By taking a timeout I discovered many interesting things about myself. I discovered that I actually like (and missed) a lot of the self-improvement habits I’ve developed over the last 6 months. I like getting up early and reading first thing in the morning. I like eating healthy. I like reading personal development blogs. It seems that once you’ve taken the red pill there’s no going back.

I also found a few things that surprised me. First, TV really sucks these days. Sure, there’s a few shows I enjoy but most of the content is crap! And the news isn’t much better – full of sorrow and suffering. Second, some of the habits I’ve developed have become so ingrained that it’s actually harder not to do them now (I actually had to force myself to go back to sleep a few mornings). And finally, it turns out I still have a passion for technology. I thought I’d lost that somewhere along the way but not so.

All in all, this was a very worthwhile exercise and I highly recommend this for anyone who’s interested in making quantum leap improvements in their life. In addition to a renewed focus on taking my game to the next level, I’ve also found it necessary to rework my five-year plan to reflect the changes in my thinking. Even though I was making good progress before, experiencing the profound difference between a “normal” life and a life of growth has rekindled my passion for being the best I can be, living on the edge, and making a difference both in my life and the lives of those around me. How do you feel about your growth these days? Is it time for you to do a hard reset?

- Dave