Since I’m completely off social media, I’m counting on you guys to spread the word this.  If you see the value and it gets disseminated, I’ll post other postcards along the journey from time to time.

So the next move is up to you… 

I’m sharing the story because it offers some fascinating lessons on thinking big, and expanding your prosperity consciousness.  It also provides some insightful marketing lessons on using the tools of inclusion and exclusion, and the dynamic of scarcity.

Before we get into the story, let’s set the stage with some “facts” that millions of people around the world seem to “know” right now.  Namely:

• Times are tough;
• Money is scarce;
• It’s hard to market public seminars right now;
• Non-profit organizations are struggling for cash; and,
• Self-development is a tough sell.

Now, back to our story…

Since I’m on sabbatical, I thought it would be the perfect time to fly to Scotland and attend the live TED Global conference next month.  Now for those of you not familiar with TED, that is the conference with 18-minute speeches, run by the Sapling Foundation, on the premise of ideas worth spreading.

To attend a live event, you can’t just pay the conference fee.  You have to make a donation to the Foundation, a minimum of $6,000 or a patron gift of $12,000.  And you have to apply to be in the audience.  With a long form showing why you would be a good attendee, add value in the networking outside the hall, etc.  You even need three references.  (Now we all know that’s marketing bullshit.  They might have even learned this from me in an earlier lifetime.  No one would actually turn away an attendee worth 12 grand, right?)

Since I’m so hot in the middle of creative development with ideas swirling madly in my head just now, I didn’t want to take any chances.  And I also want to support the fine work TED does.  So I sent in my application at the $12,000 level.

This morning I received this message:

Dear Randy



Thank you for your interest in TEDGlobal 2013. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve your registration for this conference. Because there were many more applications than spaces, we were unable to admit everyone who applied. 


Our best wishes,

The TED team

So what are the lessons for you in all this? 

Peace out from Oz,

- RG

P.S.  Judging by many of the comments below, let me clear up a few things.  I wasn’t applying to speak at the conference.  I’m clocked out for the moment and was just attending to learn and sharpen my own saw.

Clarification number two:  TED didn’t take my $12,000 and stiff me.  They simply refused the donation because all the seats are full.  I then registered for the live streaming option.

And finally some of you think I’m railing against TED, was “cranky” about it, looking for “entitlement’ or trying to start a crusade to change their policies and/or culture.  None of the above.  I think it’s absolutely delightful that they are doing so well, and couldn’t be happier for them.  I shared the story because it serves to demonstrate why so many prevalent and conventional memes about lack are simply not true, and the great marketing lessons this contains for anyone willing to see them.

And thank you everyone who is sharing this and commenting with such passion.  It’s wonderful to see this participation from the community here, and as a result, I will send some more “postcards” along my journey.

I’ve been providing a lot of content on a weekly basis:  A new episode of Prosperity TV, five blog posts, and many shorter posts on social media channels.  This is all done in addition to giving many speeches, consulting, writing books, and authoring other resources.

This has been a rewarding and intoxicating process, and I feel that I am working at the highest level of my life.  But it is also taxing my resources and limiting my own learning.

So today I must say goodbye, for a time… 

I have sold my home, sports cars and all the furnishings to a sheik from Dubai.  I have more than $100,000 worth of suits that don’t fit my new physique and lots of other possessions that don’t serve me any longer, so I’ve created a vacuum.  Please don’t tell Robin Sharma, but my next book might be titled, The Monk Who Sold his Viper.

Effective today, I’ll stop posting to my Facebook page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and blog, and am going to disappear from the public stage.

I will be traveling the world, following the sun and my creative muse, looking for the next lessons that life can offer me.  I may write four or five books, learn two or three languages, and visit 10 or 15 countries.  I could go back to school somewhere, search for Galt’s Gulch, schedule some sunsets, or maybe just run off with Cirque du Soleil.

One thing is certain:  The exponentially increasing speed of change and technology development will make the next decade the most chaotic one in human history.  We are going to have to find answers to the most perplexing questions humankind has ever had to face.

And from that chaos will emerge the greatest opportunities in human history as well…

The process of writing Risky Is the New Safe opened my eyes to developments, trends, and opportunities I want to explore deeper.  One of the things I’ll be doing on this sabbatical will be writing the sequel to “Risky,” which is titled, 2024: The History of the Future.

I’ll take some of the concepts explored in the first book, and go deeper down the rabbit hole…

In the areas of sales, marketing, and branding – there will be more disruptive change in the next ten years than occurred in the last 200.   In other areas like medicine, wellness, and longevity, we will experience more serious disruption in the next decade than we have seen in a thousand years.  And in a few select areas like genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence – there will be more disruptive change in the next ten years than occurred in the last 13 billion.  Really.

For humankind to survive these challenges, it will require a whole new level of thinking.  I’m not at that level of thinking yet, but I’m committed to getting there.  And that is the reason for the adventure I’m about to embark on.

In the meantime, I’ve left behind plenty of content for those of you intent on studying the path of prosperity.  There are more than 100 episodes of Prosperity TV here.  Visit and watch one or two a week to keep your prosperity consciousness up.  You can find all of my books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.  And stop back here and search the blog anytime; there are more than 1,000 posts archived here.

Please don’t ask how long I’ll be gone, because I don’t know.  Sign up for my update list here, and if and when I reappear, you’ll be the first to know.

Keep an eye out:  You might catch sight of me on a college campus, or a Shaolin Temple, on a ballroom floor in Buenos Aires, climbing a volcano in Costa Rica, or somewhere south of disorder.

But until we meet again, please:  LIVE RICH!

- RG

And because those beliefs are created by mind viruses – highly charged with emotion and often indoctrinated at a young age – most of the people with these dangerous beliefs have no clue of the danger they pose to themselves and others.  And have no idea that they are not acting rationally.

Some commenters on the earlier posts on this subject have chastised me for being judgmental or as dogmatic as the brainwashed religious cult members I am warning against.  But this criticism does not stand the test of reason.

The goal of those posts was not to attack or ridicule people’s beliefs or their right to hold them, but to point out the lack of rational thought it takes to believe such things.  They also serve to illuminate the subliminal programming which many of them have that leads to low self-esteem, worthiness issues and self-sabotage – and in extreme cases physical attacks or murder of others  (as the Boston events just demonstrated).   These beliefs are anti-humanity and thus, anti-prosperity.

The Greeks thought Artemis was the virgin goddess of the hunt, although she later was promoted to the moon goddess.  The Romans had a counterpart in Diana.  Likewise the Greeks had Poseidon as the god of the seas, and the Romans worshiped Neptune for all things maritime.   When it comes to the supreme, supreme deities, the Greeks went with Zeus, while the Romans genuflected to his counterpart Jupiter.

As people became wiser and science helped unfold some of the mysteries of the universe, these beliefs faded away, becoming the grist of folklore, superstition and metaphors for superhero movie plots.   (Although don’t think for a minute that there are still not people who believe in them.  There are.)

For most people today, however, we look back on these myths, thinking they are quaint, and wondering how people could hold such illogical, irrational and outlandish beliefs.   Yet if we look at the beliefs held by at least four or five billion of the world’s population today, they are just as bizarre and no less implausible.

You may think that these are just harmless personal beliefs, and if they console people and help them process traumatic events like the death of a loved one, or a bad medical diagnosis, they serve a beneficial purpose to society.  But now we have to seriously question that assumption.

Because religion is killing people.  Again.

Unreason, which is a polite way to say craziness, is running rampant in the world today.  The fact that such a large percentage of the world’s population still believe in Sky-God superstitions – and these people are air traffic controllers, engineers, and even presidents and Prime Ministers – is certainly cause for trepidation.   Even worse, none of them think there is anything irrational and absurd about the certainty they have in their superstitions.

Shit and Stuff…

The really ironic dynamic in all this is that everyone thinks their own beliefs are historical facts, and everyone else’s beliefs are crazy delusions.  It reminds me of George Carlin’s brilliant bit on stuff and shit.  If it’s yours, it’s stuff.  If it belongs to someone else, then it’s shit.  As in, “Who left this shit here?  This is where I keep my stuff.”

So we have Mormons who think their magic underwear protects them from evil, Christians who trust Noah brought dinosaurs on the ark, Hindus who believe Indra was born fully grown from his mother’s side, Scientologists who imagine they are extraterrestrials from a previous lifetime and Jewish Rabbis who fly on airplanes sealed in a hefty bag because they’re flying over a cemetery.  Certainly no rational person not indoctrinated at birth or infected with mind viruses would exhibit any of these thought processes.

Probably you defend the rights of people to practice their faith and believe any of these things, as I do.   Just as these people have no real proof their deities actually exist, I have no proof that they don’t.   Most of these beliefs are quaint superstitions like Zeus, Poseidon and Neptune, and if they make people feel better, good for them.

The issue arises when the beliefs that these people are brainwashed with cause misery and suffering for them, and prevent them from reaching the prosperity and happiness that is their birthright.  Or worse yet, cause them to attack and kill others.

Most of your core foundational beliefs about all the important things:  relationships, health, happiness, prosperity, religion, sex, etc. – are set before you are ten years old.   Sadly, only one person in 20 or 30 million actually does any critical thinking on this when they grow up.   To live an enlightened life, you must be willing to analyze the beliefs you live by.

You have to ask:

• What are my core beliefs on these subjects?
• How did I come to get them?
• Are they actually true?

These are questions most people simply don’t ask.  They operate their whole lives on the programming they received with they were six, seven or eight years old.  And if that programming teaches you that you are a sorry sinner, are not worthy, are meant to suffer in this lifetime, won’t reach enlightenment until another 44 lifetimes, or you’re reincarnated this lifetime to pay penance for a past lifetime – you’re pretty much screwed.

Unless you question your beliefs with a rational mind, and eviscerate the ones that are not serving you. 

Otherwise, you will grow into adulthood with low self-esteem and worthiness issues, which prevents you from being happy and leads to a lifetime of fear.   This can lead to self-sabotage behavior in your health, relationships and career.  In extreme cases it can lead to suicide, as when young gay teens take their life because they’ve been programmed to think there is something wrong with them.

For the most part, the beliefs of these individual sects and cults only impact the cult members themselves.  But there is an even greater danger today, and that is when religious zealots attack and kill people outside of their faith.

And that is where Islam comes into the picture. 

The Qur’an is very specific in its instruction for believers regarding non-believers:  Non-believers are infidels who must be converted or killed.  And Muslims who read and believe the Qur’an is the verbatim word of Allah are not only dangerous to themselves, but society as a whole.

It apparently was those beliefs that led Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to detonate the explosives that would kill and maim dozens of innocent spectators at a sporting event.   Like the 9/11 attacks, the victims were of many faiths, even Muslim.  How can you quantify the mind viruses that cause people to blow up an 8-year-old boy, cause his 7-year old sister to lose her leg, and even injure believers of your own faith, and believe you are conducting a holy war?

Muslims who take the Qur’an literally believe that by committing such cowardly and heinous acts, they will receive 72 virgin maidens in paradise as a reward.   And this is where Islam jumps the shark…

Some dismissed my earlier posts as “Islamophobia,” (a charge I see being leveled against Sam Harris recently as well).  That accusation does not pass the logic test.  Islamophobia would suggest an irrational fear of Islam.

But the events of the last 15 years have demonstrated that non-believers have many very rational reasons to fear Islam… 

Islam certainly isn’t the only religious cult to operate on folklore, myths and superstitions. I think most if not all do.  And Islam is not alone being based upon premises no rational person could believe if they were not infected with memes.   What makes Islam the most dangerous religion in the world today is its teachings on martyrdom, jihad, and killing non-believers.

To be fair, the way Islam discriminates and ostracizes women, non-heterosexuals and non-believers is not unique.  Mormons banish non-heterosexuals, the Bible says they should be stoned, and the Torah prescribes the death penalty for homosexuality.  But truth is, you won’t find a lot of Mormon deacons, Jewish rabbis, or Catholic ministers actually preaching to kill homosexuals today.   But in the Islamic world, homosexuality equals a death sentence, and there are many Imams preaching this.

The way the Muslim world treats women is simply unconscionable and barbaric.   Even “Game of Thrones” wouldn’t fantasize something as preposterous as killing girls simply because they wanted to get an education.   It wouldn’t pass for a credible plot in an epic fantasy like “Thrones”, but this is the actual reality in many Muslim countries today.

And it doesn’t stop with the non-heterosexuals and women…

Many Muslim clerics advocate attacking or even killing anyone who ridicules their religion.  These “spiritual leaders” issue death fatwas on authors and incite riots in response to comics.  And there is a strong and growing faction in the Islamic world committed to a jihad to convert or kill all “infidels.”  The Boston bombings and the plot to derail a Canadian passenger train are just the most recent examples of attempted mass murder done in the name of Islam.

Islam is certainly not the only religion to kill people in the name of God.  There are many examples throughout history, notably the Catholic church during the Inquisition.  And while this was as vengeful and barbaric as the fundamentalist Muslims are today, there’s a very big difference in the potential impact:  While the Inquisition was at its peak of violent extremism, there were no tools of worldwide manipulation like the Internet and satellite TV.  Nor did weapons of mass destruction exist.

This all leads us to three very important issues, in terms of prosperity:

First, be mindful of what beliefs you’ve been indoctrinated with, and then being able to rationally analyze them.   Do they pass the rationality test of someone who isn’t infected with memes?  Do those beliefs serve you or enslave you?

Second, recognize that “religious tolerance” and respecting the beliefs of people who want to kill you doesn’t end well.  A central tenet of prosperity is knowing your own value, setting boundaries, and protecting your interests.

Finally, we need to really think about the role organized religion plays in the world today.  Instead of leading to self-awakening and enlightenment, it seems to be leading people to be satisfied with not knowing answers, instead of searching for them.

Fundamentalism now often serves as a code word for hate and intolerance.  When religions become catalysts for killing, it’s time for some serious re-evaluation.

-RG

P.S.  Based on some of the questions and comments below, let me add some additional thoughts.  I have read the Qur’an.  I have spent time in Dubai, Malaysia, and Indonesia numerous times and found the people there to be delightful.  I was always treated gracious and welcoming, and am happy to have many Muslim friends from those countries, Egypt, and here in the U.S.

I think some of the Muslim beliefs are preposterous, but no more so than many of the beliefs held by devout Jews, Christians, Hindus and many other religions.  Personally I find the Qur’an to be filled with savagery and barbarism, but we can certainly say that about other sacred texts, including the Bible.

The difference is you don’t see religious leaders in those other faiths directing their followers to continue the iron and stone age savagery, but many Muslim clerics and heads of state still do.   The other issue is when Muslims practice such behaviors, people suggest that they are extremists who don’t follow the Qur’an, when in actually, they are devout Muslims who are following the Qur’an quite literally.  Lets at least be honest and acknowledge the real nature of this sacred text.

I’m not on a crusade to rid the world of Islam, or any other religion.  (Although the question of whether the world would be better off without them is a fair one at this point in time.)  The purpose of this post is to point out the danger that arises when people blindly follow dogma and doctrines without practicing critical thinking.   Everything goes back to the three questions I pose above, and whether you have the courage and rationality to ask and answer them.

Unfortunately, it seems natural when you’re sick to think about your runny nose, cough, aches, or pain.  When you’re depressed, it’s easy to think about all the things that haven’t gone the way you want.  And when you’re broke, the stress of looming bills can dominate your thoughts.

But the only way to change your results – is to change the way you think.

-RG

Conventional thinking is seldom very insightful, and sometimes the surface problems aren’t the real causes.  And the answer is not moving backwards.

The planet is made up mostly of water.  Yet kids die of thirst every day.  That is a crime.  But it’s not because it’s a water shortage.  It’s because the process of desalinizing water has not become viable enough to work everywhere in the world.  Like a lot of challenges, the answer lies in innovation.

There are those who would make you feel guilty for driving your car, reading a print newspaper, or even using electricity.  But even if everyone agreed to forsake all cars, boats, trains, planes and go back to candlelight (and good luck selling this idea) – the world would still be facing serious problems, just from the growing population.

Over the next decade we will face some of the most daunting problems humankind has ever seen.  We need better ways to grow food, supply energy, build shelter, travel and many other things.   But the solutions will come from moving forward, not backward.  The free enterprise system fosters innovation and inventions, and these are the things that create solutions.

So celebrate Earth Day.  Just know the best way to save Mother Earth is with the power of ideas.

-RG

You don’t need a time management course, a mission statement, or a business plan.  You need to do the work.

You don’t need someone to tell you what to do.  You know what you need to do.  Do it.

-RG

Do work that you’re immensely proud of.   The work will attract the tribe.  The right tribe, for you and them.

The only things that achieve universal acclaim are pap and mediocrity.  If you’re not pissing some people off – you’re probably not doing relevant work.   Everyone is not supposed to be in your tribe.

Don’t pander.  Be dangerous. Don’t water the work down to attract more.  Make the work challenging to attract better.

-RG

P.S.  And if you haven’t read Tribes by Seth Godin yet, what are you waiting for!

He’s a sharp guy, I like him and he has valuable content that could contribute to a project.  But I’ll never work with him, because he can’t be counted on to return a message. I know from past experience that he starts a project, makes commitments, then goes AWOL for weeks at a time.   His word means nothing.  He’s certainly not alone…

I have another colleague that told me, “You just sent one email?  You have to nag me five or six times to make sure I get it.”

No, no I don’t.  I prefer to work with people I don’t have to chase after.

Then there are all the people who read The 4-Hour Workweek and really believed it.   You know them because they brag about how they might only check email every three or four weeks.  Listen, it’s a great book and it will provide you some helpful lessons on lifestyle and productivity.  But don’t be foolish enough to think that Timothy Ferriss actually works only four hours a week.

I sure there are a couple weeks that was true.  Just like it was true for me when I went to Hawaii and Bali.  But if you think any high leader achievers in any field do it with four hours a week, you’re not thinking rationally.

And if you think you’re impressing me by telling me you have more than 1,000 unanswered emails in your box, or it might be a month before I get a reply from you on something, you’re very mistaken.  It just tells me you’re an amateur.

Yes of course you should have family and recreation time and set boundaries.  But successful people also work.  Hard.  And the most successful people are successful because we seek out other professionals to work with.

You can tell a professional because they:

• Keep their commitments.
• Can be reached within a reasonable time frame.
• Return their messages or have a process in place to handle them when they’re not available.
• Work because it’s a passion of theirs.

So how are you doing on all this?

- RG

Sometimes you need courage just to live.

There are evil people in the world, natural disasters occur and accidents take place.  You never know when you will face rejection, a failure, or a bad medical diagnosis.

Bad things happen to good people all the time.  It’s all part of the nuances of life.  But you must stand strong and be brave.  No mater how difficult the situation seems, don’t give away your power.

So whether you were injured in the marathon yesterday, are fighting an addiction, facing the loss of a loved one, or struggling against all odds, be strong.  And know that somewhere, in some way, you will benefit and become stronger because you have faced adversity.

You may feel lonely and alone.  But know there are people who care about you and believe in you.  And I am one of them.

-RG

Every once in a great while you’ll have a golden opportunity that screams opportunity.  But most of the opportunities (and usually the most lucrative ones) are the ones that come from solving problems, overcoming challenges, or otherwise remedying a situation that makes it better for others.

In Risky Is the New Safe I suggested that in the new economy, the most sought after currency in the world will be ideas.  I believe we’re there now.  Want to get wealthy?  Look for problems, challenges and obstacles.  Then nurture the idea that could solve them.

-RG