I suppose it only appropriate that a word should be said about one of the great personal development gurus of our time, Jim Rohn.
Jim Rohn’s loss will be felt by many and the ripple effect of his passing will be significant. Even those unfamiliar with his work will seek out his words and lessons in order to find out why this man had such a significant effect and impact on so many great men and women.
This is, of course, one of the imprints we leave on this world, the ripple of our presence, if we have placed our mark and a significant imprint on others, either in word or in deed; and, most particularly through our deeds, we are measured accordingly.
However, words, properly shaped and measured, having a profound impact on peoples’ lives, and moving them towards greatness is a noble deed, as well. You see, others will always be attracted to the words a great leaders, men and women who rise above the norm in whatever milieu, but it is the impact of the deeds either performed or inspired by great individuals that assure their immortality.
There can be little doubt that Jim Rohn’s name will be remembered for many years to come, as his words and his deeds ripple on across the fabric of eternity.
He has earned his rest and his reward, whatever you believe that to be, either in the immortality of remembrance or in the immortality of the next world. He will be missed…but not soon forgotten.
My favorite Jim Rohn quotes:
“I don’t want to live this way any more!”
“It’s not too expensive, the problem is you can’t afford it!”
“This is all the company pays you!“
“You don’t have to work on the company, you have to work on you!”
And the best one of all:
“Success is something you attract by the person you become!”
The self-improvement and personal development movement has lost a great man in Jim Rohn. The world has lost a great teacher…the essence of what a true guru is…Jim Rohn!
John
Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
216-539-7412
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@johnzajaros.com
I was talking to a new friend over at StomperNet the other night and mentioned what a shift I had had to make in my thinking now that I am back in the real world and building businesses again. The shift in mindset from the scarcity mode to an entrepreneurial mode is a difficult one to make, particularly after so long a period of time living from month to month, often from one day to the next…and sometimes moment to moment!
This is a discipline, like any other, a mindset that takes training and real effort to develop.
The fact is, most people live in a constant state of “we can’t afford that!”
Whereas, in the entrepreneurial mindset, instead of living in a constant state of “we can’t afford that!” we shift our thinking and ask “how do I make this happen?”
In many ways the difference is, on one hand, living in the scarcity mode, protecting what resources we may have, living from “paycheck to paycheck,” doing without when it didn’t fit the budget, and when it doesn’t fit our mindset.
While, on the other hand, living life in the “make it happen,” entrepreneurial mode, we make things happen in order to reach the goals and acquire the possessions important to us and our families.
This shift in thinking takes training because most of us are raised in the former mindset, rather than the latter.
Some of the “protective-negative” mindset is a carry-over from the Depression mentality of our grandparents and great-grandparents; it is entrenched in our culture, our philosophy and, to a large extent, in our national psyche. The recession of the early 1980s, and the shift in our economy from a manufacturing-base to a service-base with the resulting loss of high paying blue-collar jobs, did nothing to eliminate this mindset. In fact it re-established it as the cornerstone of our fiscal mentality and entrenched it in the lower/middle and middle/middle class mindset. It also invaded the upper middle class mindset as so many mid-level and middle management jobs, particularly in the industrial sector, vanished. This latest recession has done little to help people shed this now-antiquated way of thinking. In fact, it has once again reared its ugly head as millions face another shift in our way of doing business, here and around the world, with its obvious, and not-so-obvious, effects
on the “masses.” Of course the “masses,” and I use this word “cautiously,” will never rid themselves of this mindset, the day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck mentality; and, they are simply getting by, getting through, and getting on with life the best way they know how.
It is the entrepreneur who has to guard against what some have coined as cautious optimism. Cautious optimism is a plague on our thinking and, by the way, it is one of the most overused and abused phrases in the English language.
Google it with quotes, “cautious optimism,” and you still get almost half a million results!
That’s unreal!
How can so many be so cautious about being optimistic?
It should actually state something like:
“I’m gonna say this but I want to cover my backside…so I am going to add the words “cautiously optimistic” to my assertion, thus protecting my neck if I happen to have stuck it out too far.”
Cautious optimism equals negative thinking and that has failure built in!
Ask Sir Richard Branson about cautious optimism! I can only guess what he would say?
So, how does that take me back to my shift to an entrepreneurial mindset?
Well, it is impossible to succeed in life unless you shed the “protective-negative,”cautious optimism mindset and believe in what is possible…not only what is possible but what is probable, what we can make a reality is we only believe!
Belief?
Belief is the magic ingredient, the key component necessary to shift from guarded optimism to cautious optimism, and finally on to real optimism.
The first two being synonymous with failure, the latter the only mindset acceptable in the entrepreneurial mode, the mindset required to succeed…to “make it happen!”
My two favorite quotes sum it up best:
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve!” Napoleon Hill
“To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve.” James Allen (Author of As A Man Thinketh)
Charles Darwin spoke of belief in The Descent of Man.
In it he wrote: “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts…”
So many say they believe in themselves, in the possibilities life offers, but in reality they are “cautiously optimistic.”
Believe and you can achieve!
This is not peculiar to Hill, James, and Darwin, this mindset has been championed throughout history. The power of belief has been suggested by everyone from the Buddah to Jesus, and from the Qur’an to the Bible.
However, while many parrot the quotes, buy the books, listen to the CDs and DVDs most fail to put into action this powerful message daily in their lives.
Why?
I think when it is all said and done it is about the ultimate belief…belief in one’s self!
As Tony Robbins recently put in a copy of Power Talk, people fail to believe in themselves, in what is truly possible in their lives, in just how powerful belief can be!
Ultimately, the shift in mindset must be preceded by a belief in one’s self, in the belief that all things are possible to those who believe.
Only through faith, hope, and ultimately belief can one hope to achieve!
Great things are possible to those who can conceive and believe. I believe this, it allowed me to shift my thinking, and from there all things are possible. They are possible for me…they can be possible for you!
I wonder which will come out on top? That’s the subject of the video below, the blog post grew out of it!
How?
I haven’t a clue, I just get these ideas and run with them.
I hope you find it interesting!
But like the video, we make assumptions every day about people, situations, prospective clients, and life. I just thought this video might give you an interesting look into how wrong, even fatal, certain assumptions can be, not only in an aquarium but in Internet marketing and life, in general!
I’ve been on this assumptions, perspective, and perceptions kick lately, if you haven’t noticed, and I hope it is helping you, I know it is helping me! I am doing what some have referred to as “an agonizing reappraisal.” And, I have been re-analyzing not only my marketing and business strategies, but of my life strategies too.
One of the things I’ve noticed as I grow older is how much of what I thought I knew, I actually don’t know very well at all!
The fact is we go through life, many of us anyway, thinking we have things pretty well figured out, until we come to an epiphany of sorts. Some people undergo a change during some sort of major life-event, a catharsis of sorts.
A catharsis?
The word has been used for hundreds of years in medicine for a “purging,” of sorts, usually of the bowels. Hey! That’s probably more than you wanted to know! But what the heck, with everyone doing the “cleansing” thing lately, it’s not that far out of bounds!
The word catharsis has also been conscripted by modern psychologists, particularly Freudian psychotherapists, to explain and describe the act of expressing, or more precisely, living through and/or experiencing feelings and deep-seated emotions in one’s past. The focus is on those feelings repressed or ignored from early in life, those that have never been properly dealt with or experienced until some sort of major life-event brings them to the fore, forcing one to deal with them head-on!
It happens to almost everyone at some point or another in their lives, earlier with women and later with men. That isn’t quantifiable, there is no data to support my observation, it is purely anecdotal. I sense that about women, they generally get it, life that is, sooner than men do. Why? I have my ideas but I think I will keep them to myself, at least for now. It’s kind of like the whole Venus and Mars thing so popular a while back. You know what I mean?
A classic of sorts, and very popular with the women!
Anyway, no matter whether we get it early in life, or later, most of us seem to figure this out at some point along the way, unless you are a total loss, and there are far too many of those.
Take heart!
If you were one of the lost, you certainly wouldn’t be reading this…or anything else for that matter!
Anyway, back to the assumptions, perceptions, perspective, and what we just don’t know!
Ultimately, what we don’t know, what we can never know, not really, is the mind of another person. In fact, what we don’t know fills libraries! Pick any topic and then “google” it.
Let’s say the “Korean War.” I got 26,400,000 results for that phrase when I “googled” it, without quotation marks.
Now go to the nearest public library and go to the row or rows of books that cover “The Korean War.”
See what I mean?
You can spend a lifetime on just one aspect of the Korean War and not get to everything written. In the information age one thing is clear, there is too much of it!
Beyond this, and this is really my point, the more we know, the more we know…the more we don’t know!
Obviously, you don’t have to do it to know what I am talking about, right? In fact, I would be absolutely astounded if anyone actually did what I suggested and went to the library. I don’t have that kind of control!
But next time you are there, if anyone even goes any more, except to use their computer room. that is. Check it out. Just pick a topic and see how many books there are, how much knowledge there is! It is harder to get the real sense of what I am talking about when you “google” it, the numbers are somehow “less real” but the books really bring it home in a tangible way.
We simply cannot know everything about anything!
This brings me to my final point before the video.
Phew!
Thought I never get there didn’t you!
Marc Joyner talks about dealing with information overload in marketing and focusing energy in one of his videos; and, a particularly good one too. The video and his example are appropriate for this article. Marc Joyner uses the example of piercing a box with two tools, a knife and a rock. The rock may be powerful and cover a broad surface area but the knife’s energy is focused on a single point, thus piercing the box easily. The rock just cannot do it as cleanly or as effectively, the energy is to spread out, not focused like that of the knife!
We have the same sort of dilemma in marketing, we can either bring our focus, train our attention and bring it to bear on a single task, or we can try to do too much at one time and get little or nothing accomplisghed!
So, we have assumptions, perceptions, perspective, agonizing re-appraisal and the gender gap, control, and information overload all linked together. How to we know what to do? How to we know who to listen to? How are we supposed to take the millions of search engine results, and tens of thousands of volumes of books available, and make sense of it all? How do we know what products to buy and which “guru” (geez, I hate that word) to follow?
Well, the answer is as simple as the knife’s energy is focused! You trust yourself and your instincts! However, until you can trust your self more completely, and you should never trust your instincts completely, you should always have at least one trusted advisor, you need to find a coach and/or mentor. Just like everyone else does, in every endeavor and/or pursuit in life worth achieving, you need a mentor.
Whether you are Tellman Knudson and find a Shawn Casey, Robert Kiyosaki and find Donald Trump, or Frank Kern and Bill Glazer and find Dan Kennedy, or Michael Jordan and find Phil Jackson, we all have mentors and coaches, and we all need trusted advisors!
Let me say that again!
We all need trusted advisors!
The problem? Most of you are looking for one in the wrong places! We will get into this more in the next post but for now know this…you must have a mentor if you are to be successful! Whether it’s a Rich Dad or a Donald or a Dan or a Vince Lombardi…we all need that certain someone to trust and bounce ideas of of, someone who is not afraid to tell you when you are full of “it” because they are are afraid of losing a $97 DVD sale or a $9997 coaching sale for that matter!
You must have someone in your corner who you have faith in and someone who will tell you like it is.
AND someone who is not financially motivated, at least not primarily! Ultimately, finances drive the world but there has to be an intangible, a certain something that links the two of you and forges a bond that will last through the trying times ahead! And there will be trying times ahead! There will be times when your coach or mentor will have other things on their plate and you will feel slighted. I guarantee it! Get over it and grow up! Stand on your own, forge ahead and learn from your mistakes. As so many have said before me, we all learn from our failures! Attempt, grow, fall, fall, get up again, and fail again! Every time you get back up, you will be stronger than the time before, and that much closer to success. You will fail if you don’t get back up…that’s a certainty!
Woodrow Wilson had a nervous breakdown, yet went on to lead the country through a World War and became the champion for what would ultimately become the United Nations. Harry Truman faced failure and disappointment several times before becoming president. Truman’s father went bankrupt and then he was refused admission to West Point due to his eyesight. Later, after closing his business due to recession, he even had to move in with his in-laws; and, he still became President of the United States! We all know the story of Michael Jordan, cut form his basketball team as a sophomore in high school!
In every instance, those individuals above went on to do great things because they had someone in their corner who believed in them, someone they could confide in and someone who would tell them like it is, even Harry Truman himself, known for his tell-it-like-it-is-manner, had Bess! Michael Jordan, his coach. And so on!
That sort of relationship is rare!
And it takes time and effort to develop that sort of relationship. It doesn’t happen in 90 days on Twitter and it doesn’t happen overnight on facebook or Skype! It takes getting to know and trust the person well enough to put your financial future in their hands and know they will not cheat you, lie to you , or take advantage of you! In most cases, and their are exceptions, money corrupts the relationship!
So, for now we have raised more questions, I hope, than we have answered. Now to the video that stated all of this!
One of the Biggest Challenges Most Entrepreneurs Face is in the Area of Time Management The fact is, while most entrepreneurs, most business people online or offline, feel they simply don’t have enough time in the day to get everything they need to get done, done, they generally have more than enough time to get everything [...] […]
It is hard to believe it has already been more than a year online…time flies when you’re having fun! In fact, I took my first, very tentative steps online in August of 2008! In August of 2008, almost a year and a half ago now…(wow, time flies!)…I knew 2 things: 1) The Internet was the place [...] […]
Internet Marketing is NOT for the Faint of Heart or Thin Skinned Individuals! Internet marketing has been an education by fire! Learning the nuances of an online business takes time and effort….and more than a little bit of money! Anyone who is not willing to put in their own blood, sweat, and tears will find that [...] […]
I would like to wish all of my readers a happy and healthy holiday season! Mery Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy Kwanzaa! Additionally, I would like to thank you for taking the time to stop here, to thank you for subscribing to our blog and to the newsletter. Thank you too for commenting when the urge or [...] […]
How to Build a Social Media Presence: The Use of Autofollowers and Other Mistakes As more and more Internet marketers hop on the social media band wagon, chasing social media riches, many focus on building huge followings using the various autofollowers. With all the hub-ub about Twitter, and social media in general, that people would attempt to [...] […]
...with a finer spirit of hope & achievement. You're here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand. W. Wilson http://twitter.com/JohnZajaros10 hours ago
You're not here merely to make a living. You're here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision... (cont) Woodrow Wilson http://twitter.com/JohnZajaros10 hours ago
I received back-to-back emails from mothers of kids I work with, gone from Ds & Fs to As & Bs in 2 months! Want to talk about a rush?! Wow! http://twitter.com/JohnZajaros10 hours ago
