As I reflected back last night on my last day as a man in his thirties one word kept coming up again and again: Gratitude. We all have ups and downs in life and I can say that being blessed to have made it to the Big 4-0 makes me smile.
I'm often asked what drives me? Travel, writing, a constant 'go-go' schedule that most people find curious, odd, and maybe a bit "weird." As I thought about today, July 24th, 2012 and it being the'official passage' from my thirties to my forties in chronological age, the words I first penned a couple of years ago jumped out in my mind.
What I'm about to share is a partial excerpt from Chapter 10 in my third book titled, "The Power of Lists." The message seemed appropriate for today.
I hope you find the story and exercise as something to inspire you, not bring you down, and to also help push you to take a closer look at your own life and see it in a whole new dimension.
I’ve seen many people in my own life, including my own father; turn the initial death sentence of six months or a year left to live, into a live life to the fullest sentence. I’ll explain. They treated these remaining days like gold, without inhibition and the key phrase: without fear! What if we all lived this way? What a very different world it would be. I sense that many people would treat each day with a passion and intensity that would marvel and inspire themselves and those around them.
Father time is strange indeed. When we’re children life moves at a crawl, and when we’re adults it begins to pick up speed like a snowball rolling downhill. We cannot go back in time and rewrite or live in the past. Nor should we allow the two thieves known as regret and guilt to haunt and steal our valuable time known as the present. An untrained, negative, and beaten down mind filled with regret and fear is much more dangerous to success than most people realize or can even imagine.
The Honor List
The names and dates are unfamiliar to most people, but to me they are pivotal markers and turning points in my destiny and journey.
Stan Rubleski 1984 Age: 46
Robert Austin 1985 Age: 19
Dan Hutchinson 1993 Age: 21
Craig Shriver 1995 Age: 22
Four names, four years in time, four major people who left an impression on my soul and present state of how I look at motivation and action. Like a bright, burning, orange flare in a pitch black forest, each one of them grabbed my soul and uniquely changed my destiny in ways that no one could imagine or possibly link together.
Frozen In Time, But Never Forgotten
The years and ages of Stan, Robert, Dan, and Craig represent the year they exited the game of physical life. Their life clocks here on Earth burned out quickly and far too soon. Two of them passed from cancer and two of them were involved in freak accidents.
While many people these days obsessively worry about retirement and multiple “what-if” scenarios as to what they’ll be doing when they turn 50, 60 or 70 years of age, this was not an option for the four people I’ve listed. Unfortunately, they never had the chance to fill their minds with such trivia, for their life force was snuffed out at relatively young ages. It’s ok and healthy to dream and think of the future, but sadly, most people obsess and worry relentlessly about a future date or marker in time that may burn out before they even get there. Each day thousands of people are notified that their life will end soon, while others get no warning at all.
The List of Four Exercise
I’m a big believer in creating and using lists to get things done quicker and with less stress. Yes, for men it’s wired into our DNA. This next exercise is designed to make you appreciate the life and talents you might be taking for granted at this moment in time. I’m going to have you create a very different type of list that you may have never thought about making, and move it from your head into the physical realm via pen and paper. Be prepared, this will also conjure up many strong emotions from your past.
If we sat down over a cup of coffee and I said to you, “Write up your own list of four people who’ve passed on and how they positively impacted your life?” What names and reasons would you put on the list and why?
I want you to do this right now. Take a few minutes and write their names on a piece of paper or the spaces provided here.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The ages and dates of the names on my own list of four serve as a stiff reminder to me that death is a part of our existence, and can come in the prime of life with some advance warning and often when we least expect it. The goal here of creating your own list of names is to remind you to deeply think about your own life, appreciate it, and look at each day as a gift to be celebrated and lived fully even during the hourly ups and downs.
If you made up The List of Four for yourself, welcome to the club. I now urge you to honor these people in your life by going after your dreams and passions with a renewed sense of urgency.
A second question: Is your current life honoring them or would they wonder why you’re squandering it? This isn’t an easy question to ask, yet alone think about. However, it’s essential for you to dig deep within your own life story and answer this question. Again, the goal is to allow these people who were in your life to inspire you to rise up and cultivate your inner genius.
Look, every human who’s ever lived, past or present has made trade-offs. I believe true life balance is one of the biggest myths still being packaged and sold across the radio and TV talk show circuit to society. It’s sexy to talk about “work and life balance,” but achieving it is not easy. Many times when we’re in flow or actively pursuing a big goal, creative chaos will take over and mess with balance. It will happen, trust me. It’s important to continually gain perspective and work towards recognizing that a short term imbalance is required to help us in the long-term to see our dreams take shape.
Finally, let me ask you a third question that few people, especially those in business, rarely if ever stop and slow down to ask themselves: What really drives and inspires you to play the game? Each of us gives up most of our waking hours and valuable life force to work for someone else or to build and pursue our own enterprise. There are no timeouts in life, so let me ask once again, what really drives you to play the game?
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Tony Note: While the author may have passed away 88 years ago, his timeless message is still relevant today. Marden’s insight and words also influenced him as he was the original founder of Success Magazine.
A great many people never really discover themselves until ruin stares them in the face. They do not seem to know how to bring out their reserves until they are overtaken by an overwhelming disaster, or until the sight of their blighted prospects and of the wreck of their homes and happiness stirs them to the very center of their beings.
The real test of character is what a man does after he fails. What will he do next? What resources, what inventiveness, will his failure arouse in him? Will it discover new sources of power, will it bring out reserves, double his determination, or will it dishearten him?
“I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind,” said Emerson, “as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port.”
“To come up again and wrest triumph from defeat.” That is the secret of success of every brave and noble life that ever was lived.
A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. “Oh, by getting up every time I fell down,” he replied. This is the spirit that leads men and armies to victory. It is not the fall, but the not getting up, that is defeat.
Perhaps the past has been a bitter disappointment to you. In looking it over you may feel that you have been plodding along in mediocrity. You may not have succeeded in particular things you expected to succeed in; or you may have lost friends and relatives who were very dear to you. You may have lost your business, and even your home may have been wrenched from you because you could not pay the mortgage on it, or because of sickness and consequent inability to work. The new year may present a very discouraging outlook to you. Yet, in spite of any or all of these misfortunes, if you refuse to be conquered, victory is awaiting you farther on the road.
This is the test of your manhood: how much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself? If you lie down now, throw up your hands, and acknowledge yourself worsted, there is not much in you. But if, with heart undaunted and face turned forward, you refuse to give up or to lose faith in yourself, if you scorn to beat a retreat, you will show that the man left in you is bigger than your loss, greater than your cross, and larger than any defeat.
You may say that you have failed too often, that there is no use in trying, that it is impossible for you to succeed, and that it is useless for you even to attempt to get on your feet again. Nonsense! There is no failure for a man whose spirit is unconquered. No matter how late the hour, or how many and repeated his failures, success is still possible.
The evolution of Scrooge, the miser, in the closing years of his life, from a hard, narrow, heartless, moneygrubber, whose soul was imprisoned in his shining heap of hoarded gold, to a generous, genial lover of his kind, is no mere myth of Dickens’ brain. Time and again, in the history of our daily lives, chronicled in our newspapers, recorded in biographies, or exhibited before our eyes, we see men and women redeeming past failures, rising up out of stupor of discouragement, and boldly turning face forward once more.
There are thousands of people who have lost everything they had in the world who are just as far from failures as they were before their loss, because of their unconquerable spirit –stout hearts that never quail.
In true manhood there is something which rises higher than worldly success or failure. No matter what reverses come to him, what disappointments or failures, a really great man rises superior to them. He never loses his equanimity. In the midst of storms and trials to which a weak nature would succumb, his serene soul, his calm confidence still assert themselves, so completely dominating all outward conditions that they have no power to harm him.
“What is defeat?” says Wendell Phillips. “Nothing but the first steps to something higher.” Many a one has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory. There is something in defeat which puts new determination into a man of mettle.
No, there is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor, the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.
Born in New Hampshire, Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) was orphaned at age seven, and worked throughout his childhood as a “hired boy,” going on to graduate from Boston University and Harvard. Marden published his first book, Pushing to the Front, in 1894, to great sales and acclaim. He went on to found Success Magazine in 1897. This article first appeared in his 1913 book, Training for Efficiency.
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When you ask anyone closely linked to the success and personal development industry what book influenced them most you’ll often hear one book’s title come up over and over again. The book is Napoleon Hill’s 1937 ground-breaking release titled, Think and Grow Rich.
Here are Ten Thought Provoking Quotes from this timeless classic that has sold over 80+ million copies.
1. “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
2. “Great achievement is usually born or great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.”
3. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
4. “If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.”
5.“Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.”
6. “The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.”
7. “Action is the real measure of intelligence.”
8. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
9. “A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.”
10. “Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.”
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( 3 / 81 )When you ask anyone closely linked to the success and personal development industry what book influenced them most you’ll often hear one book’s title come up over and over again. The book is Napoleon Hill’s 1937 ground-breaking release titled, Think and Grow Rich.
Here are Ten Thought Provoking Quotes from this timeless classic that has sold over 80+ million copies.
1. “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
2. “Great achievement is usually born or great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.”
3. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
4. “If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.”
5.“Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.”
6. “The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.”
7. “Action is the real measure of intelligence.”
8. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
9. “A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.”
10. “Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.”
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( 3 / 71 )Tony Note: In preparing for the upcoming Inaugural 75th Anniversary Think & Grow Rich International Summit I’ve been immersed in reading many of Hill’s works and talking with other top speaker’s and authors who will be presenting this October. As I dug into the last few pages of Think & Grow Rich where Hill describes ‘The Six Ghosts of Fear’ a sage recommendation of how to defend against them, jumped off the pages. Here it is. Enjoy and apply this timeless wisdom he shares in this amazing book!
You have absolute control over but one thing, and that is your thoughts. This is the most significant and inspiring of all facts known to man! It reflects man’s divine nature. This divine prerogative is the sole means by which you may control your own destiny. If you fail to control your own mind, you may be sure you will control nothing else.
If you must be careless with your possessions, let it be in connection with material things. Your mind is your spiritual estate! Protect and use it with the care to which divine royalty is entitled. You were given a will-power for this purpose.
Unfortunately, there is no legal protection against those who, who either by design or ignorance, poison the minds of others by negative suggestion. This form of destruction should be punishable by heavy legal penalties, because it may and often does destroy one’s chances of acquiring material things, which are protected by law.
Men with negative minds tried to convince Thomas A. Edison that he could not build a machine that would record and reproduce the human voice, “because,” they said, “no one else had ever produced such a machine. Edison did not believe them. He knew that the mind could produce anything the mind could conceive and believe, and that knowledge was the thing that lifted the great Edison above the common herd.
Men with negative minds told F.W. Woolworth he would go broke trying to run a store on five and ten-cent sales. He did not believe them. He knew that he could do anything, within reason, if he backed his plans with faith. Exercising his right to keep other men’s negative suggestions out of his mind, he piled up a fortune of more than a hundred million dollars.
Doubting Thomas’s scoffed scornfully when Henry Ford tried out his first crudely built automobile on the streets of Detroit. Some said the thing never would become practical. Others said no one would pay money for such a contraption. For said, “I’ll belt the earth with dependable motor cars,” and he did! For the benefit of those seeking vast riches, let it be remembered that practically the sole difference between Henry Ford and a majority of workers is this –Ford had a mind and controlled it. The others have minds that they do not try to control.
Mind control is the result of self-discipline and habit. You either control your mind or it controls you. There is no half way compromise. The most practical of all methods for controlling the mind is the habit of keeping it busy with a definite purpose, backed by a definite plan. Study the record of any man who achieves noteworthy success, and you will observe that he has control over his own mind, moreover, that he exercises that control and directs it toward the attainment of definite objectives. Without this control, success is not possible.
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