Law and Disorder

“The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty.”
~ Publilius Syrus~

I’m as guilty as the rest of the mob.  When a relative stranger approaches me, gains my ear, and ultimately convinces me that they have a real solution to my personal or financial problems…well, I still hesitate and reach back to make sure my wallet is still stewing in the rump pocket.

Let me get in your face and mine.  Life is not a saintly adventure.  It is full of cataclysmic choices.  When you have weighed the pros and cons of doing or buying something, make a choice.  NEVER pocket veto a chance to be right and to move your life forward one notch or a hundred.

In these dismal economic times, when most people are licking their FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real), resolve to be decisive.

The alternative is to find your fame and fortune in a soup line with all the losers shaking with fear and unwilling to invest in anything or anyone that could possibly improve their lot.  Get out of that line.

Think about the moments when you say, “If only I could afford to get help with XXXX, I’m sure I could succeed.”  Most likely you have been saying the same thing for ages, hoping against hope that God might intervene with oodles’ of money or a knight on a white horse who will sweep you off your feet and gallop you away to the castle of your dreams.

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Let’s say a financially-secure relative takes his precious time and explains to you a formula to get a job by the end of the month, though you have been on the dole for six months.  It all sounds logical, but when your friend says it will cost you $200 in envelopes, paper and stamps and  another $100 in phone bills…you balk.  “I can’t spend money,” or “My spouse wouldn’t let me do that,” or “That sounds good, but you’re different than me.”

So you keep your dwindling cash in the rear pocket and continue to pray for divine intervention.  Of course, you don’t receive it, unless you consider one meal a day at McDonald’s to be divine.

That friend then gives you tough love and tells you that you are the most moronic piece of cockroach feces on the planet.  He tells your wife that she’s a disabler, and then shrugs his shoulders and walks away saying, “It’s your life, fool.”

Husband and wife look at each other in flashes of rage and utter despair.  Finally the husband says, “I’m going to invest in that stationary and stamps and send out hundreds of resumes.”  He does so and, lo and behold, three weeks later he’s back at work.

The lesson?  Find good advice from successful, ethical people and then follow it to the letter.  Going cheap is very costly and stupid indeed.  Think always of what your Return On Investment (ROI) may be, if you act.  There are no guarantees of success when you step to the plate, but the soup line crowd will most definitely keep you treading water forever.

“Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird.”

~Paul Eldridge

Have you ever attended a party of people over 30?  A few are fit.  A few are rich.  A few are ebullient and confident.  A majority are full of hot-air stories of unproven and improvable glory years.

Fast forward to a party of people over 45, and now nine out of ten are full of bluster about the way they used to be.  Their stories are so incredible, that even (or maybe especially) their wives’ – usually the male specie does this -  eyes roll.

“I used to be a scratch golfer, says one.  “I used to date the most beautiful girls on campus,” boasts another.  “I used to be Barrack Obama’s buddy in his Chicago days,” blinks a third distortionist.  “I ran a four-minute mile when I was 19,” claims another boaster with a potbelly gut.

The used-to-be crowd remember the good old days as remarkable, but that’s usually because they tend to forget or brush over uncomfortable failures and setbacks which lessen their achievements.  If only the cameras had been rolling to record real history, maybe the braggarts would talk much less boastfully about their past.

“No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life,” Bertrand Russell mused, “as not to receive new information from age and experience.”

Stop trying to impress people with the old, unreal you that may occasionally make you feel good or impress those unfamiliar with your past.  To ruminate about the used-to-be’s of life will surely paralyze you in the here and now.  They never ever produce a a drop of honey.

The best of your life is in front of you, whether tomorrow or 50 years remain in store.  If age and ability seem to be draining you of your life force, then learn to make lemonade from the lemons you have been given.  The happiest people always do so.

“As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big.”
~Donald Trump, Real Estate Mogul~

Throughout my life I have been astonished by how small-minded most people become.  They live in a world where something constantly is created out of seeming nothingness. Ideas nesting in a mind often whisper for actualization. Yet they remain blind and deaf to their hidden purpose in life.

It is tragic that all but a very few of us discard these divine whispering voices as delusional or totally unrealistic.

For example, let’s say I ask someone if they want to get rich.  With a faint, whimsical, resigned-to-doom smile some will say, “Yeah, I’d like that.”  Others will answer with false altruism, “Nah.  Rich people are selfish and many of them are unhappy despite their wealth.”  Still others will fall back on the standard refrain, “Rich people are lucky and fortunate.  They get all the breaks and are usually born with a silver spoon.  I am doomed to mediocrity.  I gave up on being rich a long time ago.”

All of the above are guilty of small-mindedness which is, if left unchecked, a fatal disease of the soul.  We all have 24 hours in a day and a chance to change our attitude and thrive.  Our chances to think and act big are as infinite as the universe.

No matter how old, young, rich, poor, advantaged, disadvantaged, educated, ignorant, despised, loved, dysfunctional, functional, handsome, wretched, beautiful, homely, lucky or unlucky we believe we are is truly a matter of choice and consciousness.

No other human being – even one with a pistol pointing at our head and telling us to reveal all or die – can strip us of our dignity without our consent.

Recently, I was watching a video presentation by one of my mentors, Bob Proctor of “The Secret” fame.  He suggested that he was humble, poor and shipwrecked in his early life.

Then one day he wrote down his ultimate goal in one, all-encompassing statement, put it in his breast pocket, looked at it throughout the day, and never went to sleep without expressing gratitude to his Maker.

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Thereafter, he added the most essential element which has led to his multimillion-dollar income for close 45 consecutive years.  That element is living as if.   It is not enough to want to be rich and successful; you’ve got to feel it in your bones.  You need to hang around with eagle accomplishers and leave those complaining human turkeys to wallow in their desert of dry tears.

The honest truth is that your life is not predicated on approval of others; it is predicated on dreaming and doing on a massive scale.

If you are uninspired in what you do, then you are probably thinking small and feeling insignificant.

Instead, why not latch onto ideas and people in your life that fuel unbridled passion?  If you want to do more, you will have to become more.

As another one of my mentors, the late Jim Rohn, has said:  “Don’t aspire to be a millionaire simply because of the money and fame you can accumulate.  Instead aspire for the good life because of the excitement of the journey and the personal growth you must experience to get where you want to go.”

False humility is often nothing but a cover up for failure.  The truly humble are usually on top of the economic heap and don’t make you feel small because of their stature.  The falsely humble use God, government, community, family, friends, circumstances, genetic deficiencies and a host of other lame excuses so that they can unashamedly and justifiably dwell in a sea of underachievement.

Why not choose to become big and truly humble as a result?  Make the best of time allotted to you.  Count your blessings and determine to find a solution to your adversities.

Spare us all any lame excuses inherent in the settling for far less than you deserve.

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
~Derek Bok, Harvard educator~

No matter how you spin the effects of the economic climate, one constant remains: the few people with a great attitude or outstanding skill base get to hold onto their jobs, while the marginally efficient workers get their walking papers without a blink.

Education and a hunger to learn will put you in the running for the best jobs and the best entrepreneurial options.  We have libraries, we have the Internet, and we have a plethora of in-house and societal seminars/workshops to upgrade our skills and knowledge.

Yet how many people wile away their free time multi-tasking in escape activities such as watching TV, email messaging, reading vacuous comics, listening to deafening music, or just sleeping away the hours, days and years?

One bad habit repeated over and over again can put you on the surgeon’s table for open heart surgery or put you on Redundancy Avenue in the workplace.  You can’t be faked out by the short-term feeling of invulnerability.

The man who eats a Snickers Bar every day for thirty years may at first only get a sugar high.  But down the road he will deal with heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and perpetual drowsiness.  The smoker may run marathons in his twenties but, by the time he is in his forties, will be wheezing, suffering from chronic bronchitis, or even knocking on death’s door.

In the same manner, a man who doesn’t read the book, attend the seminars, and in general upgrade his skills will find himself left behind or left out in the workplace.  He may claim it is unfair that he got laid off, but the years of bad habits and perpetual intellectual laziness are his own fault.

Our results in life are usually very scientifically predictable.  That is both good and bad news, depending on our willingness to change and to shape up.

Start a daily plan of education.  Make it as habitual as eating breakfast or brushing your teeth.  At the end of the day ask yourself:  What have I learned today?  What have I accomplished?  What do I want to learn and accomplish tomorrow?

In many super successful people’s houses, the most important room is the library, not the entertainment room.  And the library – believe it or not – is often filled with books read rather than displayed for pretentious intent only.

I was never a fan of our outgoing President, George W. Bush, but I knew that he was not stupid, as many people claimed.  You don’t become President by being a stupid oaf or even by being the son of a former President.  It recently was revealed that President Bush was and is an avid reader and has plowed through over 185 books in less than two years.

Never underestimate a man or woman who reads and challenges his mind in many subtle ways.  Such a lifetime habit will bring infinite joy and breakthroughs which are clearly attributed to the ritual of making education a daily part of one’s life.

Be extremely vigilant over the gateway to your mind.  Your destiny is in your hands.  Every day use all your senses to soak in the sensations and information essential for your prosperity.  Most information is – with a bit of effort on your part – free of charge.

Further down the road, however, it will cost you dearly for being intellectually bankrupt.  To punctuate this philosophy, watch this Obama speech…