Hello! After almost a two year hiatus spent working on other websites and self-help ventures, we’re back! We see a ton of activity from when we were away, and for that, we’re so thankful. It’s great to know people are still engaged.
Expect more from us soon!
Hello everyone,
I have moved my blog to my personal website: www.irrationalliving.com. There’s much more great content on there, so head on over, get to reading, and start succeeding!
Dan
A great post from Jacob about having true passion in your life and not getting sucked into crazes. This really makes you think about the psychology of things like the Harlem Shake…something I never thought I’d be doing!
Have you ever wondered where all of the crazes come from? The crazes which I’m referring to are the one hit wonders, the mass movements which society feels like they’re obligated to participate in. Remember the Harlem Shake? Where people would go nuts in a small room, wearing animal masks and behaving as if they were on some sort of drug. (Some people actually got married to the Harlem Shake I believe?)
Then after the Harlem Shake there was that annoying “Selfie” song which was about teenage girls deciding on what filter to use for their next photo. You see these mass movements are what the zombies (the people with no ambitions in life) are craving. They wake up with the hope of finding something which will make them cool for ten seconds and then it’s back to their same old lifestyle of trying to find the next cool thing.
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Jacob’s post about power is spot on…people don’t change, only their opportunities and circumstances change. Work toward exposing the good personality traits you have, not toward creating new ones.
We will all get to experience some form of power within our lives. It might be coaching a football team, managing a new project at the office or simply declaring that we are going to take full control of our lives.
“With great power comes great responsibility.”- Voltaire
This particular quote may be a little bit of a cliché and it always seems to remind me of the first Spider-man movie for some reason. But it’s one of the best quotes to keep in the back of your mind when you feel like you’re in a position of power.
People often claim that when a weak individual who has stood along the sidelines for the majority of his life, comes to a position of power he will abuse that power and act vindictive towards others. Instead of uplifting those around them, their main aim is to bring people down…
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This is a difficult thing to write about, but Jacob approaches it with a stern finesse. Great stuff!
In the previous post “move along your path” Dan talked about selfishness and selflessness and how we should implement the two in order to progress towards our goal/dream. In today’s post I’m going to add a little bit onto that and show you how certain individuals can lead you off the path to greatness by exploiting your loving and caring nature.
In one of the chapters of “The Motivation Manifesto” by Brendon Burchard, “We shall reclaim our agenda.” I came across a quote which said:
“I am not in charge or responsible for the wrecks others have created in their lives and I do not need to save everyone in my life.”
Certain individuals have the constant need to please every one around them. They offer to help when an opportunity presents itself. They have trouble sleeping at night thinking about if there’s someone out there who might fit the…
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Usually my posts propose an idea, or something specific to think about. This one is going to be more along the lines of a motivational post. It’s for a friend who is in need of a little push.
Bob Dylan said, “a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” That’s all you have to concern yourself with. There’s so much pressure on everyone to go to school and get good grades and get a job and earn enough money to have a wedding and buy a house and raise a family. RELAX. Life isn’t that complicated if you don’t want it to be.
Focus on enjoying life, be it with your family or your spouse or your dog or whomever. Do something you love doing, and learn to do it so well that people pay you to do it. This seems like an oversimplification, but seriously…this is how it works. People get paid for things you wouldn’t believe because they’ve learned to do them really well. Things will come along and catch you up, and do their best to drag you down, but just focus on enjoying life.
It’s all about balance. Balance out enjoyment now with preparation. All work and no play is just as bad as all play and no work. Prepare for the future, of course, but make sure you have plenty of time to enjoy today.
Don’t listen to too many people about what makes you happy. If enjoying life to you is accumulating lots of money, go for it. There’s nothing wrong with what makes a person smile, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. If it’s owning a farm and living off the land, giddy up! Do what makes you happiest.
If you need help along the way, call me. I can help you. Or call someone close to you. Humans are successful as a species because we work together. Think about how many people’s work went into making your breakfast this morning. Really…because eggs and bacon and toast requires a whole lot of hands other than yours. Reach out to people you know will help.
And always remember that you’re powerful beyond measure. Nothing can resist a human will that is settled on something. Focus, grit your teeth, repeat in your head that it’s possible, and go get it.
Think about what you want most in life. It could be a certain lifestyle, a career, a relationship, wealth…think about it. Now think: who has this already? Who do I know or know of that has exactly what I want in life?
I’ve always said that the difference between the rich and the poor is not the amount of money they have, it is their mindset. Similarly, the difference between an PhD student and an uneducated person is not degrees and knowledge, but in their mindset. Your mindset is what makes you what you are. This is a good thing, because if you want to change, you only have change the way you think about things, and it IS possible.
Like Tony Robbins says, “success leaves clues.” This means that someone who is successful, or someone who has done what you want to do has left a trail of clues for you or anyone else to follow. It spells out, this is what I did and when I did it, these were the mile-markers I passed and when I passed them. This is the recipe for my success. This is where the mirroring comes in.
It’s similar to finding a mentor. You’re looking for someone who has done more than you have who can teach you how to get to their level. If you’re struggling to find a mentor to meet with in person, then find one in a book or in YouTube videos. I guaranty there is someone out there who has done what you want to do. They know how to get where they are, and you don’t…so the logical step would be to mirror them. Figure out the “recipe” for their success that they used, and follow it.
Of course, you shouldn’t mirror them forever. There will come a time when you have reached their level of success in an area or surpassed it. You can always take your own direction as well, but people who have already done what you want to do are a great source of information and inspiration.
This post will also be featured on TheBulbCulture.wordpress.com. Be sure to head over there to see more great stuff, and contact Jacob to submit articles! He’s building a community of positive people to motivate each other and others.
A few months ago I read this book, “The Wealthy Speaker,” by Jane Atkinson. It’s a guide to becoming a motivational speaker, and she goes into such things as how to prepare a media kit, how to get in touch with speaking agencies, and really all of the parts of being a speaker.
One thing she talks about is the “Ready, Aim, Fire” method of performance. Essentially she says there should be three steps to doing anything: Ready, which is preparation, Aim, which is figuring out how to implement what you’ve prepared, and Fire, which is the implementation of what you have been working on.
It brings up an interesting question that has been floating around a few of my posts recently: how do you decide which is better, preparation or action? Both are helpful, of course, but how do you know when to take what you’ve prepared and get it out to people?
It’s more complicated than it may seem. Preparation allows you to produce the best content, product, or service you can. The more time you spend preparing, the better and better you and your project will become. The problem is that I just called it a “project,” because that’s all it is in the preparation phase. And to make matters worse, at some point, the amount of time or effort you pour into something, the less and less value gets added per time spent. For example, if Apple had pushed the iPhone 6 release back another 6 months, could they have made improvements? Of course, but in that time, the advances wouldn’t have been noteworthy…think about patches and bug fixes. Those are basically proof that they didn’t overspend time in preparation. You have to take action to make something more than project.
But of course, the reverse is also true. If you put a product or service out before it’s “ready,” it might be a total flop, and your name or your company’s name might get a bad reputation. Interestingly, I think the same is true for blog posts on here! Also noteworthy is the idea that you’ll learn as you go along. If you rush into something you’re not ready for, you will learn from the experience. I would argue that you learn more from making mistakes than you do from preparing for them.
So maybe there is a sweet spot…maybe there’s some way of knowing when you’re ready to move from the preparation phase to the action phase. How do you decide?
This post will also be featured on TheBulbCulture.wordpress.com. Be sure to head over there to see more great stuff, and contact Jacob to submit articles! He’s building a community of positive people to motivate each other and others.
An awesome post. Ask yourself this question, whether you’re into lifting weights or not. There’s a lot of knowledge in here that goes far beyond the gym, but of course is relevant there as well. Are you moving toward pleasure or away from pain? So well written.
I fell in love with lifting weights my freshman year of college. I graduated from high school earlier that year at 6’2 and 139 lbs soaking wet. I was skinny, lacking even a shred of self confidence, and, most importantly, didn’t have a passion for anything in life. I started going to the gym at the local community college that I enrolled in.
I started like most people do, with little knowledge but a strong desire for results. My workouts were terrible, consisting of mostly machine based exercises and some “dumbbell stuff”, as I so intelligently wrote in my training log. But I was doing two things right that many skinny guys starting out never figure out. First I was keeping a training log. It started as a spread sheet on my computer, and was born out of my desire to write things down and keep track of my results…
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I’ve been rereading “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill…I think it’s 5th time I’ve read it (yep, it’s that good!). One of the things I got fixated on this time was the importance of stubbornness, when to apply it, and when to let things go.
For those of you who don’t know,Napoleon Hill was approached by Andrew Carnegie with the idea for the book: research and interview the most successful people of all time, find commonalities among them, and figure out which personality traits, habits, ideas, and thoughts led them to be successful. Great concept.
He’s talking about how Henry Ford would come to a decision quickly, but then be very slow to change his mind. He asked his research team to create an engine block out of a single piece of metal, and they said it was impossible. He said, “do it anyway.” They continued to work on it, and after six months, they said it was still impossible. Ford told them it didn’t matter if it was impossible, they should continue to focus on doing it. It was over a year before the research team was able to do it and Ford was able to implement the revolutionary engine block that saved both time and money.
He was stubborn about his idea for over a year, pouring money into the research even though the people doing the research said it was impossible. The point is, everything takes time. If you’re looking to make a change in your life, be it weight loss or running your own business, it’s going to take time. Probably a lot of it. You have to be stubborn enough to wait out that period of time and continue to focus on your goal.
You might be asking, “well, what if the thing I’m being stubborn about is wrong, and it isn’t going to work out? Won’t I be wasting my time then?” No. An emphatic “no.” As long as that thing toward which you’re working is a worthy goal in your mind, it isn’t a waste of time for two reasons. The first is that, if nothing else, it is a learning period. You will gain knowledge and experience that you can use for the rest of your life. That’s never wasted time. And the second reason is that you can make anything work. I won’t say nothing is impossible, but I will say impossible is nothing. We overcome impossible on a daily basis.
If there’s something you really want, then grit your teeth, clench your fists and go get it. Persistence and diligence can make anything work. Just be stubborn. Know in your head that what you’re doing will work, and it will.
This post will also be featured on TheBulbCulture.wordpress.com. Be sure to head over there to see more great stuff, and contact Jacob to submit articles! He’s building a community of positive people to motivate each other and others.
Irrational Living 