If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours–Henry David Thoreau
For those who have been following this Blog for this past year, you know my tag line and one of my objectives is ‘”Helping People Help Others.” You’ve heard me say there is plenty of opportunity in America, you just have to be willing to look with an open mind. Unfortunately, much of America is in the mood of depression and have resigned themselves that there isn’t anything they can do about it or it will just get better.
I had another great example of this today. I had shared a one of my business opportunities with a small business owner a few weeks ago and told him I would follow up after I got back from vacation. When I called him back, he said he had just lost his biggest vendor and everything was up in the air. He asked me to call him back this week and when I called him today, he said he wasn’t interested. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested that bugs me, it’s that he’s trying to do business the old way and it’s not working. He is indicative of all the people out there who aren’t willing to change their thinking and behavior to change their circumstances.
It reminds me of a book written by Spencer Johnson called Who Moved My Cheese, in which he reports how rats in a laboratory maze are trained to press a certain buzzer with their noses, and once they are reinforced with a reward of cheese, will keep going back to press the same buzzer even though they are no longer receiving cheese for pressing the buzzer. Their noses will become bloody and they will eventually die rather than press a different buzzer.
People do the same thing. They will repeat a behavior that used to work over and over again, even though it’s not producing the desired result, hoping that someday it will work again. There is something to be said for perseverance in the face of an obstacle, but sometimes you have to come to grips with the fact that a particular opportunity may never exist again.
So how do you create the life of your dreams? How can you get past the goal of just getting back to even and replace it with a goal to thrive? There are some time-tested principles that will work no matter what the economy is doing.
- Keep dreaming and don’t give up on your dreams.
- Write then down, read and visualize them at least twice daily.
- Recite positive affirmations and keep all your self-talk positive.
- Surround and associate only with positive people.
- Read and listen to uplifting books and CD’s.
- Trust you intuition and only listen to people more successful then you.
- Take consistent and continuous action.
- Expect the best.
- Plan, Do, and Review and make necessary corrections based on feedback.
- Persevere until you get the result you want.
This is a formula that always works. You just have to be disciplined to follow it.
Look for opportunities to fill an unfulfilled need. Keep and open mind and then put a plan together to live out your dreams. You can do it.
