You are NOT Stupid!!!!

         Have you ever felt stupid or inferior? Dumb question right.?  Everyone has.  Maybe you weren't top of your class or are considered to be a "slow learner"  My hope in writing this is that you will make some distinctions about who you are.  You are not broken. You are not stupid.   You are misinformed.   But not anymore.
          As a human species we have a global obsession with highlighting the shortcomings of others.  Some even make a career out of it.  You have immeasurable strength but the odds are you have been attempting to eradicate your weaknesses rather than honing your skills.  These skills are your God given talents. We all have them.  The key to finding and honing your strengths is twofold.  First you must figure out how you learn.  Second you must uncover your strengths and begin at once to enhance them.
            From birth through school and into adulthood we are told to move with the crowd. Be a good student.  Sit and be quiet.  We sit and learn together with 30 to 40 other kids who all have different learning styles and strengths than we do.  We compare our insides to other people's outsides and yearn to be accepted.  Instead of focusing on our strengths we are told we need to fix our weaknesses.  This is totally untrue.  You see everyone is different thus we all learn the world differently.  The world you perceive is brought to you by your senses.  Most of the work is done by the big three Visual-seeing Auditory-hearing Kinestetic-feeling. These are called your representation systems, how you represent the world.  Different people favor different senses kind of like some of us are right handed and some are left. It is easy to figure out what sense you learn with.  Visual people tend to speak at a faster rate of speech and use phrases like "That looks good" "Can you see what  I am talking about?" etc.  Do you see how they communicate with themselves and other through pictures?  Auditory people are slower paced and choose their words carefully.  Phrases like "It sounds like a winner." or "I hear where you are coming from" are common amongst auditory people.  Kinestetic people lead with their feelings.  "This feels right" "This is really heavy" These people generally talk even slower than visual or auditory.  A winning phrase that elicits all three in sales is "Can you see how people who hear about us feel we do a great job?"  This phrase appeals to all three types of learners. This is key to your learning style.  Which sense do you lead with? Do you think in pictures or movies?  When you need to remember something does a voice help you? Are you someone who is led by your heart and feeling?  If you take someone who learns auditorily and show them bunch of pictures you are speaking a foreign language. Mine is visual.  I am heavily visual meaning if a teacher is trying to explain something to me by talking (auditory) I 'll never get it.  In fact I get so bored I completely tune them out.  Doesn't make me stupid they just aren't adapting to how I learn.
               Each person has a map of the world.  How they learn and believe their life should be.  It is the duty of any good teach to enter your map, figure out how you learn, and then teach you in a style that you best understand.   This has worked magic in my personal life for two reasons. 1. I know my learning style so I can learn at a much quicker pace. 2. I do not develop untrue beliefs about myself or my ability. The key distinction between me and most people is that I have done the research to understand this.  I carry no guilt or shame for not understanding things outside of my context of learning.   Many people develop untrue beliefs about themselves and their abilities which carries over into all parts of their lives.    This is a sad fact because I know people in my personal life who've grown up their whole lives thinking they are stupid just because no one has taken the time to teach in their language.  Don't misunderstand me here.  I love teachers.  My mom and sister are both teachers.  The truth is this isn't being taught to teachers either.
                 You have immeasurable strength.  Have you spent most of your life attempting to fix your deficiencies rather than uncovering and developing your strengths?  According to the author of the fabulous highly recommended book StrengthFinder 2.0 their research indicates  "people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths everyday are six times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general." The authors have studied millions or people with one question in mind "What is right with people?"
                 What are your strengths?  What are you doing to build them?  Do yourself a favor and  buy this book.  You can do so by clicking below.  (Make sure you buy a new copy because each one has a unique code to take the test.)   It will share with you what your strengths are give you permission to become the highest best expression of yourself .   You now have the resources available to you to find your strength zone.  Give yourself the gift and do it.  You will thank me later.

Leadership Lessons from Keller Williams Realty Vice President of Growth John Davis

        Today was a great day.  I had the honor of interviewing an absolute star in the Keller Williams family.  His name is John Davis.  John is now the Vice President of Growth for the fastest growing real estate company in North America.  You don't get the position by being average.  If you are interested in leadership then you will love these lessons. 
        First let's look at John's definition of leadership which is teaching other people how to think so they can get what they want.  You need to be looking at your leaders and asking yourself  "what is this person teaching me?" Leaders are teachers and the more they can teach you the more valuable they are.  Many people feel leadership is something that is given through a job title or status.  Leadership is earned.  I believe it all boils down to one word; influence.  The ability to influence yourself and influence others.  The definition John uses is great because it revolves around adding value to other people's lives which is the only way to feel long term fulfillment.  Just as Zig Ziglar used to say "you can have everything in life you want by just helping enough other people get what they want." 
          The second point John spoke to is the importance of facing and overcoming adversity.  John says it is easy to say and do all the right things when you are winning.  But it is when you are going through the trials and tribulations of life you find out about the metal of people.  Facing adversity and turning it around is the common thread running through all the stories, movies, and books we all love.  Without a test you never have a testimony so keep in mind that how you face adversity is a magnification of who you truly are. 
          Lastly you have to know and be confident in who you are.  Like Stephen Covey says in his book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People "you must win in private before you can win in public."  John has to make decisions all the time.  Some of them may not be so popular.  You see true leadership is doing what's right not what's popular.  He says that if he constantly worried about what others thought of him he would have a lot of sleepless nights. His success is judged by him not what others think.  This is my favorite quote from today. "When you have big goals you are going to be disruptive and you have to be ok with you because the status quo doesn't like people who change things up.  Then what happens is when you're different you're the problem according to the status quo.  When you're good with you, you understand that when they're saying that you're doing your job." Make sure you are good with you because if you aren't good with you it is impossible to be good with other people. That also means you are going to be making mistakes or meet with failure along the way.  However are your public failures really failures if you learn from them privately? I don't think so.
         I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.  Thank you for reading and please feel free to add any thoughts in the comments section below.

 

Inspiring Quotes + Poetry= Quotery

Last night I was driving home from Trent and Amy's house when I came up with this idea.  I thought "what if I could mix some of my favorite quotes together to make them into poetry?"  Boom! Quotery was born.  I hope you like these. Please feel free to add any of your own favorite quotes in the comments section below.


A friend is one before whom I may think aloud-Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd-Max Lucado

Bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other-Abraham Lincoln
Biology is the least of which makes someone a mother-Oprah

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new-Albert Einstein
How am I going to live today to create the tomorrow I am committed to?-Tony Robbins

When you learn, teach, when you get, give-Maya Angelous
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live-Martin Luther King

The game is not lost-or won-until the last bell-John Curtin
Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well-Jim Rohn

Understand if you can't you must -Tony Robbins
To know how to live, in yourself you must trust-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are no traffic jams in the extra mile-Zig Ziglar
I have witnessed the softening of the hardest hearts by a simple smile-Goldie Hawn

A dress that zips up the back brings together husband and wife-James H. Boren
Don't let making a living prevent you from designing a life-John Wooden

A friend to all is a friend to none-Aristotle
If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one-Mother Theresa

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve-Napolean Hill
You don't become what you want, you become what you believe-Oprah

Every problem is a gift-without problems we would not grow-Tony Robbins
I was gratified to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know-Mark Twain

Those who have a "why" to live can bear almost any "how"-Viktor Frankl
We may have all come on different ships but we are in the same boat now-Martin Luther King

Real Life Super Heroes

I am going to keep it short today. Not really my style huh? What I want to cover are three men who seem to be real life super heroes.. Odds are you have never heard of any of them and you'll probably think they are nuts. What I love about these guys is they have found their purposes through their passions. Your life on earth has a purpose and it is found through your passion. You will know when you find it because it is the most exciting, challenging, and fulfilling thing you can ever do. As these three men illustrate money is not the goal. Living to the highest possible expression of themselves and doing what they love most is. Oprah says our only job on earth is to figure out why were put here and get about the business of doing it. Take the time to watch the videos below and let me know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for reading.

Alex Honnold-Human Spider Man

Dick Hoyt-The Iron Dad

Jeb Corliss-Real Life Superman