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

3 Things You Can Learn from Millionaire Real Estate Agent--Josh Roy

Josh Roy is a dear friend of mine and is also in the top 1% of real estate agents in the United States.  He will probably kill me for posting this because he is one of the most humble people I know.  Over the years I have learned a ton from Josh and thought that you deserve to hear the top lessons I have picked up from such a successful guy.

1. Family First Always-Josh is a busy guy.  You don't sell 195 homes in a single year without being busy.  However unlike many of the real estate agents I know who are willing to sacrifice everything in their lives for the good of their careers he won't.  If you aren't in the real estate profession then you may not know that the work in this industry never stops.  Most agents work 10 to 12 hour days 6 to 7 days a week which doesn't leave much time for family and recreation.  Josh doesn't miss his kids' baseball  or basketball games.  He very rarely works a weekend.  Nothing takes the place of his family on his schedule, nothing.  Yeah yeah Josh can probably sell more homes if he would meet people at 8:00 on a Saturday night but he doesn't care.  His wife and kids come first and that's the bottom line. I admire him for this because while I have seen many real estate agents and career driven people look back on their lives and realize they have missed huge events in their family's lives.  These can't be relived.  Josh won't do that.  When his kids are grown they will say "Yeah my dad was always there." That my friend is priceless.

2. Be Learning and Coaching Based-When I first met Josh he approached me after a class I had just taught in his office.  I was teaching about how to generate new business off the telephone.  He asked me if I would like to practice the techniques I taught over the phone with him.  Honestly I attempted to blow him off because I have people come up to me after every class I teach wanting to practice and when the rubber meets the road they don't follow through thus wasting my time.  Josh persisted he was not going to take no for an answer. Persistence pays.  For the next two to three months we practiced almost every work day.  He took what I taught him and implemented it and had great results.  It proved to me that when you look at truly successful people it is not the chosen few but instead the few who chose.  Remember the saying when the student is ready the teacher will appear?  Josh was ready.  He was learning based and coachable.  Coachable to me means that he is willing to do things with out dissecting and questioning it to death.  He just trusts and does what he is told which is why he gets great results.  I have attended thousands of hours of training with Josh and every time we go to seminars he is bright eyed bushy tailed absorbing as much as he can. In fact travelling to these events with Josh is one of my favorite things to do.  If you want to be successful in any endeavor then be learning based and coachable.

3. Connecting is Everything-Are you a sales person?  Do you know why that is a loaded question?  Everyone is in sales.  Now I know you're probably saying "whoa slow down there tiger I'm an accountant or a teacher. I'm no slimy sales person."  Well that's not entirely true.  If you are an accountant you still have to sell your clients or boss on why they should use/hire you.  If you are a teacher you had to sell the district on hiring you and your classroom on why they should listen to you.  You see sales is communication and communication is connecting. Connecting is important. Write this down "the quality of your life is the quality of your communication." When Josh first meets someone who wants to sell their home he understands that he must connect with them first.  What I mean is he must earn their trust and respect.  Ever heard the saying "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care?"  Well Josh is a master at this.  I have seen him do it countless times with strangers, home sellers, and his team.  He genuinely connects with people so they feel he has their best interests at heart.  Want to know how he is able to do this?  He does genuinely like people and does have their best interests at heart!  People these days have a super sensitive bs detector.  I believe one of the reasons Josh has been able to consistently grow his business 40% year over year in the worst real estate climate many of us have ever seen is because he has the ability to connect.  I encourage you to become a life long learner on the best practices of connecting/communicating.  If you need a role model start with Josh Roy.

Josh will probably kill me for writing this because he is his least favorite subject.  I just felt there are some great lessons to be learned from him that may help someone along their way.  Please feel free to share with anyone you feel can benefit from this message.

Success Rituals!!!

What are success rituals?  These are the things you do regularly to program your mind and body for success.  Over the past 10 years I have listened to and read hundreds of self improvement books and programs.  After investing that much time you start to pick up patterns or as Jim Rohn used to say "Success leaves clues."  One thing I've noticed is that most of the people who I consider to be highly successful have success rituals they go through every day.  This is called success conditioning.  Keep in mind these have to be done consistenlty to be effective.  Obviously going to the gym once won't give you the results you deserve and these rituals follow the same principle.   I encourage you to do one or all of them and track your results.  Remember what you track changes.

1. Your Hour of Power-I picked this up from Tony Robbins and his Get the Edge Program (which I highly recommend for everyone).  For best results you wake up in the morning and immediately put on your shoes and start walking.  Now the first five minutes are what's called breathwalking which really puts your body into a peak state.  During this time you are also saying incantations or affirmations to yourself such as "every day in every way I'm feeling stronger and stronger" as you do this you will start to feel really powerful.  The next step is 3 minutes of gratitude where you start to thank God for everything and everyone in your life.  As Tony says "when you're grateful you're rich!"  Basically you are thinking or saying to yourself all the people, feelings, and things you are most grateful for.  When I first heard this I thought this sounds too hokey for me but after suspending my need to understand and just doing it I found it has profound results on my life.  Next is visualization where you begin to visualize the things you want to happen most in your life.  Whatever your goals may be see and feel yourself as if it has already happened.  The reason for this is your mind does not know what is real and what isn't.  So if you can get yourself to associate that a goal has already happened your mind and body will instantly start to move towards it.  Last part of this is incantations and some sort of exercise.  You should come up with some phrases that really get your blood pumping.  My favorite is a "I am a peak performance mobile millionaire."  Another one that I heard from Joseph Mcclendon III "God's love is flowing through in avalanches of abundance."  Again I know this sounds crazy but it works.  Successful people will do what failures won't---Just try it.

2. Gratefulness Journals-Gratefulness journals have been around forever.  It works several ways but the overall premise is to write down 5 to 10 things you are truly grateful for every morning and every night.  Now I hear all the time "I don't have anything to be grateful for"  Bull.  There are a lot of things you are taking for granted if you have nothing to be grateful for.  How about the fact you didn't have to live three years in a Nazi Concentration Camp like Viktor Frankly illustrates in his book Man's Search for Meaning?  Or that you have running water which almost 1% of the planet doesn't have.  How about you have the eyes to read this post.  If you look you will find something to be grateful for.  If you are really struggling watch this video by Peter Diamandus titled "Abundance is our Future."  You can also pick up his book "Abundance."  We all know people who have every resource they could possibly need for success and yet they are miserable.   The reason is they aren't grateful for what they already have so they get caught up in the never ending cycle of getting more and more without fulfillment.  Being grateful is also a fantastic way to get out of fear and worry.  Did you know that worrying is simply praying for what you don't want?  So instead look around and say thank you for what you have and I'll bet you start getting more of what you want.

3. Journalling-If your life is worth living it is worth recording.  At first I didn't care for journalling because I didn't see the long term results that many had talked about.  Probably because I didn't ever commit to doing it regularly.  Now I understand it is vital.  Not only is this a written progression of your life it also gives you the opportunity to record your great ideas.  If you aren't regularly writing down your strokes of genius you will never remember them let alone act on them.  We are bombarded with so much information these days that having something to record and prioritize your thoughts is very helpful.  There are all kinds of different journals from handwritten tablets to apps on the iPad.  The very best one is the one you will use so figure out which one works best for you and follow through.  Some people like the idea of simply answering a few set questions in their journals such as "What did I learn today?" or "What did I do right today?"  Other simply like to recollect and write down their thoughts from the day.  I recently heard from a great leadership trainer that she hopes to pass all of her journals (30 years worth) to her children and grandchildren when she dies.  Imagine how priceless of a gift that would be to your loved ones. 

4. Affirmations-Affirmations work if you put some feeling behind the words you use.  The goal with affirmations is to bypass your conscious mind and influence your subconscious mind for success.  What this really does is train a portion of your brain called you Recticular Activating System or the RAS.  This component of your brain tells your mind what to focus on and what you focus on expands.  Think about all the stimulae sitting around you right now.  You probably didn't even notice your breathing until I just told you to right?  You see without the RAS our brains would become instantly overloaded and shut down.  It tells our focus what is important and which direction to go.  The best example of the RAS in action is to imagine yourself standing in the concession area of a movie theater.  A movie has just been let out and all the people who are coming out are walking right towards you.  There are hundreds of people and as you scan their faces you instantly spot your mom walking inside the crowd.  How did you do that?  Your brain looked through hundreds of pieces of data and instantly found the one thing you were looking for or are familiar with.  Same thing with success affirmations.  The proper affirmations tell your brain what to focus on thus showing you the path to attaining your desired result.  After awhile you don't even have to think about it.  It is just automatic  Pretty cool huh? 

These are just a sample of some of the success rituals I have found.  One of the best books you can read about how to influence your mind for success was written by Napoleon Hill called "Think and Grow Rich".  It is a classic I have read many times.  I hope you found this post helpful and please feel free to share with anyone you think can use this message.

.333

Do you know what these numbers represent?  They represent a hall of fame baseball player.  Surprised? Confused?  What this means is a hall of fame baseball player, someone who is considered one of the best in the world at their trade, fails 667 times out of a 1000 at bats.  So here is the question, are you failing enough?  Are you failing hard enough?  You see we are taught by failures that we should avoid failing. However when you look at really successful people they will most often tell you they failed far more than they ever succeeded. In fact that embracing failure is the only reason they are where they are today.  The point is no one remembers your failures except you.  The world loves a winner and has no time for a loser.  I read this quote from Michael Jordan and thought this is a perfect example of the message I am attempting to convey.

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over in my life. And that's why I succeed!" - Michael Jordan

Now depending on who you talk to most people agree that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player who ever lived.  Obviously if you want to become the best in the world at something then you have to learn to fail and fail hard.  You see real failure never occurs until you decide to quit. When you intensely focus on something and persist until you know what works and what doesn’t magical things happen. As Henry Ford says “Failure is simply another opportunity to start again more intelligently.”

Have you ever heard the saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”  That is true but I believe a better way to put it is “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” Dare to suck at something. Think about a baby.  Do babies begin walking perfectly? Most don’t. Instead they fall down, get back up, and continue that pattern until they have it down.  Would you ever tell a baby they only have a finite number of attempts to learn to walk? Treat your life as if you are a baby attempting to walk.  Cut yourself some slack and allow yourself to learn something new that is in line with your purpose and strengths.  Do it over and over until you become a master at it.  In his book The Ultimate Sales Machine Chet Holmes says mastery isn’t about doing 12,000 things 4 times.  Instead it is about doing 4 things 12,000 times.  I urge you do adopt the same philosophy.

Lastly understand the 4 levels of learning.  They are:

Unconscious Incompetence---We don’t know what we don’t know
Conscious Incompetence----We now know what we don’t know
Conscious Competence---Now we know
Unconscious Competence---Now we just do it without even thinking about it

The goal is to get you to unconscious competence.  To do that you are going to fail so fail hard. Really go out there and screw things up.  Fail with a smile on your face and understand that God is less concerned with your comfort as he is with your character. Now along the road of success you will come across a lot of naysayers including people who are close to you.  If your friends and family member aren’t laughing at your goal it isn’t big enough. Ignore them and allow their criticisms to fuel your fire. Also remember, no one ever built a statue in honor of a critic.  It is easy to criticize the people who are following their dreams.  Purposeful driven people make people who are stuck in neutral uncomfortable.  That’s ok. It’s your life. Success is the ultimate revenge and the people who believe it is impossible should not stand in the way those who are already doing it.   So fail, fail really really hard!

Jordan Freed-Author and Creator of You Need Freed Technologies

If you found this useful please feel free to share. 

Next Time: Are you Febreezing your Life?