I know there are times when you could just use a good old fashioned success story to keep you moving in the direction of your dreams and goals. I get that way myself.
Susan, The 13 Year Old Business Entrepenuer
I found an incredible story for several reasons that caught my eye and wanted to share with you. One reason is the success comes to us from a thirteen year old girl with big dreams, and the other is she is doing what most people would probably think is too much of a challenge to take on.
Let’s look at this a bit more in detail. In short, Susan is in the process of creating a new iPhone and iTouch application that she has thought up based on the classic Stacker arcade game. In addition, she’s building it by utilizing “crowd funding”.
Crowd funding is somewhat new to project funding and involves people who are interested in the idea to donate dollars to the cause. Once the amount of money needed to fund the project is obtained, it’s created by the crowd funding project manager. In this case it’s Susan.
The really neat thing about her project is that she will only create an iPhone and iTouch application if she gets the necessary funding needed to create it. This means there is vested interest in her idea and it makes sense to move forward in creating the application as she has described it.
An additional benefit is that the person donating also wins big time too. They get the application for free, possibly at a considerably reduced price for having donated during the pre-design phase and additional benefits based on donation levels. So at a minimum the contributor is buying the application before its release and getting rewarded for having done so beyond just buying the application once it is ready for purchase in iTunes or the App Store.
This is a brilliant idea and really highlights Susan’s talent because of the win/win scenario she has created. In addition, Susan also has her own website called iTouchTechTalk.com, where you can learn all kinds of interesting ideas from how to solve application challenges to learning about some of the most useful applications available today. She often reviews applications so you can determine if an application is something you want to buy or not.
Susan started her internet venture on January 1st, 2010, just a mere 3.6 months ago and is already known as an iTouch/iPhone expert making her mark on this popular internet mobile niche.
What can you do or start today that can change your life for the better? Like Susan, find a passion you have in life and make your mark because life consists of a finite amount of time. You haven’t a moment to lose in finding and living your dream. Susan has, and you can too!
I’m a proud Papa too, because Susan is my daughter.
I talked recently about persistence as a way of helping to achieve your dreams and goals. However I had a recent dilemma in regards to a new project I’m working on, in that I was being challenged with having a combined teleseminar and webinar series.
Find Bright Solutions Instead Challenges
The webinar portion would increase the difficultly to execute successfully because of my thinking that a live broadcast would work best in creating the most usefulness to my audience.
Then it came to me one fine day hitting me like a ton of bricks and interestingly it happened to be something I’d pondered already some time ago, which got lost in the static of life. Here it goes…
Make the series focus on personal growth and development from within and leave the artistry and implementation related to external (outside the body) student development as follow up material that might very well include videos or demonstrations.
The point here is that if you believe and love what you do, as I do, your thoughts will center around that love all the time and the best solution will come to you in perhaps the most strangest and surprising moments when you most need them. So, as one of my great past mentors said to me “You don’t need to know all the ‘how’ answers to be successful. You just need to know the why.”
And I say there are 2 whys, 1) why you are doing it and 2) why you’re serving, serves others. For example, 1) I would like to create $3000 so I can buy my daughter a piano and 2) by providing new and fresh information a deeper understanding and wisdom will result in benefiting my clients by exposing a larger fullness and breadth to their experience (This answers the question of why what I am serving, serves my clients). When you can answer those two questions, and if necessary ponder a bit longer, the answers to your challenges will appear. Keep in mind, this technique or principle is applicable in the work environment, if you are serving in that capacity too.
When you are in a creative mode of thinking about what means so much to you and that you enjoy, your project will become all encompassing. It is at this time when you will only know solutions to your challenges and know no reasons why it won’t work.
It’s tax time again and that’s a good time to look at what you accomplished from a financial perspective for the previous year. I hope you have something to celebrate about because even in an economic down-turn people are getting wealthy.
Keep Your Heart Pure And Have Love For All
As you know, money isn’t everything. In fact, I’d rather have a lot of other things in life like my precious family, our health, happiness, peace and calmness above money. However, you probably know that having money helps if you have grown enough inside to handle having it. I know I have. This leaves me with a sense of feeling good because if you don’t have the financial wherewithal you want right now, you can always get it by determining you want it. And as long as you have grown inside enough to handle financial success, you will be able to keep it and share it without ever losing it.
Recently I’ve been thinking and saying “If you can dream it and believe it, you can achieve it.” Napoleon Hill the famous author of Think and Grow Rich said something similar, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”, however I wanted something that was original :^) Also, when you talk about the life you are going to have, that is extraordinary way beyond what it is today over and over until it becomes a burning desire and everyone you say it too is tired of hearing it, you will get there, I firmly believe it.
There are people who have a lot of money and resources at their disposal, but they haven’t grown personally within to provide peace within themselves. They are not happy. To me, that is sad. It is their choice to be like this because everyone has the capacity to control themselves if they chose to do so. If you don’t steer your ship of life, then others will do it for you which can lead you to running into rocks, which isn’t a very pleasant experience. In other words, you will end up with a life you are unhappy about.
I keep coming back and dreaming of the life I desire that my late mentor Jim Rohn would talk about. That is a life where you create so much abundance for yourself that you can help yourself, your family, your extended family, your friends, your community, your world and so on. You can make a difference in the world. You can leave a legacy that says, You meant something, You did something great. You created hope and helped millions of people. Your life was not for not, but for significance. You were a meaningful specific, not a wandering generality. Folks, I challenge you to create and live a life that is meaningful. But remember, life is very short so you better start today!
I was talking to one of my multi-millionaire friends today and one of the many things he talked about is how being persistent will allow you to achieve whatever it is you want. Persistence pays, and pays in huge returns. Just hearing that really made me feel good.
Your Persistence Fortune
You see, it’s easy to feel bad and to work as hard as you can and come to expect great results and then have those great ideas wither away like a dying flower in late summer. It’s harder to find something to keep you going when you shake your head in disbelief because things didn’t work out the way you expected them to. To make things worse, you bragged to everyone again about how well you are going to do, to find out that the idea you implemented turned out to be another bomb. Don’t you hate that?
But the fact is that a lot of ideas won’t work out and you just need to work until you find the one that does. That’s what I’m doing and have been doing for over 20 years. You can make it too.
For some, it won’t take very long. For others it will take a long time. However, what is a long time? To a dish cooking on the stove on a medium high temperature, 2 minutes exceeding the done time is too long. However, for building from scratch a rocket to get to the moon and back 10 years is pretty fast.
So what if it took 20 years to achieve your goals and dreams? For a lot of people it won’t, but what if it did? I say big deal. One of my mentors once said, “We’re going to be here anyway.” Life’s going to pass anyway, so don’t worry or be bothered by it. Would you rather achieve your goals and dreams at the end of 20 years or not at all? I think we all know the answer to that and in order to get there, we must never give up!
Remember, a failure is not a failure unless you give up. It is instead a lesson learned on our journey to success. Keep going and find a support system or create one that supports you reaching your goals and dreams. Like this web site or a friend, or an organization like the List Building Club, or a mastermind group and so on. Find someone who believes in you and believes in your dreams and goals and this will help you in being persistent. I say to you right now, never give up on yourself or your goals. Be persistent.
I came across one of the most inspiring, interesting and incredible stories ever told by Brian Tracy that I want to share with you. I know you will love this video. Watch all 4 short parts. Well worth your time.
You should be. Here’s a person and a story that was meant to inspire everyone. Your problems may just seem not so big after you learn about Z.
You may not know Z Zazhinne, but you should, because she lost her sight and was told she had permanent brain injuries and would be permanently disabled. Well, that didn’t happen because Z wasn’t going to allow it to happen. Find out this week on the Ask Mister Self Help Tele-seminar series what can be learned through Z’s experience, like Never Give Up among others. Here is a quick video to introduce her to you:
I am a very emotional person, even so I don’t cry very often. Usually if at all, it’ll be at a good sad movie that you’ll hear a whine coming from the audience that embarrasses my family. But today was different. I’m sure everyone as people has felt the pain that life can sometimes provide like when a loved one dies or you lose your home or you can’t make your payments or the struggles of life just seem to be too much. As a man, at least for me, these kinds of times are infrequent of which I am grateful for because they are so hard to deal with. I think of crying. I think of time alone to just try and pull things together. I think of praying.
Find Strength in Your Feelings
Now if none of that helps, then there are the old standby things to try like, thinking about all you are grateful for, or putting a good self-improvement audio on or reading something inspirational, perhaps playing your favorite songs, and so on. Life is so short and true winners minimize these troubled times as much as they can in order to keep moving in the direction of reaching their goals and dreams. But there are real times in your life when you are experiencing true feelings of sadness and as such they can’t be discredited or overlooked.
They need to be acknowledged them for what they are. Writing is such a powerful tool to help you through these times. One of my mentors Chris Cade has helped me to find more meaning through writing and you may want to check out his work too. You can write anything you want. You can write what you feel or why you feel the way you do. You can write until you have nothing more to say. You can speak from your heart. And I encourage you to keep those thoughts, as they are yours and you can re-visit them as you journey through your life.
As you may know, I am on my way to making the success I desire in my life. I’m doing it with you and I’m here to help you in any way I can. We are going to make it together. That is my dream for you. Please let me know what I can do to help you in reaching your dreams and goals. I really mean it because I believe when you take the focus off yourself and place it on others, that your sadness can be replaced with a meaningful life that gives hope to living a happy life, because your life’s work is for a worthy cause and not a selfish one.
See what you can do for someone else that needs you or is in a time of need. You will experience one of the most beautiful rewards life has to offer. The reward of helping others. I recall a friend of mine calling me recently in need and he was so glad that I just picked up the phone and would listen to his hurting and provide some guidance in getting him back to being a productive and happy person again. Friend, that’s what makes life so grand. Being able to help that person, because some day it might be you. Now I cry no more, for I have purpose.
But the truth is, if you strive to reach your dreams and goals that you will meet more disappointments than if you don’t, and that means more hurting too. But regardless if you strive to be all you can be or not, we are all human and will meet sadness and pain headlong sooner and later. Reality is, to not live your dream life is more painful than doing what it takes to realize and live the life you really want.
I wish you strength and peace as you recover from the difficulties life has to offer you. My suggestion to you is to not pray for things to be easier but for you to become stronger to deal with difficulties. We grow through challenges, not through the mundane.
Have a great week and we’ll talk soon,
Kevin Levine (Mister Self Help)
Check out our free Ask Mister Self Help tele-seminar series, it’s incredible and so are you!
I was reflecting on a Toast Masters meeting I had attended the day before and thought about the contributions I had made and the awards that are given at the end of the meeting to signify who has done the best work that day in three areas; best speaker, best evaluator, and best table topics. I’ve won a few of these ribbons, but more importantly was the wonderful lesson that came to me by having used these tools as rewards to signify at least in your peers eyes, better work than others had given during the meeting. It made me ponder these questions:
See Yourself As You Should!
1) How hard did I work to do the best job I possibly could to win a ribbon or be an active participant?
2) Could I have done better?
3) Did I give 100% of everything I’ve got to be sure when I walk out that door, whether I won or not that I gave it my all?
It’s hard to answer the above questions in a favorable way to everything we do every day. It seems we just get into some kind of daily trance doing what we feel is necessary and needed, or perhaps if we are fortunate enough, doing what it is we really want to do. But think about this, how do we feel when we don’t answer the above questions in a favorable way? Not very good, right? Now think about how you feel when you’ve given your all to a task or an hour or your children or your life. You feel on top of the world, right?
How do we want to feel? The latter I’m sure. What does it take to achieve that level of winning in life? It takes being conscience, awake, aware, and in the present. It may take preparation too. The Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared.” Are you prepared to accomplish everything in life that you want? You don’t always have the time or the inclination to be prepared. But is it worth not doing? I don’t think so.
So my recommendation to you is to live your life 100% of the time at your peak performance. I realize you can’t always do that, but the more you can the better you will become and the better you will feel about yourself. If you live your life like that, you will be happy about it and when you reflect on it, you will be proud. I also believe you will win more winners ribbons to complement your life.
Sometimes we work so hard toward making a better life for ourselves and family that we forget what it’s all for. We create our goals, we work our plan and we progress; usually not as fast as we like, but still we make progress, which is good. I’m as guilty of not doing, yet now suggesting we live our dream life today by imaging it in our mind, possibly as much as you, because I haven’t done it much yet myself. Take 2 minutes or 2 hours to imagine in your mind what it feels like when you reach the success you desire. Do it today, do it now. Do it regularly.
Make Your Desires Crystal Clear In Your Mind
You may think to yourself that you don’t have the time or don’t want to take the time to do so, but I suggest that you do take the time because it is what I believe is a critical piece to ultimately obtaining that which you desire.
And here’s the thing. If you’re anything like I am, then you didn’t just start doing everything that you should be doing in order to accelerate your path to success. I added new success principles into my life one by one such that once I mastered and created a habit of utilizing one, then I worked on another. For example, I became very passionate about finding the best way to write my goals down. I studied it for a very long time and ended up using Raymond Aaron’s teachings and have been using them regularly for a while now.
There was a time when I stopped writing down my goals, however I re-committed myself to doing it because I know it’s the right thing to do and because I want the results of what writing goals down provides. I’m also being an example to my family and that makes me very happy. The point here is if you start and stop you can always pick it back up again.
Now that I feel comfortable about writing my goals down and am getting great results in that area of my life, I’m ready to get even better by adding the success principle of imaging in my mind what it feels like and all other aspects once I achieve the success I’m working towards. I’m actually looking forward to it.
And one thing I’ve learned by having written my monthly goals is that I’m so happy after having done so because it makes me feel good to have them done and I’m excited about living the life that having achieved those goals will provide me. You can feel good about your life too. My challenge to you is to incorporate a new success principle habit into your life and then enjoy the results you create for yourself. Imagine and live the life you want today and every day, even if it’s for just 2 minutes.
I was fortunate to be in the presence of a very knowledgeable friend and Taekwondo Grandmaster (8th degree) recently and we were talking about what Napoleon Hill said in his “Think and Grow Rich” book. He said something to the affect that if you want to succeed, you need to have a “Burning Desire.” Then my friend said, “How do you define a burning desire?” I didn’t have an automatic knee jerking response to that question, which led me to think that it’s worth more pondering.
High Focused Intensity In Action Will Confirm A Burning Desire
Have you ever had a “Burning Desire?” To me, it’s almost unexplainable, but it gets me right down to the core of my existence. When I have a burning desire, I feel it completely through me from top to bottom and it resonates in my mind and gut in a way that nothing else does. I feel energized just thinking about the words “Burning Desire” because of what the meaning of those two words stirs up inside me.
A burning desire causes me to do things I might not do otherwise. In fact, it can often be triggered by an un-comfortableness that stems from some external event(s), like a person who shows a lack of appreciation for what you’ve done to help them or an internal feeling, like wanting your life to change in some way. I’m placed into a mood and focus that no other scenario puts me into. It’s like focusing or harnessing the light from the sun through a magnifying glass until it catches an old dead leaf on fire. I’m unstoppable at that point and nothing can stand between my achieving that which I desire because of a decision I’ve made with a strong emotional anchoring attached to the attainment of that goal or desire.
Here is my best attempt at defining what a “Burning Desire” is… “A desire that requires a defined and definite action regardless if known or not that results in total completeness of a purpose upon its attainment.” In other words, there is no other option than to achieve the burning desire and enjoy or realize its full attainment. Now, this said, you may have a burning desire and then at some point that same burning desire loses its appeal or strength and is no longer a burning desire, but when it is a true burning desire, the definition I described above applies completely.
