The Essence of Life

• When you follow your inspirations and intuition, you grow in self-worth and potential, as well as toward you true capabilities
• Gratitude is the key to growth and fulfillment.
• If you are not grateful for what you’ve been given, then why would the universe want to give you more?
• What exactly is gratitude? It’s what you feel when you’ve attained perfectly balanced perception.
• Many people confuse gratitude with elation. They think that when they’re elated about something and say, “Oh, I’m so thankful for that!” they’re being grateful.
• True gratitude is a quiet state of poise and inner calm where you’re truly thankful, where you sense the divine order and wouldn’t want anything to change.
• Nothing has ever happened or can happen to you that is not a gift and a blessing, but it’s difficult to be thankful until you find the hidden benefit in what may seem at first to be a negative event.
• There’s only two things that the world can’t take away from you: your love and your wisdom.
• Love and wisdom are the essence of life.

Divine Order

• Everything that happens is a vital part of the divine order.
• Even the most terrible events always contain hidden blessings.
  • The masters know this great truth and remain undisturbed by events, while those of lesser wisdom swing from elation to depression as they move through positive and negative experiences on their way to understanding.
• Childhood deprivation is often the source of adult dreams ans aspirations.
• Perceived voids create values; we are programmed to seek whatever we think is missing the most.

When you buy into the fantasy of better and worse, seeking the illusion of greener pastures, you’re never present, or satisfied with your life the way it is. You think, Someday I’ll find a way to let my wife and children know how much I really love them. Someday when things are better, Ill start that business, take that trip, or write that book. You live on Someday Isle, which doesn’t exist.

Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, once said, “Don’t look for opportunities in the far distances of space and time, but embrace them right where you are, because where you are already has the perfection and the balance.” Right this minute you have everything you need to fulfill your life.

At any moment of your life, you will never be put down without being lifted up, nor lifted up without being put down. Positive and negative, good and bad, support and challenge, peace and war – all come together in pairs. They are simultaneous and perfectly balanced, and that is what makes up the divine order.

• If you ever see one side without the other, you’re living in an illusion.
• Nobody will ever put us up or down as much as we do, because no one will ever think as much or as intensely about us as we think about ourselves.
• People treat you exactly the way you unconsciously treat yourself. Their outer mannerisms toward you reflect your inner mannerisms, so one of the most powerful ways to transform your life is to become consciously aware of you beliefs and feelings about yourself.

True Love

• True love emerges from a state of emotional balance. One of the purposes of having a partner is to maintain a loving equilibrium.
• If you would love to be the director of your own life, you must equilibrate your perceptions and emotions.
• The heart opens only when the mind becomes consciously equilibrated, while imbalanced emotions close it down.
• Love is made up of two sides: support and challenge.
  • Were you aware that supporting someone can make them weak and dependent, and that challenging them can make them strong and independent?
  • A child requires both support and challenge in perfect equilibrium. If one parent plays one side, the other parent will play the other. If not, the brother or sister will play it, or the kid down the street will beat them up. They won’t escape whatever it takes to equilibrate them.
• Nature won’t allow anything but equilibrium.
• Strange as it may seem, critics and the tabloids actually help keep celebrities alive by balancing all the praise and adulation their receive.
• One of the greatest illusions people fall into is the search for pleasure without pain, praise without reprimand, or nice without mean. Looking for elusive, one-sided events in a two-sided universe is the root of people’s so-called suffering.
• When you embrace the balance and the truth, love surrounds you. You can’t escape true love. You can’t run from it. There’s nowhere to go. When you understand this truth, your fears and guilt can evaporate, and you can begin to dance with your life.
  • To a master, there is no such thing as attacks, only invitations to dance.
  • When somebody lifts you up or puts you down, if you buy into their one-sided illusion, they can run your life.
  • If every time a a crisis struck, you trained yourself to immediately look for the blessing and opportunity that certainly exists, you could dance with your life.

Exercise

Before you go to sleep tonight, lie comfortably in you bed and begin giving thanks inwardly. Remember everyone who helped you today. Call up their image in your mind’s eye and thank them for their support or challenge, niceness o r meanness, or simply their presence in your life. Identify what they were teaching you and how what they were balancing.

Continue until you feel great gratitude for your day – until you see that both sided are perfectly balanced and both are love. Going to sleep with a grateful, open heart is a powerful healing practice. Your dreams will become more inspiring, and you will awaken in the morning with lighter state of mind.

Lighten Up

• Whatever you don’t want to see or appreciate in yourself, you keep attracting into you life until you learn to love it.
• You are not here to run from sadness to happiness, because fulfillment is not possible when you deny half of you existence.

Pain and Pleasure

Let’s say you were doing some job around the house and you smashed your thumb with a hammer. Just as you began cursing and leaping around the room, the doorbell rang. If the person at thee door had come to congratulate you on just winning $50 million in th lottery, you probably would notice little or no sensation of pain in your thumb. When pain and pleasure are perfectly balanced, both disappear.

The funny thing is that pain and pleasure remain perfectly balanced at every moment, but you selectively attend to on side or the other and feel pleasure or pain accordingly. There is both pain and pleasure in youth and age, poverty and wealth, solitude and multitude, illness and wellness.

Love is simply a state of non-separation, where you perceive no division between yourself an d some aspect of the world. In that wholeness and oneness, you experience what the ancient Hindu philosophers described as the highest state of consciousness, where whatever you see is you. To the degree you tap in to that state, your dreams are in your hands. You have access to an infinitude of possibility because you’re now tuning in to you infinite potential through the balance of love.

That is the unified field theory, the unified force that immortalizes people. When you can tap in to that source, whatever you dream is yours. In that state, you know why you’re here, you’re filled with certainty, and you r mind becomes clear and focused. When you feel worth of having your dreams, they appear. Your innermost dominant thought becomes your outermost tangible reality. Whatever you think about – and thank about – you bring about.

• When you know that you are loved no matter what, you have great power.

The Perfection of Two Sides

All emotions are lies. The truth is love, but emotions are half-truths, distortions and lies. There is nothing but love, and all else is illusion. We go through life merely living instead of embracing it all. We oscillate between our positive and negative emotions because we don’t love.

You don’t have command over anything that you have emotions about; you only have command over the things you love. Love is a perfectly equilibrated, divinely ordained state of consciousness that’s available to you 24 hours a day if you just balance your mind and don’t let it go off on emotional illusions.

• Every expression and repression of emotion will run your life.
• Love is not an emotions; it transcends emotion. It is the synthesis of all polar-opposite emotions.
• Emotions are blind because they see only one side.

Have you ever noticed that when somebody tries to praise you beyond your true worth, you’ll put yourself down in front of them? And if someone tries to cut you down below your true worth, you’ll lift yourself up to balance it?

Exercise 1

• Affirmation: “No matter what I have done or have not done, I am worthy of love!“

Exercise 2

1. Look back over your life and identify every single thing that you think was somehow negative – that is not meaningful and purposeful and aligned with your destiny. For each item, ask your, “How was that an active of love? How did that serve me and others? How did that help me?” Don’t stop until you can give thanks for each one.
2. Then ask, “How did that help me become what I am today? How did that person or event bless me and contribute to my mission?” You’ll see that there was not one person or event that didn’t equilibrate you and wake you up.
3. Imagine what it would be like if you could not see anything else around you but perfect equilibrium, and the more clearly you saw it, the more you saw the divine assistance. No matter what happened, you could turn it into guidance and fuel for you journey home or your destiny. When you know everything serves you, what can stop you?

Living Dreams

• To be a genius, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams, but there’s always a price.

• Donald Trump’s strategy to get to his priorities: He bought a 15-minute hourglass, and when someone walked into his office, he’d turn it over and say, “You’ve got 15 minutes to make your pitch. Go!” He made them get real, get clear, and get present. If they weren’t focused enough to sell him in that time, he gave them a decision right away. His business and energy went way up as a result.

• The key to success: Try really working eight hours a day, be present with your mind eight hours a day.

• The masses wait to see it to believe it, but the master believes it and then sees it. The master affirms and believes it ahead of time. We create our lives with our thoughts, every minute of the day.

The Dream Is in the Detail

• If you get absolutely crystal clear on exactly what you would love, and you can’t see anything but that, it’s almost impossible for you not to get it.
• If you know that no matter what happens, your life is serving your dreams, then nothing can stop you. The minute you truly commit to your dream, watch the universe immediately bring you the sustenance and the challenges necessary to fulfill it.

Secrets of an Inspired Life

• The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.

• Even when you’re not inspired and consciously following your mission, you still play a part in the divine order. There’s nothing wrong if you feel like you’re off purpose. Just know that your resources, energy and life will be give to somebody else who is inspired and feeling purposeful.

Exercise

Create the life you love:

1. Every day, sit for a moment in silent meditation and concentrate on exactly what you would love to create in your life. Imagine every detail you can, and then even more. See your life exactly the way you would love it to be. Let your imagination be real enough to come true, yet ideal enough to inspire and stretch you.
2. Write down all that you can imagine, and begin formulating your goals. Writing down you dreams helps them come true, so include all the details.
3. Every day, take at least one action step toward making your goals come true. What you move toward moves toward you.
4. Keep record of every synchronous, goal-aligned event that occurs; they fill your life when you stop to acknowledge them. Write down all the events that come true each day that demonstrate that you’re moving in the direction of you dreams.
5. Keep refining your goals, becoming clearer with each passing day about what you would love to create.
6. As you begin to fulfill these goals, be sure to add new ones all revolving around your chief aim or purpose in life.
7. Maintain an achievement and blessing journal. Be thankful for every supportive and challenging event that occurs to give you feedback and fulfillment on the road to your dreams.

Both Sides Now

Everybody has two sides. If you’re honest, you’ll see that you are both saint and sinner, virtuous and vicious. So when someone accuses you of something, don’t waste time defending yourself. Instead, admit that you are in fact possessor of whatever it is the’re attaching you for. Not only are you possessor, but they are, too, and they’re judging themselves; that’s why they’re accusing you. If it hurts to hear it, that means you haven’t seen how that quality servers you or others and you’re judging yourself. Their gift to you is to wake you up to another part of yourself that you haven’t yet loved.

• Whatever you do, you do to yourself. To judge others only compounds you own faults. -The Buddha

“The longer I stayed positive, the more something would blow, and I’d get really negative, either to myself or someone else. I noticed that the more I tried to put on the facade of being positive, the more i’d beat myself up inside. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of my negative side.”

• People who try to be positive to everybody, at home and in the world, end up negating themselves.
• If you try to put on a facade for the world about how positive and upbeat your are, there will be chaos in you private life or your personal health.
• Tragedy heals self-righteous people; it humbles them back down into their hearts. Comedy heals self-wrongeous people by lifting them back up into their heart.

If everything you did, said, and thought was broadcast 24 hours a day on eternity television, and everyone knew everything about you, could you love yourself?

Mastery is the ability to take your privates public. By that, I mean that if you can take the private things you don’t like about yourself and embrace them to the point where it doesn’t matter if people find out about them or not, then you love yourself. When you love yourself, people can’t push your buttons, but they will automatically attack you in whatever areas you attack yourself.

• When you give yourself permission to be fully human, you approach the divine.

Exercise

We normally look for differences between ourselves and others. This exercise is designed to reverse that. Sit in a public place where you have3 a great view of passerby, and start identifying yourself in them. Look quickly from person to person, and whatever trait stands out, ask yourself where and when you have the same quality. Find out where and when you’re exactly like them.

As you improve, you’ll be able to find yourself in anyone and anything.

• Whatever I see is me.

Who’s Minding the Store?

• Death is a naturally recurring part of the cycle of life; there is no life without death, and the greater the death, the greater the life.
• The greater you vision and patience, the greater your power and scale of creation.
• Death is an illusion; life just changes form.
• There is nothing to fix, but much to love.

Exercise

Transcend the myth of loss or death:

1. Think of someone you believe you “lost” at some time in your life, through change, divorce, or death. Write down the specific traits or aspects you think you lost.
2. Go back to that exact time and place, and ask yourself, “What were the new forms of these specific traits or aspects? How did those qualities immediately show up in my life in some other form?” As you discover them, write down the new form that each quality appeared in. You may have to be creative and insightful to recognize the new form. The qualities you miss in someone may appear in other people, yourself, a beloved animal, or new relationships and opportunities. They can also manifest in the virtual reality of your memory, imagination, and dreams.
3. It’s not a matter of if the new forms exist; it’s simply a matter of where they exist, so don’t stop looking until you find them. You’ll know you’re done when you realize that you wouldn’t exchange the new form for what seemed lost. When you see the blessings, you’ll experience a moment of silence and stillness, and a tear of inspiration.

Relationship

• The purpose of relationship isn’t happiness; it’s a combination of happiness and sadness, which makes up fulfillment.
• As you grow in wisdom, you’ll learn to embrace and love others for who they are, looking for the benefits they offer you and knowing that they represent parts of you that you’ve buried or disowned. Wisdom means thanking others for bringing to your awareness those areas where you’ve lied and not loved, and for being grateful that they’ve given you this opportunity to love.
• When you can’t wait to share a message from your heart, your students can’t wait to hear it.
• The purpose of marriage is to teach people how to fully love themselves, their owned and disowned parts. Love is the perfect equilibrium of pain and pleasure, support and challenge, nice and mean, pleasant and unpleasant, like and dislike.
• People who say, “I don’t want to play games in relationship,” are constantly at the mercy of the game.
• Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. -Lao Tzu
• Your values dictate your destiny. Anything that supports your highest values you call “good” and are attracted to; anything that challenges them you call “bad” and are repelled by.
• Your values are based on the perception that something is missing, that a void exists. But the Law of Conservation says that nothing is missing, it’s just in a form you haven’t recognized. You think you’re missing it; therefor, you seek it, and anything you think supports that search you call good and anything that challenges it you call bad.
• A careless relationship is one in which you project and focus on you own values without considering your partner’s at all. A careful relationship is when you think in terms of their values without considering your own – this one is called “walking on eggshells”. Both are one-sided approaches that ignore the other person and create tension in the relationship. But a caring relationship is one where you communicate your values in terms of theirs. You think of both sides simultaneously, expressing your love for yourself and each other. The definition of caring is knowing someone well enough to know their values, and caring enough to express your values in terms of theirs.
• “I have my individuality, too, and I can’t sacrifice my life totally for her. The more I sacrifice myself for her, the more she’ll minimize me because I’m minimizing myself. She’ll take me for granted and treat me accordingly.”
• Whenever something supports your values; you take away the rules, and when something challenges your values, you set rules. Nations do it, companies do it, and you do it in relationships. You set up rules when your values feel threatened.
• Often when we’re in a relationship, we unwisely think the other person is supposed to be like us, and we project our hierarchy of values onto them. When they support our values, we call them “good” and let them do almost anything they want. But when they challenge our values, we suddenly call them “bad” and clamp down with our laws, rules and ultimatums.
• We want our partner to be like us, but if any two people are exactly the same, one of them is unnecessary.
• Every human being has a domain, a territory that fluctuates according to their emotions. Arguments happen when two people in a relationship need to either add or subtract space, time, energy or matter. Any perceptions of too much or too little of any of those elements will cause arguments to equalize them. Are arguments bad? No the’re telling you that somebody loves you and wants to regulate space time energy and matter with you.
• Did you know that everyone has a running checklist on their relationship with you? They have a complete log of every exchange from the time they met you until now, and you have the same with them. They know exactly where your exchange with them is, and when there’s a conflict, out it comes. Remember that what they think is just what they think; it may or may not be accurate, and the argument is the process of sort it out.
• Give space and you get love; give love and you get space.
• When you love someone, you’re the nicest and the meanest too them. You support and challenge, you’re pleasant and unpleasant, you lift them up and you put them down, you do things for them and ignore them. Those are the two sides of love. The myth says that you’re supposed to show only one side, but that creates tension in a relationship and in your life because it represses half of the truth.
• Love cannot be rejected, but expectation will certainly be. Most people confuse love with expectation. You can’t avoid having expectations and opinions, but to get stuck in them is to stop your growth.
• Whatever you love turns into what you would most love it to be. If you try to fix or change somebody, they’ll resist; but if you honor and thank them for who they are, as they are, and love them for who they are, they’ll assist. When you love people for who they are, the turn into whom you love.
• People want to blame someone else when they don’t understand their accountability for their own reality. Have you ever noticed that blame doesn’t empower you? It can, in fact, be very dis-empowering, and it won’ t get you what you would truly love in life.
• Life is funny. The moment you realize you already have everything you’re looking for, the universe gives it to you. The instant you think you don’t have something, it evades you further.
• The greatest discovery in life is that no matter what you do, you’re being supported and challenged simultaneously. The second greatest discovery is that nothing is missing; it’s just in a form you haven’t recognized.
• Happiness and sadness are the two sides of fulfillment.
• There is nothing but love, and all else is illusion.

Divinity

• I haven’t seen anyone liberate themselves, nor seen anyone open their heart or become empowered, by blaming playing the victim. No liberation is complete until you realize that your perceptions are your own cause, and it’s up to you to empower yourself. The second you understand that you’re playing a role that attracted those forces, you have the power to transform that reality. You are the author of your own life.
• Disease and illness are the signs and symptoms that the body uses to reveal to us where we’re not loving.
• Illness is your body’s way of telling you that you’re lying about life.
• There is a meaning behind all events, and wisdom is finding and saying “thank you” for your meaningful life.
• I have yet to find anything on this planet that wasn’t serving someone in some way.
• Anything you don’t love about a past relatinship of any kind you bring right into your next one; you keep dealing with it because it’s not about them, it’s about you. Love yourself enough to love them, and set both of you free.
• Don’t complain about your lot. Instead, ask yourself, “How does my illness serve? What is the hidden benefit to my fear or confusion or lack of money?” and don’t stop until you’re thankful for it.
  • Does it make you slow down, seek healing, remind you of your mortality and stop taking life for granted, return to basics and take responsibility for your life? Does it help you dig inside and find courage, be grateful for small things, humble you, attract help and support, motivate you to get creative and get real? I promise you that th blessing is there, but you must be willing to look for it.
• Anything you perceive as life-threatening or destroying is also life-giving and creating, if you only have the wisdom to look for it.
• The only real meaning of forgiveness to me is, “Thank you for giving me this experience,” whatever it may be. If you can say that, you’re no longer fearful or a victim.

Genius

• Great geniuses are willing to pay the price. They’re willing to make sacrifices for their dreams. They do whatever it takes. There’s nothing wrong with that, because pain and pleasure always come together in a pair.
• The story you tell yourself about your life is what your life becomes.
• The Law of Lesser Pissers: If you’re given the choice between pissing someone else of or pissing yourself off, chose them.
• The greatest cause of illness, disease, and death is not living your dreams. That will kill you quicker than anything else.
• Don’t think you’ll ever be without fears in your life; fear means you’re growing and challenging yourself beyond you comfort zones.
• Many who can’t see your dream will immediately try to ridicule you, or ask you to clarify how you’ll fulfill it. It’s part of the equilibrating game. Anybody who ridicules you also honors you by acknowledging that you have exceeded their capacity to understand what you’re about.
• Every moment we spend not focused on your dreams becomes a moment we spend focused on our doubts and obstacles.
• Everybody has a dream, but a genius is willing to define and redefine that dream and keep acting on high-priority actions to fulfill it.
• Fantasies are lopsided illusions to which we compare our reality; they eventually depress us. Dreams are realistic objectives that we refine our lives toward and can live.
• Your vitality is directly proportionate to the vividness of your vision and the clarity of your calling, which are directly proportionate to how well you see and acknowledge the divine order.
• I link everything I do to my mission, and I am inspired by my life.
• I walk through the darkened doorway where fear lurks, and I turn on the light.

Exercise

• Read about the lives of those who have left an immortal legacy to humankind. By immersing yourself in the lives of these geniuses, you’ll carry some of that inspiration away with you.

The Quantum Collapse Process

(The process itself is not explained here, only quotes from the chapter)

• There’s no such thing as somebody being too hard; there’s just somebody who reminds you of what you don’t want to own inside yourself.

Believing Is Seeing

• Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
• God is in the details. An inspired vision isn’t just some vague perception; it must be extremely clear and detailed.
• In this creation process, you have a balance between making things happen and letting things happen. it’s wise to lay out a plan, but not to be so rigid with it that you can’t allow refinement and adaption.
• The purpose of this plan isn’t necessarily to make it go only that way, but to allow you mind to see it clearly enough to erase all fear and doubt. Then you attract what you envisioned, or even more efficient alternatives.
• If you set a goal with your self-righteous persona, you’re going to get burned out attempting to accomplish it. If you set with your self-wrongeous persona, you won’t be motivated and you’ll bebored in. Inspiring visions that are crystal clear can be manifested. You don’t get elated or depressed about them; you just keep working away until they materialize.
• Students who study only practical matters don’t develop a broad enough vision to extend beyond themselves. They must be stretched and made uncomfortable to get out beyond their normal ream of thinking.
• The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
• I plan to live my life fully until the moment I stop breathing, being productive and doing something that fulfills me and servers others.
• The most magnificent thing in life is to be able to get up every morning and do what you love and love what you do, to be well paid and inspired to do it, to make your vacation you vocation.
• Most people are too busy to take the time to plan, and they’re distracted by low-priority actions instead of committing themselves to high-priority dreams.
• The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.
• I am the author of my life.
• Whoever has the most certainty, rules.
• God is the power, I’m the vision; we’re the team.

Materialization: The Blueprint of Creation

• If you believe in God, work with him. If you do not, become one. -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are many levels of excuse in answer to the question, “Why aren’t you self-actualizing your life and living exactly the way you would love it to be?” and they’re all based on fears and forms of guilt.

I havn’t self -actualized my life because…

• I desire to lose the fat on my body first.
• I want to pay off my debts first.
• I need to complete my education first.
• I ought to spend time doing charity work at my church first.
• I have to raise my family first.

None of those are necessarily true. The’re all excuses for not doing what you love, but excuses won’t bring you your dreams. If a person was absolutely certain and had an unshakable belief in themselves an what they do, you could take away their money and everything they have they’d just create it again.

To materialize your dreams, you must consistently take two wise action steps:

1. Define your dreams. If you don’t define them, don’t expect to have them.
2. Ask yourself what’s in the way of those dreams. It makes a difference. If you find yourself making excuses, know that any excuse can be dissolved by a Collapse. Procrastination, which define as putting off living your dreams, is based primarily on three things: an un-chunked and un-detailed goal, a lopsided perception, and a dream that isn’t linked of aligned with your highest values or purpose. Break any goal into doable steps, balance your perceptions, and link you dreams to you highest values, and you’ll break through procrastination and act. Self-actualization requires no excuses, but people use excuses to justify why they’re not doing what they would love to do.

Do you know people who think they’re purely giving, charity-oriented altruists? If somebody says, “I would love to give this to you from my heart; I love to give, it’s my nature,” you can test for their hidden agenda by saying, “Oh, thank you so much for this lovely gift,” and then give it to someone else right then and there, or possibly ignite it in front of them. Suddenly their hidden agenda surfaces, and the expectation behind their giving is revealed. If they had truly given for the sake of giving, they would be able to appreciate your action. But if the hidden agenda is, “you’re supposed to appreciate my exquisite taste, thank me, and be grateful,” it will suddenly leap up an they’ll react. Know that giving and taking maintain equilibrium. Become awakened to others and your own hidden agendas.

• So self-mastered people maintain fair exchange in their lives. that’s why one of the most ancient Greek provers said, “Payment is due when services are rendered.”
• If you receive a large inheritance and you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it, some equilibrating force is likely to reduce that amount to exactly what you feel you’ve earned.
• To equilibrate your perception and feel that there has been fair exchange, you’d be wise to find out what you did to earn what you have received.
• The universe is asking you, “What is your value?” and waiting patiently until you finally wake up to it.

The Manifestation Formula:

1. Clarify you purpose.
2. Link all seven areas of life to your purpose.
3. Think about what you would love.
4. Visualize what you would love.
5. Affirm what you would love.
6. Feel what you would love.
7. Write what you would love.
8. Act on what you would love.
9. Materialize what you would love. Affirm that you’re at the perfect place, at the perfect time, to meet the perfect people to fulfill the perfect dreams. If yo begin to experience any doubt, fill your mind with height-priority thoughts, and take high-priority action steps. fill your day with the things you love, and watch what happens.
10. Be thankful for what you would love.

• Purpose + thought + vision + affirmation + feeling + writing things down in space and time + taking action with energy on matter + being thankful, manifests things.
• I’ve heard people say things such as, “It’s going to take me two of three years to fulfill one of my dreams,,” but I say, so what? What else would you do with those years anyway?
• If you’re really determined, you can make it “meant to be.” Be willing to do whatever it takes. Allow nothing to stop you.
• At the end of you life, you';re going to be asking yourself, “Did I do everything I could with everything I was given? Did I use all of my talents to the fullest?” What do yo want the answers to be?
• How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

Completion: Full Circle

• Your mind dictates your destiny, and you dominant thought determines your world. Don’t just repeat the words I’ve give you; become them. Say them as if you life depended on them! -Paul Bragg
• Ancient wisdom dictates that if you don’t pass or light another torch, you won’t receive greater light. Whatever you would love to master, pass it on like a torch. If you help others achieve what they would love to achieve in life, you’ll be more enabled to achieve what you would love.
• To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who don’t no proof is possible. Waste no words on those who seek not. Sometimes silence is more powerful than speech. Be wise in your selection of torch carriers.
• The quicker you gather information and the faster you give to others what you’ve learned, the more you remember. The more time that elapses between receiving and broadcasting, the less you retain and the less certain you become. If you’d love to have a photographic mind, immediately give out what you’ve taken in.
• Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise men of old. Seek what they sought. -Matsuo Menefusa
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize who close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison
• It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid,. Everybody who ever did anything extraordinary was frightened at times. All things are in balance. If you have great fear, you also have great courage, for they remain in equal proportions; and both are necessary for us to evolve and grow.

Believe You Can Succeed And You Will

• When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it develops.
• Belief in success is the one basic, absolutely essential ingredient of successful people.
• It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him.

How to develop the power of belief:

1. Think success, don’t think failure.
2. Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are.
3. Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by th size of your belief.

Cure Yourself of Excusitis, The Failure Disease

“But My Health Isn’t Goodd”

• There is something physically wrong with everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excusitis, but success-thinking people do not.
• Book recommendation: How to Live 365 Days a Year by John A. Schindler
• The right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.

Four things you can do to lick health excusitis:

1. Refuse to talk about your health. One may (sometimes) get a little sympathy, but one doesn’t get respect and loyalty by being a chronic complainer.
2. Refuse to worry about your health.
3. Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is.
4. It’s better to wear out than rust out.

“But You’ve Got to Have Brains to Succeed”

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

• What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have.
• The thinking that guides you intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
• The ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts. -Henry Ford

Three ways to cure intelligence excusitis:

1. Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.
2. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”
3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.

Build Confidence and Destroy Fear

• Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear.
• In a way, most job applicants are a little like beggars – they’ll accept anything, and they aren’t particular.

How to Think Big

Four ways to develop the big thinker’s vocabulary:

1. Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel.
2. Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people.
3. Use positive language to encourage others.
4. Use positive words to outline plans to others.

• See what can be, not just what is!
• Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.

1. Practice adding value to things.
2. Practice adding value to people.
3. Practice adding value to yourself.

How to Think and Dream Creatively

• Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking.
• Top level leaders in all walks of life spend much more time requesting advice than they do in giving it.

You Are What You Think You Are

• Each person working with us is important, else he wouldn’t be on the payroll.
• The way we think toward our jobs determines how our subordinates think toward their jobs.
  1. Always show positive attitudes toward your job so that your subordinates will ‘pick up” right thinking.
  2. As you approach your job each day, ask yourself, “Am I worthy in every respect of being imitated? Are all my habits such that I would be glad to see them in my subordinates?”

• Build your “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial and practice it out loud in private at least once ad day.

The “How am I thinking?” Checklist:

1. When I worry:
   • Would an important person worry about this? Would the most successful person I know be disturbed about this?
2. An idea:
   • What would an important person do if he had this idea?
3. My appearance:
   • Do I look like someone who has maximum self-respect?
4. My language:
   • Am I using the language of successful people?
5. What I read:
   • Would an important person read this?
6. Conversation:
   • Is this something successful people would discuss?
7. When I lose my temper:
   • Would an important person get mad at what I’m mad at?
8. My jokes:
   • Is this the kind of joke an important person would tell?
9. My job:
   • How does an important person describe his job to others?

Cement in your mind the question “Is this the way an important person does it?”

1. Look important.
2. Think your work is important.
3. Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial.
4. In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?”

Manage Your Environments: Go First Class

The number one obstacle on the road to high-level success is the feeling that major accomplishment is beyond reach. This attitude stems from many, many suppressive forces that direct or thinking toward mediocre levels.

1. Those who surrendered completely: You can easily spot these people because they go to great lengths to rationalize their status and explain how “happy” the really are.
2. Those who surrendered partially: This group includes many talented, intelligent people who elect to crawl through life because they are afraid to stand up and run.
3. Those who never surrender.

• Go first class when you have questions. Seeking advice from a failure is like consulting a quack on how to cure cancer.
• What happens on weekends and between 6pm and 9am directly affects a person’s performance from 9am to 6pm.
• Go first class: that is an excellent rule to follow in everything you do, including the goods and services you buy.
• Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to go any other way.

Make Your Attitudes Your Allies

Grow the attitudes of:

1. I am activated.
2. I am important.
3. Service first.

• To activate others, to get them to be enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself.
• Use the dig-into-it-deeper technique to develop enthusiasm toward other people.
• Keep digging, and you’ll eventually discover a fascinating person.
• To get enthusiasm about anything – people, places, things – dig into it deeper.
• Ask yourself every day, “What can I do today to make my wife and family happy?”
• “Put service first” is an attitude that creates wealth. Put service first, and money takes care of itself.

Think Right Toward People

Success depends on the support of other people. The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.

• A person is not pulled up to a higher-level job. Rather he is lifted up.
• Successful people follow a plan for liking people. Do you?
• It’s a mark of real leadership to take the lead in getting to know people.
• The most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.
• The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person.
• The more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems.
• Don’t be a conversation hog. Listen, wind friends, and learn.

Get The Action Habit

• Leaders in every field agree on: There is a shortage to of top-flight, expertly qualified persons to fill key positions. There really is plenty of room at the top.
• Destroy fear through action.
• The only way to start is to start. Don’t deliberate. Don’t postpone getting started.
• People who get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them; they move the spirit.
• When you see something that you believe ought to be done, pick up the ball and run.

How to Turn Defeat Into Victory

• Inside, Mr. Mediocre feels defeated. He feels beaten but tries hard to endure the sentence of mediocrity that “fate” ha handed him. He, too, has surrendered to defeat, but in a reasonably clean, socially “accepted” way.

Use Goals to Help You Grow

• Use goals to live longer. No medicine in the worlds is as powerful in bringing about long life as is the desire to do something.
• Invest in yourself. Purchase those things that build mental power and efficiency. Invest in education. Invest in idea starters.

How to Think Like A Leader

• Achieving high-level success requires the support and the cooperation of others.
• Success and the ability to lead others – that is getting them to do things they wouldn’t do if the were not led – go hand in hand.
• Ask yourself:
  • “What kind of world would this world be, If everyone in it were just like me?”
  • “What kind of company would this company be, If everyone in it were just like me?”

The four leadership principles:

1. Trade minds with the people you want to influence. It’s easy to get others to do what you want them to do if you’ll see things through their eyes. Ask yourself this question before you act “What would I think of this if I exchanged places with the other person?”
2. Apply the “Be-Human” rule in your dealings with others. Ask, “What is the human way to handle this?” in everything you do, show that you put other people first. Just give other people the kind of treatment you’ll like to receive. You’ll be rewarded.
3. Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress. Think improvement in everything you do. Think high standards in everything you do. Over a period of time subordinates tend to become carbon copies of their chief. Be sure that master copy is worthy duplicating. Make this a personal resolution: “At home, at work, in community life, if it’s progress I’m for it.”
4. Take time out to confer with yourself and tap your supreme thinking power. Managed solitude pays off. Use it to release your creative power. Us it to find solutions to personal and business problems. So spend some time alone every day just for thinking. Use the thinking technique all great leaders use: confer with yourself.

The poster is great to collaborate on one physical sheet of paper, but I needed a digital friendly version to save the results and work on it later. So here is my bullet point structured version of the business model canvas crated with WorkFlowy. It can be copied and pasted from the website into most word processing applications.

The Business Model Canvas

• Key Partners:
  • Who are your key partners?
  • Who are your key suppliers?
  • What key resources are we acquiring from partners?
  • Which key activities do partners perform?
  • Motivations for Partnerships:
    • Optimization and economy
    • Reduction of risk and uncertainty
    • Acquisition of particular resources and activities
• Key Activities:
  • What key activities do our value proposition require?
  • Our distribution channels?
  • Customer relationships?
  • Revenue streams?
  • Categories:
    • Production
    • Problem solving
    • Platform/Network
• Key Resources:
  • What key resources do our value propositions require?
  • Our distribution channel? Customer relationships?
  • Revenue streams?
  • Types of resources
    • Physical
    • Intelectual (brand patens, copyrights, data)
    • Human
    • Financial
• Value Propositions:
  • What value do we deliver to the customer?
  • Wich one of our customer’s problems are we helping to solve?
  • What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?
  • Wich customer needs are we satisfying?
  • Characteristics:
    • Newness
    • Performance
    • Customization
    • “Getting the job done”
    • Design
    • Brand/Status
    • Price
    • Cost Reduction
    • Risk Reduction
    • Accesibility
    • Usability
• Customer Relationships:
  • What type of relationship does each of our customer segment expect us to establish and maintain with them?
  • How are they integrated with the rest of our business model?
  • How costly are they?
  • Example:
    • Personal assistance
    • Dedicated personal assistance
    • Self-services
    • Automated services
    • Communities
    • Co-creation
• Channels:
  • Through which channels do our customer segments want to be reached?
  • How are we reaching them now?
  • How are our channels integrated?
  • Which ones work best?
  • Which ones are most cost-efficient?
  • How are we integrating them with customer routines?
• Customer Segments:
  • For whom are we creating value?
  • Who are our most important customers?
  • Classes:
    • Mass Market
    • Niche Market
    • Segmented
    • Diversified
    • Multi-sided platform
• Cost Structure:
  • What are the most important cost inherent in our business model?
  • Which key resources are ost expensive?
  • Which key activities are most expensive?
  • Sample characteristics:
    • Fixed costs
    • Variable costs
    • Economies of seal
    • Economies of scope
• Revenue Streams:
  • For what value are our customers willing to pay?
  • What do they currently pay?
  • How are they currently paying?
  • How would they prefer to pay?
  • How much does every revenue stream contribute to overall revenues?
  • Types:
    • Asset sale
    • Usage fee
    • Subscription fees
    • Lending/Renting/Leasing
    • Licensing
    • Brokerage fees
    • Advertising
    • (Barthering)

Non the less, it gives me goose bumps every time I hear or read it. This has to be one of the deepest truths about us humans:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

Money:

• Appreciate all the riches around you, including the riches of others. Look for wealth wherever you go, and appreciate it.
• Be clear about the amount of money you want to receive. State it and intend it! Don’t think about how much you can earn, but how much you want to receive.
• Love yourself and know that you are deserving and worthy of an abundance of money.
• Do not speak or think of the lack of money for a single second.
• Be grateful for the money you have. Appreciate it as you touch it.
• Affirm to yourself every day that you have an abundance of money, and that it comes to you effortlessly.
• Be certain that money is coming to you.

Relationships:

• You can completely transform any relationship, no matter what it’s like right now. (Erik: Don’t confuse that with transforming the people in relationships)
• Every single relationship you have is a reflection of how you feel inside about you. You are a magnet attracting to you all things, via the signal you are emitting through your thoughts and feelings. Every relationship you have and every interaction with every person, is a reflection of your own thoughts and feelings in that very moment.
• Make lists of hundreds and hundreds of wonderful things about you. Keep adding to it every day.
• Focus on the wonderful things in every person. Look for only those things. (Erik: Conflicts with Demartini’s advice to appreciate every aspect of a person by finding out how negatively perceived traits are helping you)
• Do not blame or criticize anybody, ever.
• Set an intention that you are going to see the best in everything and everyone.
• Make your happiness the number one thing in your life. Happiness is an inside job. (Erik: Conflicts with Demartini’s advice to search balance. Happiness is a one sided feeling and can’t persist for ever. Love and and fulfillment through balance of happiness and sadness)
• Free yourself of the responsibility of trying to make other people happy. Respect and love them enough to allow them to take care of their own happiness.
• Appreciate and love yourself in every moment you can.
• Do not expect others to behave in a way you want, so you will be happy. Release yourself forevermore and know that you alone control your happiness and it is a choice, no matter what anyone else is doing.
• Know that you are perfect right now.

Health:

• Free yourself of any past resentments or disappointments you may be holding about you.
• See yourself as completely well in your mind and visualize yourself doing things in a complete state of perfect health.
• Do not speak of your illness, or disease with others.
• Love and appreciate everything and everyone, and especially yourself.
• Know you have the power within you to heal yourself.
• Never criticize or blame yourself or anyone else for anything.
• Be grateful for the wellbeing that is coming to you.
• Be happy, knowing that in your state of happiness your body is healing itself.
• As you appreciate, as you love, as you are happy, as you are grateful, you are summoning wellbeing and it is pouring through your body and disease is vanishing in the moment.
• Laugh! Hire funny movies or recall any memories that make you laugh. Laugh your way back to health.
• Make lists every day of all the things you are grateful for, including being grateful for your healing and complete wellbeing.
• You must do whatever you can to remove your attention from disease.
• Distract yourself from thoughts of disease, and put all of your focus and attention on doing things that make you feel good.
• Make your happiness the number one thing in your life.
• Resist nothing, love everything!
• Know that there is no such thing as incurable.
• As you love completely and feel the joy within you, disease cannot exist.

Dr. Demartini about The Secret:

People

• The best Virgin manager is someone who cares about people and who is genuinely interested and wants to bring out the best in them.
• A boss who is willing to party with all of their people – and pay attention to their personal concerns – has the makings of a great leader.
• When I work with people, I really want to get to know them personally. I want to meet their families, their children, I want to know their weaknesses and their strengths, and above all I want them to know mine.
• Across the whole Virgin Group, we encourage people to take ownership of the issues that they confront in their working lives. Why? Because it’s their business; and extension of their personality. They have a stake in its success.
• It’s difficult to change someone’s attitude – so hire for attitude and train for skill!
• We have disciplined people right across our Virgin businesses. After all, if you’re going to let people get on with and even develop their jobs, you need people you can trust.
• Remembering who you are: it’s the biggest challenge an expanding business ever has to face.
• Employees are number one. The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.
• Have fun at work. Take the competition seriously, but not yourself.
• If your business has ossified to the point where you haven’t a clue what’s wrong, and it desperation you’ve called in a bunch of management consultants who charge by the hour, then, let’s face it, you troubles began some while ago.
• All you can do is hire the right people and empower them to sort things out as they happen.
• “Entrepreneurs have literally destroyed poverty in the Western world as the rest of the world knows it, and as history knows it. No other social system can compete with the entrepreneurial free market system in terms of productivity, raising standards of living and creating permanent prosperity.” -John Butcher
• Entrepreneurship is not about getting one over on the customer. it’s not about working on your own. It’s not about looking out for number one. It’s not necessarily about making a lot of money. It is absolutely not about letting work take over your life. On the contrary, it’s about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.
• Inspire your people to think like entrepreneurs, and whatever you do, treat them like adults. The hardest taskmaster of all is a person’s own conscience, so the more responsibility you give people, the better they will work for you.

Brand

• Far from ‘slapping our brand name’ on a number of products, we carefully research the Achilles heels of different global industries, and only when we feel we can potentially turn an industry on its head, and fulfill our key role as the consumer’s champion, do we move in on it.
• An established brand on a new product is a guarantee that what you’re getting will be, in its own way, like something you’ve enjoyed before.

Delivery

• The bald fact is, change, most of the time, is a threat. it’s the thing that wants to kill you. And let’s face it: one day it will. In business, change always happens more quickly than you want – it steals up on you fast, when you are least prepared.
• Those business leaders who seek, in interviews and in their writings, to turn their industries into complex puzzles, subtle chess games of one sort or another – these people really, really annoy me.
• A basic understanding of the business, gleaned by immersing yourself in every little detail for months or even weeks, is often enough to get you started. The volume of information you’ll need to hack through will be high – so find some friends to help you – but the underlying business model is always fairly simple.
• Remember to communicate, and pay attention to detail.
• As I said, communication is important – and to that we might now want to add the words, ‘especially communication with one’s bank!’
• Don’t be afraid of changing your bank if they are unreasonable. Banks are not for life. But don’t put it off till the last minute!
• When you’re first thinking through an idea, it’s important not to get bogged down in complexity.
• It’s easy to be hoodwinked by technical-sounding detail, and to parrot it at others, and to feel important in doing so. It’s hard to ask the naive question. Nobody wants to look silly.
• You can never go too far wrong by thinking like a customer who’s new to the business.
• It’s easy – too easy, in fact – to relinquish your responsibility for your idea to experts. This is almost always a mistake, because experts are only experts in their field. The’re not experts in your idea. At this stage, the only person qualified to assess your idea is you.
• You need to flesh out your own ideas. You need to do your own research. You need to take responsibility for how you plan to turn an idea into action. That way, when you approach the experts – the accountants, the legal brains – thy have something to get their teeth into.
• An expert who makes things more complicated isn’t doing their job right – and frankly, this is probably your fault. An expert should make things simpler.
• Remember: complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple.
• Remember, everyone has an agenda, so the advice you receive from outside your trusted circle is not just to benefit you. Almost all of it will be well meant, but even the best of such advice needs interpreting.
• You’re in business to deliver change, and if you succeed, the chances that no one will get hurt are virtually zero.
• Be sportsmanlike, play to win, and stay friends with people wherever possible. If you do fall out with someone, ring them a year later and take them out to dinner. Befriend your enemies.
• Engage your emotions at work. Your instincts and emotions are there to help you. Business is a ‘gut feeling’.

Learning from Mistakes and Setbacks

• Never do anything that means you can’t sleep at night.
• Failure usually occurs when leaders avoid the reality of business. You have to trust the people around you to learn from their mistakes. Blame and recriminations are pointless.
• Always, always, have a disaster protocol in place. Because if something truly horrific occurs, a lot of frightened people are going to come to you looking for answers.
• Code Black – Have a code in communication that indicate that something is really serious (shit hits the fan)
• Every senior executive should be capable, if push comes to shove, of becoming a visible company spokesperson.
• You can’t protect yourself against the unexpected, so you need to keep you house in as good an oder as you can. If disaster strikes, you don’t want to find youself ding twelve things at once an misprioritising them in pulbic. It’s vital, therefore, that you take control of you internal business risks – th ones you can influence.
• I don’t think that a chairman need fall on his sword if someone messes up in the company. Chairmen must learn from the incident and try to make sure that particular mistakes are never repeated.
• I know business books that say you should never admit to failure, but I would not tolerate such an attitude among my people.
• I think it is counterproductive to be ruthless. You’ve got to treat people as you would yourself, or better.
• There never was a time in business or political history when talented people resigned over trifles, or out of some notion of honor. It’s a myth.
• Managers should stay where they are and sort their messes out. It’s what they’re paid for, after all. Most importantly, someone should apologize for the mess happening in the first place.
• If you drive down the retail price fast enough when you are the dominant player, you never allow anyone else to catch up because they can’t make enough money.
• When you have found out what is going wrong, the next step is to get the team involved to fix it rather than fire them. That way, you can keep your team together and close the door on rivals who might benefit from your mistakes by hiring the very people have just learned the lesson the hard way.
• The set up a stall at the V festival to have revellers sample their products. They had two bins: a ‘yes’ bin and a ‘no’ bin. They asked people weather they should give up their full-time jobs to start the company.
• Any star-up business should sit down and take a long hard look at its legal agreements.
• Protect your reputation. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. These are the rules I live by. They ought not to contradict each other but many businesses wrongly assume that they do.
• Certainly you should never keep you head down. That will do you no good at all – it’ll simply confirm someones’s lousy opinion of you.
• Our culture of openness also prevents bad news from building up a head of steam before it reaches the public. The public is actually pretty forgiving of most business errors except hypocrisy, and stalling almost always backfires.
• We look for people with exciting, dynamic CVs, not spotless ones.
• A defensive, conservative, cautious mindset – a natural enough reaction when things get tough – can kill you stone dead in a competitive marketplace. When your very existence is threatened, you have to change.
• The best way out is always through.
• Over many years, Virgin’s business aim has been to find a strong position in a game-changing market.
• Virgin’s normal rate of return in business is around 30 per cent.
• Like most really successful people I’ve met, Martin Hughes was more interested in doing the right and proper thing than the easy and expedient one.
• In major bids, involving billions of pounds, success comes from identifying the downside – and covering it – far more than planning for the upside.
• What if you can’t move on? What if there is nowhere to move to? You could always perform the hardest trick in the book of business tricks: get very small, very specialized and very expensive.

Innovation

• The best, most solid way out of a crisis in a changing market is through experiment and adaption.
• Innovation can occur when the most elementary questions are asked and employees are given the resources and power to achieve the answers.
• Virgin employees, after the’ve started a shiny new Virgin company or run a mature one with aplomb, are worth holding on to because they love the brand they helped build and their experience and knowledge of the brand are priceless. New companies are a great way to keep them challenged – and to keep them within the family.
• Innovation is often what you didn’t know you wanted until you got it.
• The team weren’t motivated by getting ahead – there was no corporate ladder and they weren’t inspired or intimidated by a bureaucratic hierarchy. They were empowered and they owned the product.
• Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean being first or biggest, but being the best.
• Market consultancies are a mixed bag, on the whole. You should definitely see what they have to offer, but please, never neglect your own reading and thinking. Consultancies, like any group of experts, are best given something to chew on, and the more insight and detail you can provide about your needs and questions, the more useful the advice you will get back.
• The secret to success in any new sector is watchfulness, usually over a period of many years.
• Frankly, space – outer space – is there for the taking.
  • Take a real interest in people, and what the’re up to, and how you might be able to help. You are not going to strike gold in this sector on your own.
• Trusty me on this: luck is essential.
  • But then, chance favors the prepared mind.
• Innovation is what you get when you capitalize on luck, when you get up from behind your desk and go and see where ideas and people lead you.

Entrepreneurs and Leadership

• You need to be able to recognize what you can do as an individual – and how you inspire and motivate other individuals to cooperate willingly to get the job done. How to achieve this? Well, for starters, this is something that should – no, must – be written into every business plan: This company will have lots and lots of paries and social get-togethers.
• The entrepreneur’s job is effectively to put themselves out of a job each time the new company is up an d running.
• It is generally asking four trouble for an entrepreneurs to stick round for too long, trying to cover both roles (entrepreneur and manager).
• An emerging entrepreneur should sign every cheque. Examine every invoice, and you’ll soon appreciate where your money is going. Even in a big business like the Virgin Group, I sit down now and again and sign every single cheque that goes out, and I ask my managing directors to do the same. For a month. Sign everything for a month every six months and suddenly you’re asking: “What on earth is this for?’
• As a small-business person, you must immerse yourself 100 per cent in everything an learn about the ins and outs of every single department.
• Once a business mature and is established, it can become more challenging to retain that excitement. What we do at Virgin is not let businesses get too mature.
• The ability to listen, and the willingness to stick your neck out and ask the obvious question, are criminally underrated business essentials.
• The great and good in you business sector are a resource you should take seriously. Finding a way to harness that resource to best support and encourage your industry will add value to your brand – and what you learn will have a direct and positive effect on your business.
• Failure is not giving things a go in the first place. People who fail are those who don’t have a go and don’t make an effort.

Yes, this is a lengthy post, but there is just so much deep wisdom in this book

The Principle of Fair Exchange

• The principle of fair exchange is a basic law of nature: Paying a fair price for a fair service in a timely manner.

• Pay yourself first!

• Selfishness doesn’t serve; enlightened self-interest does.

• There is no such thing as a free lunch.

• Make a list of anything or anyone in your life that feels incomplete or out of balance, and find a way to bring it back into fair exchange. It will have an incredible effect on your mind and your finances!

• If you think you have nothing, why would the universe invest in you? (compare it to a bank; if you have nothing the bank won’t lend you money)

• Entropy is the tendency for things to break down, to go from an ordered to an disordered state, so every time you put money into a more disordered system than your own, entropy takes over and system is further dissipated. The universe is trying to teach you to invest in higher order and inspiration, and when you don’t, you receive a lesson. (Erik: Invest in lowering the entropy of the world)

The Secret of Charity

• The wisest way to give a donation, contribute to a charity or tithe is to do it anonymously. (Erik: Then you play the part of the universe for the receiver, the receiver is grateful and inspired by the universe and you get your thank back from the universe instead from the receiver – who might not have what you want)

• Anytime you invest in inspiration rather than desperation, your inner self wealth grows.

The Power of Appreciation

Appreciation raises the frequency of your consciousness, and ingratitude lowers it. Whenever you fail to appreciate what you give and receive, you lower your potential energy and block the channels through which you heavenly wealth can flow.

Every time you play a bill or write a check in the state of resentment or ingratitude, that’s the message you send into the world. From now on, send a different message. Whenever you receive a bill or an invoice, have thanks that somebody appreciated you so much that they lent you money or gave you a product, service or idea in advance. They had the confidence and trust in you to invest in you, and you’re now writing a check of appreciation back to them,. Remember the beauty of saying “Payment is due when service is rendered.”

Instead of begrudging the expense, remember how what you’re paying for has served you, and pay that bill in a state of appreciation and gratitude. Give thanks for what you’ve already received, give thanks for being able to pay for it, and watch how it transforms your relationship with wealth. Rather than a sense of lack or loss, this, creates a feeling of enrichment and abundance. When you feel different about sending wealth into the world, the world will feel different about sending wealth back to you.Transactions cease to be about gain and loss and become a flow. This is financial metaphysics, and it works.

From Self Worth to Net Worth

• You set the standard, and the more you raise that value, the more you receive it.

• Until you value yourself, don’t expect others to.

• As you believe, so shall you receive.

Take Your Privates Public

• When you can take the things you judge in yourself and appreciate them to the point where it wouldn’t matter if people found out, you’ll attain real self-love.

• The world is a mirror that shows how you feel about yourself and with self-love there’s little fear of such reflection.

• “I would rather have the whole world against me than my own soul!”

You Are Divine Perfection

• No one wakes up in the morning and says: “God, I wish I could think mall! I wish I could have less and do less and be less in my life!”

• Within everyone is an irresistible urge to grow and expand. You’re destined for greatness. It’s inevitable.

The Spiritual Laws of Saving

• Until you manage money wisely, don’t expect more money to manage.

• Fixed incomes lead to fixed lifestyles because of fixed thinking.

• Save 10% of your net income per month on your immortal savings account. Increase the savings rate every quarter by 10%.

• Set up automated transfers for your savings. Pay yourself first.

Manage Your Emotions… or They’ll Manage You

• “Until you can mange your emotions, don’t expect to be able to manage money.” -Warren Buffet

• Emotion, not love, is blind.

• “Excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest disease to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and avoid the other, is not able to see or hear anything right; he is mad, and is at time utterly incapable of any participation in reason.” -Plato

• Decide how much you’d love to make in a day, and simply start carrying that amount in your wallet. Don’t spend this money. It’s purely a psychological cushion, so put it in a separate section of your wallet, away from your spending money. (To have no money in your pocket is like driving on empty)

Evolutionary Investing

The Pyramid:

Fill up every level from the first up with at least the amount you make in 2 months:

1. Level: Money-market savings account (3-6%)
2. Level: Selective, highly rated municipal bonds or treasury bills (5-7%)
3. Level: A balanced mutual fund and an index fund of corporate bonds and a few blue chip stocks (7-9%)
4. Level: Pure blue chip stocks in form of mutual or index funds (9-11%)
5. Level: Mid to large-cap stocks (11-13%)
6. Level: Mid and small-cap stocks
7. Level: Options, …

When a level is full, leave it alone an go on to the next , but allow the interest in each one to accumulate there.

• “The stock market is a financial redistribution system. It takes money away from those who have no patience and gives it to those who have.” -Warren Buffet

• Managers: Don’t give your money to any individual or company that has less than you do.

• Dept: Don’t wait with saving until you have wiped out your dept. Start saving immediately in parallel to dept reduction because savings have a positive psychological effect.

• Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth, and those that circulate the most have the least value.

The Business of Business

• Peter Principle: Eventually, through promotions, you reach a level of incompetence or a level that’s beyond your ability.

• Going beyond the plateau requires you to increase your internal order, so first we’ll look at how to increase self-mastery and internal order, and then we’ll go on to the details of orderly managing and leading others.

Time Is Life

• It’s been said that idle time can be the devil’s workshop.

• Any time or space that’s not filled with high priorities can automatically become filled with low priorities, and if you don’t know your high priorities, you’ll fall into the lows.

• Take the time to define your top priorities, because if you don’t your time will be filled with other people’s priorities and probably you own fears.

Raise Your Standards

• EVERY DAY, I INCREASE MY QUALITY AND STANDARDS!

Employees

• Support those who are overly down and challenge those who are overly up.

• Your greatest management process, though, will be beyond rewards and punishments – it will be to inspire.

• Since you won’t want your emotions getting in the way of your business, be sure to hire only those you can equally praise and reprimand or hire and fire.

• “If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to were they can be brought.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• If you hire desperation, you’ll breed it in your business.

• Many skills you can train, but inspiration isn’t easy to develop.

• If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

• If you pay them more than they’re worth, they’ll feel guilty about it and distract themselves.

• It lowers people’s self-worth to get something for nothing.

• If you’d love to have your employees be productive, give them just a bit more than they think they can do, and they’ll do more than they ever thought possible.

Keep Your Distance

• Don’t get too close to you employees or clients.

• Becoming too professional and impersonal and acting like Mr. or Ms. Mean won’t help building a business either.

• The Law of Lesser Pissers: If you’re given the choice between pissing someone else off and pissing yourself off, choose them every time.

Raising Fees

• Don’t raise your fees without offering an increased perceived value.

Urgency

• The number-one thing to remember is, everything is urgent. If you do anything other than the highest priorities, you just won’t grow.

• If you only have a few clients, appointments, or duties in a day, “cluster book” them – pack them tightly together in the smallest possible time.

Prosperity and Austerity

• When you start to feel prosperous and elated, that’s the time to get back on focus. When you’re at your peak, do what you’d normally do at your bottom. When you’re at your bottom, do what you’d normally do at your peak.

Did I?

• Every time you discover something that helped your business grow, add it to a list. Review that list at the end of each day.

• “Did I” Checklist:
  1. Did I count my blessings and focus on being thankful today?
  2. Did I list and prioritize my daily actions today?
  3. Did I act on my priority actions today?
  4. Did I communicate in terms of people’s values today?
  5. Did I share from my heart while speaking today?
  6. Did I write at least on thank-you letter today?
  7. Did I grow and accelerate my wealth today?

Feedback

• It’s wiser to receive counsel from those who’ve been there and have achieved success.

Work and Play

• Put work and play together and you and your employees will be more integrated, energetic, and inspired.

• The purpose of life is life, and it requires who sides to be complete.

Put Your Heart in It

• When you truly appreciate and value where you are and what products or services you have to offer, so will others.

• Until you innermost dominant thought is your clients, don’t expect their innermost dominant thought to be your business. When they are on your mind, you are on their mind.

The Formula for Business Explosion

• Know your business purpose and objectives.

• Organize your financial house.

• Focus on high priorities.

• Fill your mind with that you’d love and allow no idle time.

• Know your costs, set your fees, and stick to them.

• Continually raise your standards and fees.

• Organize your place of business so it’s clean, efficient, and beautiful.

• Throw away anything that doesn’t serve your priorities, and throw away anything you wear that doesn’t make you feel like a multimillionaire.

• Put your heart into your business.

• Treat your business with love.

Dept

• Whatever your depts, total them up and translate them into service. Instead of thinking of the dept, focus on the service you can provide. (Your service is inspiring, money sums are not)

Marketing Magic

• “Nothing happens in this world until somebody sells something to somebody.” -Walter Hailey

• Everyone is in marketing and sales, whether they know it or not.

• When you love yourself and become inspired, so will others. Marketing is a test of how much inspiration, self-love, and other-love you have, as well as your ability and certainty in communicating it.

• When you can confidently sell yourself to yourself, you’ll confidently sell yourself to others.

Sell the Sellers

• When a sales person comes to you: Instead of it being an annoyance, be prepared and turn it into an opportunity by asking the question “How do I make the sale when they come to make the sale?”

The Seven Stages of Selling

1. Greet or introduce. Make sure you introduce yourself with a smile. People form opinions within the first three to five seconds of meeting you, so your voice, dress, eye contact, and manner are crucial here.
2. Establish rapport. Similarities forge bonds. The quicker you can ask people questions about their lives that lead to common threads between you and them, the easier it is to sell.
3. Identify their need. What’s their primary or immediate need? find out what appears to be missing or problematic in their lives. The numbers of rejections you receive during the selling process are inversely proportionality to how well you’ve established their need or void. The deeper and broader their need, the easier it is to sell.
4. Confirm their need. Be certain that you’ve established their true need. When they’ve told you what their need of void is, repeat this back to them. It’s wiser to know than to assume or guess.
5. Offer value. Tailor you work as a solution to their issue. Make an offer they can’t refuse. If someone says thy can’t afford or don’t want something, all that means is you haven’t demonstrated value in their terms – so communicate more value! People never have alack of money, they have a lack of motivation. If you provide the motivation, they’ll find the money. (Extreme example: What if the life of your children depends on something; would you find the money for it? Everything depends on motivation)
6. Close. Make the sale. Don’t leave it vague – confirm the appointment, get the credit-card details, and arrange delivery and payment. Make it happen.
7. Provide service. Deliver the service you promised.

• The art of selling requires the ability to listen, so listen carefully and tailor your questions to fit your potential customers’ responses and needs. Link you services or products to your customers’ specific values and your products will sell themselves.

• Honestly care. Be sure that your product or service truly fits their needs and values. If you try to fool people, they’ll eventually catch on. When you’re sincere and speak from your heart, they’ll respond most favorably.

• To sell is not to tell. To sell is to ask. And occasionally it’s best to just be silent. Silence has power.

Added Value

• Find a way to provide people that little extra something. It makes all the difference.

Testimonials

• There’s a great value in having your satisfied clients speak for you.

• If you don’t feel worthwhile, you lose heart; when you know you’re of value, you reopen your heart.

Praise and Blame

• Honor and criticism come together as a pair, so if you’re not willing to experience more blame, you won’t be able to receive more praise.

Paradigms

• Beware of paradigms and limiting belief systems, because they’re usually not true.

Chunk It Down

• Donald Trump: His whole focus was on being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people. To meet more people he reduced the meeting time from 1 hour to 15 minutes.

• Chunk you objective down, and focus on the most probable and highest-quality prospects.

• Affirmation: “I’m always in the right place at the right time to meet the right people to make the right deal.”

The Myth of Retirement

• People don’t get old. When they stop growing, they become old.

• Providing a service greater than yourself and being rewarded for it is life-generating.

• “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” -Aldous Huxley

• The vitality in every human being is directly proportionate to the vividness of his or her vision.

The Power of Relationship

• Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping someone else will die.

Caring and Selling

• Caring and selling are actually identical; they both mean knowing and meeting people’s values.

• A relationship is a buying-and-selling proposition. To raise your value in the relationship marketplace, you must know the other person’s values and figure out how to fulfill them. If you can’t do that, you have little or no value.

• They’re sharing their life with you and the instant they feel strongly enough that they’re not getting value for their investment, they’ll go somewhere else, just like your clients.

• Money and beauty are powerful forces in the relationship marketplace, and if you don’t have one, it helps to have the other. To think otherwise is just another fantasy.

• There is no such thing as, “Now that I have my partner, I can take him or her for granted.” You’re responsible for maintaining fair exchange, even in your relationships.

• A relationship is an ongoing sales process, a constantly renewable contract on invisible paper, so live up to your side of the contract.

The Power of Purpose

• Little causes attract little wealth, great causes attract great wealth, and immortal causes attract vast wealth.

• When the whys are big enough, the hows take care of themselves.

• If you don’t fill your life with what you love, it will fill up with what you don’t.

God Is in the Details

• Whatever your dreams is, take the time to work it out in great detail. Any details you can’t see and leave out of your vision becomes an obstacle or challenge you’ll attract or face, and the obstacles are designed to help you clarify your vision.

• Failing to plan is planning to fail, but if you take the time to define and refine exactly what you’d love to be, do, and have in your life, that’s what begins to appear.

• It’s a simple fact that those who plan their lives, their careers, and their finances go further and end up with more life and wealth than those who don’t.

• If you would love a life that conforms to your highest dream and vision, you’re responsible to be clear about what that is.

Space and Time

• The magnitude of the space and time horizons within you innermost dominant thoughts determines the level of conscious evolution you’ve obtained. Inspired beings have big dreams. They think in long time frames and draw power from their visions.

Global Vision

• When your financial purpose and dreams are focused on more than you immediate material needs, when they encompass the entire globe and all of humanity, a magical financial magnetism begins to emerge. Without a great purpose and vision, great events, accomplishments, and financial resources are unlikely to arise.

• If you’d love to make a difference in yourself, you’d better have a vision at least as big as your family. If you’d love to make difference in your family, you’d better have a vision as big as your city. If you’d love to make a difference in your city, your vision must be as big as your state. If you’d love to make a difference in your state, you’d better have a vision as big as your nation. If you’d love to make a difference in you nation, you’d better have a vision as grand as the world. And if you’d love to have a global impact, you’d better have immortal vision.

• First visualize, then write down, your goals and purpose. Why? Because writing acts as the first step in taking things from the world of imagination to the physical world by defining them in space-time.

• Writing is a form of creation. It clarifies your mind and when your mind is crystal clear on what it would love, it finds a way to manifest those goals.

• Affirmation: “I’m the vision, God’s (or the universe is – as you like) the power, we’re the team.”

A Cause

• If you don’t have something challenging and fulfilling to awaken for in the morning, you won’t rise and shine.

• Unless your goals are vast and growing, you’ll tend to slow down as you approach their fulfillment rather than letting yourself run out of things to do. That’s why it’s important to keep clarifying your purpose and expanding your goals and dreams.

• Even with a clear purpose, you’ll occasionally be distracted and uninspired. The only reason you’re not inspired at those times is because you haven’t linked what you’re doing to your purpose. Make a list of everything you do in a normal day and ask yourself, “How does that help me fulfill my mission?” Keep linking everything to what you’d love and find its meaning and significance in your life. Anything you don’t see as part of your purpose feels pointless, and the ratio of pointlessness to purposefulness is how much hell or heaven you have in your life. Ask that question and keep asking and linking until it doesn’t matter what you do, you feel you';re on purpose. The truth is that everything you do is connected, and the more you link your actions to your purpose, the more you get to do what you love.

• Money flees from those who have no purpose for it, an flows to those who do.

• The universe meets you halfway. (that’s why your cause must be double the size of what you want to achieve)

• What vision brings tears of inspiration to your eyes?

• The quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask.

• “You are never give a wish without also being give the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however.” -Richard Bach

• Challenge is the barrier that must be overcome before you can grow to the next level. If it were easy, everyone would do it. There’s a selection process going on, and those who are willing to pay the price and face their fears get the rewards. A great purpose gives you the courage to transcend your own limitations and achieve great riches.

• “It is funny about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the very best, you will very often get it.” -W. Somerset Maugham

• When you have a glimpse of your purpose, the next challenge is to manifest it. Every morning, write down the seven highest priority action steps you know you can take to help you fulfill your dreams and purpose. Schedule your day to give priority to what’s most important to you. Do this every day for a month and you’ll begin to see a pattern.

See also Simon’s website: StartWithWhy.com

The tool I am using for taking and structuring all my notes is WorkFlowy.

More of my favorite speeches can be found here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

• All great and inspiring leaders of the world they all think, act and communicate in the exact same way. And it’s the complete opposite to everyone else.
• The golden circle: WHAT – HOW – WHY (middle of the circle).
  • All people and organization or know WHAT they do.
  • Some know HOW they do it.
    • Differencing value proposition, proprietary process or USP.
  • Very few know WHY they do what they do.
    • Why does not mean to make a profit, that’s just a result.
    • Why means: What’s your purpose, what’s your cause, what’s your belief, why does your organization exist?
  • The way we usually communicate is to go from the outside in. From WHAT, the most concrete thing to WHY, the most fuzzy thing.
  • All great leaders and inspired organizations think, act, communicate from the inside out. From WHY over HOW to WHAT.
• People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. WHAT you do simply serves as proof of what you belief.
• The goal is not make business with people who need WHAT you have, the goal is to make business with people who belief what you belief.
• Our brain is organized like the golden circle:
  • The neocortex corresponds with the WHAT level. The neocortex is responsible for our rational and analytical thought and language
  • The HOW and WHY levels make up our limbic brains. The limbic brains are responsible for our feelings like trust and loyalty, all human behavior, all decision making and has no capacity for language
  • So if we communicate from the outside in, most people can understand vast amounts of complicated information like features, facts and benefits – it just doesn’t drive behavior.
    • “I know what all the facts and details are, but it just doesn’t feel right”
  • When we communicate from the inside out we are talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior and we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do.
• If you hire people just because they can do the job (the WHAT), they work just for the money. But if you hire people who belief what you belief, they work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
• The three reasons why it seams that projects fail: 1. under-capitalized, 2. the wrong people, 3. bad market conditions. But in reality it’s not because of those WHATs, it’s because the WHY is missing.
• The law of diffusion of innovation:
  • Distribution of the population
    • 2.5% Innovators
    • 13.5% Early Adopters
    • 34% Early Majority
    • 34% Late Majority
    • 16% Laggards
  • If you want to get to the mass market (early + late majority), you first have to get over the 16% of innovators and early adopters.
  • Usually it’s easy to get the first 10%, those who “just get it”. But how do you get the next 6% until it can tip over to the majority?
  • The innovators and early adopters are more driven by what they belief in (the WHY) than the majority. The majority looks at the early adopters for confirmation.
  • Example: Standing in line to be the first who get’s a new Apple product. They are not there because of the WHAT (they can get the product later with less hassle), but because of the WHY. They want to be the first, and seen by others to be the first.
• We follow those who lead not because we have to but because we want to.
• We follow those who lead not because of them but for our selves.