MICROWAVE MENTALITY We live in a society where the expectation is instant results. The belief that our success should be as fast as our food, text messaging, faxes, overnight deliveries, 30 minute photo processing, and one hour glasses. Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magazine has a brilliant book called The Compound Effect. You need it; your kids need it as he sets the record straight of what’s involved to be successful. The book confirms most of my belief system of what’s really involved to create value in the world and a successful business. I love this paragraph in the book: “If you want to succeed we have to recover our grandparents work ethic. It’s time to restore our character, if not for the sake of saving America, at least for your own greater success and achievement. Don’t buy into the genie in the lamp idea. You can sit on your couch waiting to attract checks in your mailbox, rub crystals together, walk on fire, or chart affirmations if you want to. Much of that is hocus-pocus commercialism manipulating you by appealing to your weakness. Real and lasting success requires work – and lot of it.” That’s the message that needs to be delivered in schools everywhere from 1st grade on. And look, I’ve walked on fire at an Anthony Robbins seminar, I’ve chanted the supposedly secret mantra “Om” when I took transcendental mediation over 20 years ago. It’s all well and good to use a fire walk as a metaphor for what you can accomplish when you don’t put limitations on yourself of what you can or cannot do. Transcendental mediation is a good stress and anxiety reliever but if you want to be successful it takes hard work and plenty of it. The new NBA basketball sensation, Jeremy Lin, appears to be an overnight success. Forget about it. This guy worked his butt off practicing and training for years. It’s an insult to him to call him an overnight sensation with all the work and sacrifice he’s made over so many years and then one day – one day he gets the opportunity to prove himself. And isn’t that the real story of success? My belief has been for years that when preparation meets opportunity, success is possible. Candidly, it’s the story of my own life in many ways. I was fortunate to have my heritage begin with hardworking immigrant grandparents that passed down a work ethic to my parents, which was passed down to me and my siblings. We all did what we could to educate and prepare ourselves to add value to the world so we could support ourselves, our families, and set an example for our children. It’s ironic that my dad, two older brothers, and myself were teachers and coaches. But there is far more to just be educated as I am sure you know a lot of educated derelicts that have gone nowhere in life. There are two key ingredients that I believe are required to be successful: 1. Courage of your beliefs 2. Ability to take action And if you really want to be successful, in the words of Anthony Robbins: “You must take massive action.” We live in an imperfect world. It isn’t fair. It isn’t always just. But one thing is for sure, if you handicap yourself and let the realities of everything that is wrong about the world impact your efforts to do what it takes to succeed then you will never have more then a meager existence, with meager experiences in the only life you have on this planet. Putting your hope in the next infomercial isn’t going to help you achieve success. Success requires hard laborious work with a lot of self-sacrifice and doesn’t happen overnight. Jim John said it best: “There are no new fundamentals. Truth is not new. It’s old.” - JEREMY LIN
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 08:58:03 +0000
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