A couple of days ago a friend invited me to attend a presentation for a new MLM [Multi - Level Marketing] company launching in New Zealand.

No big deal. No doubt you [like me], get invitations to ‘get in early’ on the next new thing.

With the advent of the internet MLM opportunities abound. And the power of leverage through duplication has reached new heights through this medium.

What still fascinates me is the stigma or bad rap that attaches itself to MLM.

For every opportunity, there seems to be somebody when reckons it’s a scam, or it won’t work, or there’s no money to be made and so on.

And I am sure you a familiar with these scenarios.

MLM does offer a way for Mr and Mrs Average to go into business for themselves with relatively low capital or risk.

So why are so many people closed to the idea in these times of job insecurity of creating an ‘insurance policy’ against possible lay off, or just building a nest egg for the future?

There are many, many  answers to that question so I won’t bore you with a whole raft of explanations.

What I will say is this:

Any new venture requires consistent application, dedication and perseverance.

You go to work don’t you? You spend on average 40 hours every week in exchange for wages or a salary.

How many hours per week do you or would you put into a new venture that holds the promise of additional, maybe replacement income on a consistent basis?

How many people do you know that have told you that it [the new venture] got too hard?

How many of you were just ‘3 feet from Gold‘?

Was there a written goal statement with a time line. Was there an action plan? Was there a burning desire and faith in yourself to keep going no matter what? Were you persistent and consistent, passionate even.

One thing MLM consistently offers is a path to personal development, an opportunity to develop yourself by learning from others and going out and doing the business.

The upside is always a better you a more positive you and maybe a more secure you. The upside comes with consistent application.

Robert Kiyosaki and Jack Canfield among other luminaries espouse the benefits of MLM.

One way to really benefit is to study carefully Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and begin to apply the lessons to your own life. For many of you that is not an easy thing to do.

I am revisiting these teachings and seeing them in a new light.

If you would like some help fill in your details and hit the send button.

Everything starts with an action – take some action today.

A friend emailed me a link to a video that got me thinking.

I could say it is all about your attitude. Or your outlook on life.

I’ll let you watch the video below and then answer the question: “How do I see the world?”

Your response will give you insights that you can use, perhaps with the help of a coach, for your own self growth and personal development.

I was first introduced to Think and Grow Rich by my grandfather when I was 12 years old. He gave me his copy, an original printing from India, his home country.

I read it and it worked. From literally zero assets and no help whatsoever from my parents, at age 12, I was a millionaire by 25, owning 8 companies and retired at 29. Through my life, I have tried to teach people how to succeed based on my experience and the principles in the book, but with very little success. Over the years, I have found the reasons for the very limited percentage of successful attempts at applying the principles and am now finding my students are achieving far better results than in the past.

I knew why I succeeded and why others failed. As Mr. Hill said, the secret is in every page, if only you can see it.

The reason you cannot see it is that it is not one specific secret that your intellectual mind can understand. It is a jigsaw puzzle of various principles that are each a shadow of a concept but together make up an intangible quality. How is that for clear! That quality is the one specific secret ingredient that is emotional, not intellectual, and therefore illusive to discover, it must be felt. In fact it is the key to success.

Is the glass half full or half empty? Neither. It is always full, part water and part air. Air, the intangible yet material substance that gives us life. You cannot see it or touch it, yet you know by the very fact of your existence that it is real. How do you know this? By a totally unrelated piece of matter, your solid physical lungs.

With this knowledge, you know that if you go to outer space, you have to take air with you. If you did not know this and went up there, you die quickly. And so the knowledge of what you cannot see keeps you alive and allows you to expand your experiences into space.

I can tell you the precise details of what you need to have or do, but that is as effective as reading another book. Information is nothing, devotion is everything. Are you devoted enough to your goal that you would give up everything you have, willing to die trying? Does your very existence depend on your success, as it was on the shores as the army watched their boats being burnt along with any hopes of retreat?

And here we draw the line of the successful and the unsuccessful in the principles of Mr. Hill’s studies. And here also, we find where 98% of people give up. And so, I would like to deliver to you my attempt at how to get that white heat of desire, that burning passion, that rocket fuel so that the percentage of drop outs may decrease.

There are so many parts to this puzzle that they cannot be listed in a specific order, they must all be done simultaneously. And so, please read with a view that the air is real, it fills the glass, but you can only see it with your mind and imagination, proven by the effects of what it does for you. Use your imagination to see what is invisible.

If you cannot do something, it is because something else prevents you from doing it.
This principle tells us that for every attempt at anything, there will be an opposing block. For some things the block is so simple that we do not know it is there, but it is as real as the air. Since some opposing blocks are not as strong as our desire, we do not notice it as we pass over it, but if it is a bigger goal, and a bigger block, it can stop you.

Just to give you an idea of how solid the air is, do some investigation about how a plane flies, how the propeller works. The pitch of the blades grab the air and literally claw its way through the sky, similarly to crawling on the ground using only your hands to pull your body. A jet basically grabs the air and pushes it out the rear. Air is solid enough to grab on to and pull a plane through the sky.

On the other hand, air is not strong enough to stop me from walking. This is understanding the principle that to every thing, there is an opposing force. It is a matter of understand all forces that makes something irrelevant, useful or a hindrance.

And so for every desire you have, there is an opposing force. That opposition could be some personality trait or opinion you learnt from your parents or school or church etc. and it could be what you determine to be irrelevant or good, yet it defeats you in your goals.

If you can find the opposing and limiting obstacle, then you could remove it and move forward. That is the first step. Find those things within you which prevent you from succeeding in the instructions given in Think and Grow Rich.

Develop a white heat of desire, a burning passion.
Why can you not get that passion? Because you do not believe in the possibility of your success or because you do not really feel there is any point to your life, or because you have some inhibitions that prevent you from doing what it takes to feel this power. Your negative emotions destroy the energy and mental faith to build this level of vital passion and energy. There must be a reason or purpose to your life, and if none exists, then there is not point to burn a fire. Find a purpose.

Sex Transmutation
This chapter is the crucial source of manufacturing the energy, or rocket fuel, to take you from an average person to have the super power to achieve any goal. Why are there so many sex crazy people yet so few succeed in their worldly goals?
The inhibiting factor is the western view that sex is somehow dirty or bad. That is the first thing. Are you ready to create pornographic images and stimulate your sexual desires on a constant basis? Are you also ready to learn how to focus and redirect that sexual drive towards a goal other than sex? What are your sexual inhibitions? Can you release them to accept that the sex drive is the only possible fuel production facility you can use to succeed in your goals?

Inward and Outward goal
You think you have a goal, you think that is your real goal. You are probably wrong. That is the outward goal. The thing you want. You must find the inward goal, the reason you want it. And that is hard because what if your inward goal is that you want to be loved, that is not in your control. Maybe you are simply too lazy to work and you just want to sit on your bum on the beach your whole life so you think you want to be rich to have money, when really you just do not want to work. In this case, you may say your goal is to make a certain amount of money, but you never have the energy to put in the effort, because really, you are just too lazy. Whatever the inward goal is, you must find it or you cannot succeed because you are following a lie.

The only thing that you truly have any control over is your own thoughts.
But you do not exercise control over your thoughts, rather you let the winds of passing events moment by moment take them here and there.
Learn to exercise will power and control over the only thing you can control and with that, you will control your life.

All is mind.
The principle is simply this, that nothing exists that does not begin in your mind. Your thoughts are the beginning of everything that happens in your life. This may not make sense but consider that if a thought does not reach your mind, then to you, it did not happen because you are not aware of it. We are only concerned with those things that happen to us, in other words, what we experience and then how we distorted it in our imagination.

As the foundation determines the quality of the structure, your thoughts are the foundation of every understanding and goal. If your thoughts are strong and correct, your success is ensured.
Desire breeds the thought, Passion is the fire, Love is the fuel to keep you going. Sex is the physical method to bring the intangible into your physical body by transmuting the thoughts and desires into a physical energy that you can use to achieve your goal. But know that sex without emotion is of no value. It is the mixture of sex with emotion that gives sex the power to be used to aid in achieving your goals.
It all begins with the quality and object of your thoughts, and what you do with that thought.
Faith destroys all obstacles.

Your thoughts indicate your true desires.
You may think you want success, but if your thoughts are negative, then in fact you truly desire failure.
This is not some new age concept, take it literally, your thoughts are the fruits of your true desires, so stop fooling yourself. The power of your thoughts will show in your eyes and determine your energy level. Most importantly, your thoughts determine your EMOTIONS.

Thoughts are formed by repetition. Repeat a certain thing long and often enough, and that will become your belief.

Determination to your goal, never ever give up. There is no question of success or failure, be stubborn.

First comes the burning desire, the obsession, then come the plans. Business and events never cease. The death of something is the birth of something else. Perhaps what is necessary for your goal is not yet born. Keep training your mind on the thoughts of success and wait until the circumstances are ready.

When you get an idea or plan, you must put it into immediate action because the circumstances are good when you get the idea, but they may not be good later on, so if you wait, you may miss the opportunity and only get in on the downward cycle rather than when you got the idea on the upward cycle.

Faith is developed by basically brainwashing your mind into believing something through constant repetition of a thought.

Faith is developed by association to a particular thought. You must associate and spend your time with the people and environment that is in harmony with the thoughts and faith you wish to have.

It is impossible to fail. What is possible is to not have succeeded just yet. If you keep trying until you succeed you will not fail. If you give up trying, then you have failed. Not failed in your goal, rather you have failed to do what it takes to achieve your goal.

If you fail, it is not a failure of effort, it is a failure of your plans. Change the plan and you will succeed. If still not, then keep changing the plan. Know where the failing is, it may be in the plan.

Today I am showing my colleague Vaughan how to add a post to our Life Coach Auckland website. Vaughan has a very insightful way of writing that is quite different from my style. And our plan is to post blog entries individually which I believe will add to the ‘flavour’ of that site.

And as I teach I learn, which is  very good for my personal development.

Now all is this might sound a bit simple, you can read all the books in the world, attend all the courses in the world but unless you take action much of your study will not be particularly effective. It is what coaching is about; encouraging you our client to do something that takes you closer to realising your goals.

So why not do something for your own self development today and decide to take some meaningful action that is in alignment with what you want.

What the Mind Can Conceive

You become what you think about the most.
You have probably heard about the Law of Attraction.
The hit movie ‘The Secret’ certainly brought the Law Of Attraction into the world’s consciousness. It is not new.
Many of the early metaphysical teachers and writers wrote about this concept.
One of the most successful books of all time that describes the principles of the Law of Attraction was Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich.” One speaker referred to Hill’s book as a ‘great cliché’.

Maybe so but a very powerful one indeed.

A great many successful entrepreneurs attribute Think and Grow Rich to their own personal development and success.

The book was first published in the 1930’s, much of the language is somewhat archaic, but the message is just as timeless and relevant today.
In the video in this post Napoleon Hill discusses the power of the mind and how any one including you can channel this power toward realising your dreams and aspirations. Hill recommends having a clear description of what is you want.

I say through clarity comes change.

So spend time deciding what is you want and then describe this with absolute crystal clarity.

Notice the reference to the two envelopes.

Which one will you choose?
I encourage you to watch and listen to the video more than once. Absorb the message and begin to take the appropriate action. In order to stay on track with your self development, make yourself accountable – give me a call.

I may have referred to the ‘phenomenon’ of the ‘why the secret doesn’t work’ or ‘the secret behind the secret‘ industry that has blossomed since the launch of the very successful DVD ‘The Secret’.

One reason for the success of ‘The Secret’ is that it has been presented in modern day language and formats that people relate to more easily than many of the earlier writings such as Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ or Wallace Wattles’ ‘The Sceince of Getting Rich’ along with many others.

One of the original ‘teachers’ pulled out of ‘The Secret’ but who has a huge following is Esther Hicks along with her husband Jerry.

Esther channels an entity called ‘Abraham’ who imparts much wisdom.

For your own personal development I highly recommend Esther and Jerry’s writings.

Their latest creation ‘The Vortex’ has just been released. I have a you tube extract for you to watch.

Pay attention as in the dialogue are clues as to how to apply the Law of Attraction to your self.

Many of the principals of the Law of Attraction are reinforced by my coaching programmes.

Engaging the services of a coach will keep you focussed where you need to be.

The ideas in ‘The Vortex’ will help as well.

As my mentor tells it, one can take a very long time getting what you want or you can speed it up by having someone like a coach to keep you on the path.

Enjoy the clip!

On Saturday night David The Tuamaninator Tua beat Shane The Mountain Man Cameron a few seconds into the second round of an eagerly awaited heavy weight boxing match. Some will say the job was done before the end of the first round!

We witnessed a brief glimpse of incredible punching power and domination[from Tua] over his opponent. This surprised me as I reckon Cameron is a much better fighter than he was allowed to show on the night.

Both boxers had trained very hard to be in excellent condition for this fight.

‘If I lose because I didn’t give it my best………’ David Tua

What was the difference.? Why was one fighter so dominant. I am no boxing expert, but I am sure this was not a mismatch, not a fight just for ’show’.  The difference might come down to belief. Both contenders of course talked up their chances, both told us they would be the winner. Given that both fighters were in very very good condition and both had developed strategies to offset the other’s strengths and weaknesses, how is it that on the night the winner seemed to make victory look almost too easy?

I am sure you have seen this at other sporting events. Often the superior team somehow lets the other seemingly weaker team beat them. This has happened with the All Blacks and the Silver Ferns this year.

Both teams have played well below their potential game after game  only to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes and put on a display that is truly inspiring and won convincingly.

It is like they have woken up from a state of hibernation, too late for the series win though!

Life is like this too!

Deep down you know you have the talent and the ability to excel to achieve outstanding results but you don’t. Why is that?

Maybe you do not believe.

Maybe you have lost focus.

A useful tool that helps is to ‘remember a time when……..‘ you did succeed, you felt great, anything was possible. Getting in touch with your feelings, how you felt at that time is a great way to get back on the horse and ride to success. This is one of the self development secrets to getting what you want. To becoming all that you can be.

Just like the super sports stars and teams your chances of success are as much a mental exercise as anything else [assuming of course you have done the physical preparation!].

Being a member of a top sports team is as much an exercise in personal development as an individual who aspires to be, do, and have more success and happiness in his or her life.

Shane Cameron has said he will be back. He is disappointed, who wouldn’t be?

Next time Shane will do whatever it takes to ensure that he does not lose.

So will you.

Remember the Zen saying: ‘Knock down seven times, get up eight!

P.S. The annual Bathurst 1000 motor race is on this weekend. There will be approximately 29 teams attempting to redress their bitter disappointments from last year! They will be prepared. What will be the difference between the winning team and the rest?

Luck?

Unlikely.

Doing better or being better is what coaching is all about.

So how you do or be better?

One good way is to engage the services of a Life Coach or Mentor.

Another way is to be open to suggestions from friends and colleagues. It’s a great irony don’t you think that ‘you’ are very very good at pointing out the faults, weaknesses and traits of everyone but yourselves!

Somehow you just don’t see where or how you can make positive change for the better for yourself.

I had this experience the other day.

I met my friend Bill for a coffee. Actually Bill had a business proposition to put to me and, as is the way of the world these days, we agreed to meet in a cafe to discuss his proposal as well as swap a few ideas.

Bill is a very successful entrepreneur. Therefore by default he is very creative and observant.

During the earlier part of our meeting Bill gave me his views on this website, what he felt is good, what could be improved.

I listened and I took notes. I could have chosen to become defensive and just clam up but I didn’t.

I’m glad that I listened.

Bill reckons the word clarity [through clarity comes change] is not very powerful. A word like Focus might be better.

My header graphic has a man leaping into the air. Where’s the female and child Bill asks? I might be limiting my appeal to only men because of this.

I need a logo. I now have a magnifying glass. This could go with the word focus.

Hmmn – I’m starting to take notice. Perhaps he has a point.

Bill went on to give me suggestions regarding testimonials.

What about my business card?

And so on.

I might adopt some or all of Bill’s ideas. I am thankful for his honest and constructive ideas.

Even the coach can learn stuff!

Because the reality is that life is a process. The only constant is change and surely is the rate of change accelerating for all of you.

How you cope and prepare for this is up to you. What action will you take to be or do better?

So thanks Bill.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Ghandi

Watch this space and see what changes are made.

P.S. Bill calls himself a ‘changeovator‘ who is setting up ‘friendchises‘ for online clubs of terrific people.

Our bodies change very second. Our cells are constantly renewing themselves; our organs [given a chance though healthy diet and exercise] can also renew themselves.

Our brains do not need to lose function. In fact we can improve our brains by being challenged and stretched!

So you are not the same we were a few moments ago, a few days ago or even last year or the year before that! You are always in a sate of change. So is the world. The only constant is change.

If you look back on your childhood to where you are now, what has changed? The way we do business, banking, how we connect [e.g. Web 2.0], even what we eat.

When I was a kid, shops closed Fridays [except the corner dairy and some gas stations], and reopened Monday. Same at Christmas – you would need to buy supplies to last pretty much from 24th December [Christmas eve] thru to after New Year!

We did not have refrigerators, or TV, a transistor radio was a thing of great marvel. When Fax machines arrived we could not believe how we ever did business without one! We travelled in airplanes with propellers.

Now we have TV on our computers we have friends we have never met all around the world, we can communicate from one hemisphere to another and get a reply in minutes, send movies on our mobile phones and have access to as much information as we could possibly ask for on any given topic.

Experienced online marketers can write and promote a book to bestseller status inside a week!

And then we had 9/11.

What a significant event and how quickly the world changed in response! Terrorism took on a whole new meaning. The world is no longer the same as it was.

Now we have the financial markets meltdown. And again the world is radically changing. It is fair to say that the old model/s to a greater or lesser extent, and this will depend on how you might be affected by it all, won’t work quite the same way. Business will change or perhaps the rate of change will indeed accelerate.

Print media are reformulating their online plans and strategies as traditional revenues dry up. Many traditional news businesses have already succumbed.

Blogs are proliferating at a phenomenal rate. Many of you will follow a blog or several at the expense of newspapers.

Barack Obama used modern technology to mobilize support in ways never done before.The world is not the same any more.

Have I experienced change? You bet!  Have I changed as a result? Yes, you bet! How did I go about it? I asked questions, I observed and I started reading books on personal development.

Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, John Kehoe and others became my role models. I accidentally embraced self – development. I attended courses on personal development. 

• I trained as a Life Coach.
• I learned NLP to Master Practitioner level. I am a Reiki Master.
• I practice EFT and dabble in Numerology.

I guarantee you I shall continue to learn and grow and change.
My world – view is now completely different. In many ways it is quite different from that of my parents [our generation tended to mirror our parents], but my values are still intact!

And it won’t ever be the same – it never was. Get used to this key idea.
As Ghandi said all those years ago: ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world’.

How can I do that you ask, as the pace of change seems to accelerate? How can I influence change?

What’s the use? Things and events will happen with or without me. Yes they will.

Have you noticed how powerful personalities or entrepreneurs get to the top, and seem to be influential?

What is about them? What makes them different? Maybe the question you ought to ask yourself is ‘How?’

How can I be like them? How can I influence people and events? The answer is always the same: Through personal development or self – development.
Firstly, there was a dream or a vision and then a desire and then some form of action was taken.

A goal was set.

There is no ’secret’ to success. History is littered with role models of success. There is no limit to how many of you can be successful. It’s never crowded at the top. It sure as heck is crowded at the bottom.

Phil Linklater