Sour Gripes – A 2-Minute Story
A Fox, who was so hungry he would have eaten an old shoe if he could have found one, saw some perfect, sweet, ripe black grapes hanging up on a trellis too high for him to reach.
He jumped at them and snapped, jumped and snapped until he was so worn out he couldn’t move a paw and he still couldn’t get them.
“Pooh for those sour green old grapes,” he said, “anyone can have those. I wouldn’t eat them if someone handed them to me on a platter.”
The Point: Obviously the fox didn’t want the grapes because he couldn’t get them. You don’t fool anyone by making fun of things you just aren’t able to get for yourself.
Now consider this:
The U.S. economy is in a shambles and there are people out there hungry, so hungry that if they were shown a respectable, easy-to-perform business activity within their reach, would they take it?
They might just jump and snap at it. But once they realized that it wasn’t a welfare check, or food stamps, or that American Idol (Idle?) or Dancing With The Stars or the ballgame was on TV, . . .
“Pooh for the chance to determine my own future. I’ll depend on the government to bail me out. Anyone can have that business. I wouldn’t do it if my life were handed to me on a platter. Besides it’s probably one of those pyramid scams. I don’t really want to work anyway.”
“Ball Of Confusion”
Baby Boomers may recall that title. It’s a song by the Temptations that very succinctly captures the mid to late 60s, in a funky sort of way.
Google it. It is still a great tune with a driving beat.
“That’s what the world is today, hey, yeah, Ball of Confusion.”
You know how it is. There’s a line from a song and it just gets stuck in your mind, being played over and over and over again. Here’s one I can’t get out of my mind recently:
“Vote for me and I’ll set you free! yeah, Ball of Confusion.”
That’s how politics works, hey, yeah, Ball of Confusion.
Get enough people to believe that the right person in office will give them freedom and get elected.
Only it doesn’t work like that.
No, the government does not grant you freedom, does not set you free.
No, because it is not theirs to give or deny. Freedom is an inalienable right given to us by a creator no matter what you can him, her or it. Or don’t even accept you were created. You’re free to believe that too.
Freedom is something we, each human being, are born with and it is something a government can only TAKE AWAY. But only if we allow it.
Yet politicians have finagled a way into making the masses believe it is theirs for the giving and the granting. And the denying. Like a king or queen or worse, an emperor.
How far we have slid. How far from what the idea of this country was founded on, that all humans are created equal with inalienable rights, rights that no government can separate from its citizens without a process based on law, not on procedure.
Independence Day is coming. This should be the day a president delivers a State of the Union address. But that would put too much attention on the Declaration of Independence and some might take it too seriously, might actually read the document.
How far we have slid, hey, yeah, Ball of Confusion.
Don’t Let Anyone . . . On Your Dream – “A 2-Minute Story, Wanna Hear It?”
Just heard this one on a baseball broadcast of a game that had Troy Tulowitzki, star shortstop and team leader of the Colorado Rockies, playing.
When Troy was in the 5th grade he was assigned to write an essay on want he wanted to become. From the heart, he wrote he wanted to be a professional athlete.
His teacher handed the essay back to him and told him he should write of a more “realistic” ambition. And being only a 5th-grader, he did what he was told
Fast forward 20 years. Troy has made it to the big leagues, one of only 750 men to be called a professional major league baseball player. And one day he’s signing autographs.
You guessed it. His old teacher put Troy’s old easy in front of his former student, asked for his signature and said he has never discouraged a student of his from pursuing a dream since Troy made it to the big show.
He also thanked Troy for teaching him this lesson: Don’t let anyone ever dump on your dream.
ANYONE.
“To Discipline” – A 2-Minute Story
I put some stock in synchronicity which is, simply put, the idea that two events seemingly unrelated indeed have some connection.
One day over the Memorial Day weekend, I woke out of a sound sleep. It was a little after 4am and I was wide awake. Didn’t even need to use the bathroom so I turned on the TV figuring I’d watch for a while until I got drowsy.
Turner Classic Movies is one of the few channels I watch and at 4:15 a 1933 war drama, Hell Below, starring Walter Huston and Robert Montgomery was to begin.
Perfect.
Well, Huston plays Lt. Commander Toler, the captain of a US Navy submarine in WW I (a rarity since most of these dramas are set during the Second World War) and Montgomery plays Lieutenant Knowlton, the second-in-command.
The tension of the plot was between the very much by-the-book captain and the rakish lieutenant who falls in love with the captain’s daughter, though he didn’t know about that relationship at the time of the attraction and his subsequent maneuvers.
There’s an incident that leads to another officer’s death, a friend of the lieutenant’s, and of course he blames the captain. And when the captain finds out his daughter’s marriage is being threatened by this ‘cad’ lieutenant, he has little use for his executive officer.
About mid-way through the movie there is a scene that lays all these bad feelings out between the two leading characters. They do not like each other, to put it mildly. Yet, with the young woman in question present, there is an occasion for a drink to be shared and a toast to be made.
At this point I am still wide awake and the film’s got my attention. As they say, I care about these characters.
Montgomery’s character is bad mouthing the Navy and the cold-heartedness of the captain, falsely blaming him for his friend’s death. Huston’s character is pretty much disgusted with this excuse for an officer.
After a snide remark by a drunken Lt. Knowlton, Lt. Comdr. T. J. Toler raises his glass and toasts,
“To Discipline. There’s nothing like it and nothing without it.”
And like a synchronistic flash at about 5:00 in the morning I sat straight up in bed and I knew exactly why I woke up and why I turned on TCM and why I was watching this 1933 war drama.
It was to hear that one line:
“To Discipline. There’s nothing like it and nothing without it.”
Because right there I knew why I was not getting entirely what I desired from by business. I was lacking the necessary discipline.
Right now, as I write this, just to my left, on the wall, is that line staring back to me.
And it was from that day that I started using a system of self-accountability so simple and so visible that it would be very hide indeed to avoid doing what I must.
*Here’s a link to download that simple system. The Daily Method of Operation Chart is a great visual tool to help keep you on track and disciplined. The chart will open in pdf format. If you need any help you can contact me directly. tony@ajlauria.com
Daily Method of Operation Chart
Don’t Snuggle With Struggle: Personal Development May Be Harmful To Your Success
There is an absolute given in Network Marketing and if you have spent any time in Multi-Level Marketing you know it: you must be engaged in some form of Personal Development activity.
This could take the form of books, eBooks, CDs, online programs, seminars, webinars, aphorisms delivered to your inbox daily, or a weekend – even week long – residence programs. The Self-Help industry is huge as we all know, but why with MLM?
Why is it so indispensible to Network Marketers?
Now a common belief, both inside Network Marketing and most especially in sales forces everywhere, we all seem to be ‘working on ourselves’ to grasp the success that has so far eluded us. Or to bite off more if we’ve already tasted some sweet success
But why Personal Development & MLM? Why this peculiar marriage?
It was when I began my second go-around in MLM that Tom & Francie, my upline sponsors, asked me what kind of Personal Development I was doing. And they asked it with an air of assumption that quite honestly confused and fooled me.
“Personal Development? What’s that?”
“Well, it’s what keeps you in the game. You’ll have to do some form of PD if you want to take this seriously and get what you want out of it. If you go to our company’s home site you’ll see a resource there featuring Randy Gage and his Prosperity series.”
And so I did. And it was both fascinating and personally revealing. Before reading Gage I had no idea how negatively programmed for success I had been.
But WHY Personal Development? And why especially with Network Marketing?
Perhaps in the form of a question this could be a hint:
Why is there such a high presence of counselors, individuals recovering from one form of addiction or another, and religious true believers in Network Marketing?
A clearer answer emerged in 2008 in Houston at my current company’s convention. The presenter was a young, vibrant and attraction woman who with her husband had attained the highest level the company honors, that of Presidential. In one sentence she gave me a huge lead on making sense of all this.
She said, “This business will challenge every weakness you have.”
Every weakness. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, every weakness.
Be it self-doubt, or an addiction, or the result of some kind of abuse in your early years, or poverty programming from any socio-economic, religio-cultural background.
Any one or a combination of any, could very well be simultaneously both an obstacle to success and the impetus to take action. So Personal Development is often seen as a means to overcoming some shortcoming that you are now determined to remedy.
But I still wasn’t satisfied. The answer only seemed to be addressing some sort of surface internal struggle. What was the connection with success and in particular with MLM? After all, I keep running across people who have been in MLM for 20, 25, 30 years, and they are STILL working on themselves and their success!
A more satisfying answer, a much more satisfying answer, lies in of all places a book on psychotherapy by Brad Blanton entitled Radical Honesty. (The word ‘radical’ comes from the Latin ‘radix’ which means ‘root’. The honesty Blanton is writing of is comes from the deepest places we can find in ourselves.)
From the book (the boldface is my doing):
“The source of our power to produce the results we want does not lie in our beliefs, our hopes or our time-consuming struggle to change. The person who says he wants to lose weight, but says he just can’t give up midnight snacks, may believe he is in a struggle between “being good” and “giving in” to his cravings, but in fact he has already chosen to keep snacking. The “struggle” that he describes serves to hide this fact.
“By focusing our attention on our apparent struggle to change – the reasons and explanations and excuses that we generate instead of results – we engage in a conspiracy to pretend that we are each an accidental grouping of disharmonious parts working against each other. . . Instead of examining more closely the actual way in which we operate, which consists of ‘trying’ to get what we want and then sabotaging our own efforts, we assume our error is in not trying hard enough, and redouble both our efforts and our resistance. We always manage to stay one step ahead of ourselves, so that we never quite reach our goals. By focusing on the struggle instead of on the results, we avoid having to admit that the one who wants to change and the one who resists change are one and the same, that we are whole, and that we really do get what we want – which is struggle, rather than results. But until I can experience my own resistance as ‘me’ . . . I am doomed to be locked in the hopeless struggle for control.”
“. . . suppose we consider ourselves to be already what we long to be: functional, integrated wholes who produce the results we choose, effortlessly, with our entire beings. Suppose we all, already, are that. All the apparent contradictions and dichotomies . . . are actually smokescreens, false struggles enacted by our own minds to hide from others or ourselves our true intent. Our true intent is to do just what we do.”
“Our energy is totally invested in maintaining our lives the way they are, and the phony struggle for change only conceals the ways in which the status quo serves us. Our apparent battle for change is a tempest in a teapot. As long as I identify my “self” only as that desire to change and not also as a presently more powerful desire to remain the same, I will remain stuck. In a sense, I can change, finally, only by giving up trying to change.”
By now you know what I am implying and if you don’t I will spell it out.
We will take Blanton’s last sentence and substitute ‘personally develop’ for ‘change’:
As long as I identify my “self” only as that desire to personally develop and not also as a presently more powerful desire to remain the same, I will remain stuck. In a sense, I can personally develop, finally, only by giving up trying to personally develop.”
In Network Marketing the inability to meet with the success participants state they desire achieving is around 98%. Ninety-eight percent of ALL participants, industry wide, regardless of ‘opportunity’ (you should pardon the pun) or company, do not succeed.
NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT!
And since it is a given we know that a very large percentage of that 98% are heavily into, yes, you guessed it, Personal Development.
Too much, way too much, of a coincidence.
So what I am stating outright now is this: Personal Development serves as a convenient frame of reference for “the struggle to succeed”, the struggle that most people have been secretly conspiring with their internal ‘self’ to ensure.
Despite all the personal development, their struggling self has bought into manifestation all the socio-economic, religio-cultural programming they were exposed to and are supposedly working to make sure does not come true.
For Hamlet the play is the thing but for most Network Marketers the struggle becomes the thing – so who needs success! Because if they ever got it,, they wouldn’t be able to snuggle up to their old friend Struggle.
I want to be very clear here. I am not diminishing all the negative, poisonous and destructive programming, disguised as acculturation and socializing, that is injected into us. All that cultural, religious, socializing and political brainwashing is REAL and it WORKS. That’s why it’s done. (There’s another reason but that will have to wait for another article. Blanton does a wonderful job of calling out all this “lying” and the cause of ALL stress.)
Besides, since I know it very well and first-hand myself, I am not without empathy and compassion for those honestly struggling.
We ARE led to live dreadful and unfulfilling lives by practically every institution we are exposed and surrendered to by the authorities of our culture and society. But I do not think or suspect, and certainly don’t believe, that Personal Development alone possesses the key to unlocking the vastness of the power that lies within ourselves.
What does?
Two things.
One is the Truth and the Truth is that we all ARE powerful beyond our wildest imaginings and it scares the hell out of us.
So as protection we instead embrace the lie that is Struggle.
Second is taking action. Do the thing and you will have the power as Emerson wrote.
So, once again, why IS there this marriage of Personal Development and Network Marketing?
It’s a formalized excuse, the one most culturally approved, and popularly recognized and easiest to commiserate with within the MLM culture.
The ONLY solution is to tell the Truth, most especially to yourself. But if you honestly need help, get a mentor who will help you acquire the skills necessary to make it and who WILL hold you accountable.
Accountable for your Actions. The ones that will unlock your power.
Successful Networking What It Takes To Win: creating your life on purpose financial interdependence how to attract more money in networking mentoring help mentorship mindset of success MLM mindset money and energy seeking a mentor in MLM seeking mentorship Steps to success
by Tony Lauria
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Playing The Time Leverage Game
Funny how each of us really has the same dream: time, money, great relationships, and a meaningful, fulfilling life. But none of us will ever achieve our dream by trading time for money in a job.
There is only one way and that is to learn to Leverage Our Time; make Time and Others work for us.
Here are the Rules as outlined in a great, short, impactful book by Bill Quain Overcoming Time Poverty: How To Achieve more By Working Less.
1. Learn To Multiply. Time for Money is linear and to increase the money you have to increase the Time. It is simple addition. Instead learn to Multiply, using the Time of Others whom you have taught and mentored and the Time of the Others whom they have found in turn. And so on and so on.
2. Increase the value of your time, don’t increase your time. When you create more without working more, you have automatically made your time more valuable.
3. Use your time to Build not Buy. Build equity that will work for you forever. Don’t spend money on things but on more income-producing assets.
4. Build a Toll Booth, not a Toil Booth. Be more interested in collecting than working. Find a massive and dynamic trend and take part in it. Even just a small part of each transaction will accumulate quickly.
5. Get a Mentor, be a Mentor. In this Time Leverage Game, build a network of winners. We all need help and it is our responsibility to pass on that help to those who earnestly seek it.
Uncategorized: creating a life of joy creating happiness finding passion my life's desire
by Tony Lauria
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Being A Willing Fool Trumps Being Right
“Being right is not the most important thing in life.
If it was, you might as well kill yourself. Being
willing is what counts. If we are willing, we are
fools, as any good mind will tell you. Exactly.
Fools rush in and learn all kinds of things angels
will never know.” ~
Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty
I meditate on this tarot card frequently. Its esoteric meaning, as I was taught, depicts the human soul stepping off a cliff and tumbling into incarnation, into the physical experience. Willingly.
How beautifully that interpretation fits the words of Brad Blanton. How wise the fool is to take the plunge trusting he will land where he must. And have the experience of a lifetime.
Spirit and Money: metaphysics of money money = energy money and energy the nature of money
by Tony Lauria
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Economies: Easier To Destroy Than To Build
If someone were evil enough to set out to destroy an economy, it would be quite simple to do – just destroy the producing class, that group of individuals who create products and services. The group that CREATES wealth.
If one were evil enough and short-sighted enough to want to destroy an economy, it would be simple. All they would have to do is alchemically make zeroes appear on computer monitors, masquerading as “money” but not representing any work done by human beings.
The result would be inflation as the paper “money” would be worthless and would put the next several generations of humans into a sea of debt with no prospect of every seeing dry land. This “tax” would thus complete the task of destroying any ambition or desire to produce, and the creation of real wealth, backed by human energy and intellect, would cease.
If one wanted to destroy an economy it would be quite elementary – reward those who only consume and do not produce and punish those who produce and save.
Only when Human energy and intellect, that is Work, is valued once again and not taxed into oblivion will Wealth Creation return to us.
It took roughly two hundred years to create an economy the size of which the world had never seen and now roughly one generation to destroy it.
It is always much easier to destroy than to build.
Spirit and Money: metaphysics of money money = energy money and energy the nature of money
by Tony Lauria
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Wealth Cannot Be Printed, Only Created or Produced By Work
Money is not real. It is an abstraction, a representation of something that is real.
Very Real.
Money represents human work, human energy. Money represents human life.
But when printed indiscriminately it represents nothing and only cheapens human work.
And human life.
Sadly, the Aphorism Salon Is No More
For some time I posted both photos and commentary on some brilliant aphorisms placed in the window of a local hair salon. You can read about the shop and its owner John here.
http://liveyourdream-ownyourlife.com/the-aphorism-salon-aspiring-to-inspire
Well, sadly John doesn’t do hair anymore and so there are no more bits of wisdom displayed on the whiteboard and placed in the window. The neighborhood is changing. I’ll just have to seek inspiration elsewhere.
