Source: Letters from Iran (Unfortunately the video I watched that fueled this post seems to have been removed from the Al Jazeera website)

In Iran, the planned and controlled oppression of the young voice is drowning the brightest minds of a country daily.

Iran’s sons and daughters know no freedom.  But freedom knows them.

The fabric of restraint tied around the throats of a nation is slowly ripping and that indomitable force known as the human spirit, is like a dull knife becoming sharper over time; cutting and cutting through the binds of modern slavery to a new era of Arab freedom.

Our lives involve a much less violent form of oppression and control. Gone are the days of unveiled open slavery inflicted on us by others.  We now suffer collectively as western nations from forms of self-inflicted restraint.  Wars are now waged internally; man against himself.

We have become our own greatest enemies.

In the 20th century, the ocean of freedom washed over our western nations and swept away plights of racism, sexism and other basic human rights.  Upon the water’s receding, we entered a new era of freedom of expression, liberation and innovation.  Freedom reigned, whilst in the background the once powerful human spirit, which brought on our evolution to free selves, began quietening and regressing ,as we deservedly began enjoying the fruits of our toils, the spoils of our innovation.

Consequently, less thought oriented we have become.  The poison of laze runs through many of us and a new self-imposed slavery binds us to our halls of freedom where we once triumphantly marched.  Self-progression is halting, but thankfully we are noticing.

Hear today the voices again crying out:

“Repression, we are living lives of repression……”

“Our governments hold us back……”

“We don’t receive what we deserve……”

“Our dreams never realized; our struggles never cease…….”

Do you feel this very fabric tightening around your own throat?  Does difficulty plague your everyday living?

Is your answer, Yes?  If it is, I challenge you to rip the fabric.

You were born into a free world.  You were given the opportunity of a level playing field.  What will you do with these gifts and advantages?  It is time that we return to our grass roots nature, as the power to change; to obtain; to excel, exists within us all.  Pursue what you deserve!  Why are you playing small?  Why are you settling?  Make today the final day tht you live driven by acceptance.  Instead, drive your life forward with your influence.

The same powerful human spirit that broke chains and rewrote history in the 20th century exists inside of all of us.  Believe in yourself and your rights to success and to the true life you were born to live. Like the youth of Iran, step forward in defiance of all forms of oppression; internal and external.  Do not allow self-pity to slow your progress.

You were born into freedom and with more power than you know.

Rip the fabric holding YOUR OWN development back.

Surge forward and prosper.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And, with those 3 words, millions, if not billions, of people resolved to create wondrous new lives for themselves.

There is an undeniable power in the arrival of a new year, but that power sadly is misused by a large percentage of those seeking change. What starts as power, in weeks, or even days, melts and morphs into disappointment and failure.

Are you a New Year resolution maker? Do you know the fundamental rules necessary to wield this power continually to your benefit?

After observing many of those who have tried and either succeeded or failed to realize their accomplishments, I believe that these 10 rules will aid you to still be on your way down a path of success months from today.

Read and heed:

1. Set high goals BUT be prepared to live into them.

Don’t be lured by those who say that a goal shouldn’t be set high. Aim for your highest! Should you miss it, you can be sure that your end point will still surprise you. Be ready, however, to put in the serious effort required to reach your high goal. Because without effort, your time will be wasted.

2. Write your goals down.

The positive correlation between writing goals down and achieving them is undeniable. Write your goals down and place them in a prominent place to always be present before you.

3. Constantly focus on them.

Over the length of time required to reach your goals, the flows and changes of life will surely distract you. Create a simple schedule where you can re-center yourself and focus on your goals. I do this nightly as I have developed the discipline to do so. For you, a weekly 10-minute session may serve you better. Whatever it is, create it and follow it.

4. Take daily, committed, early action.

Action is necessary to reach your goals. That sentence is worth repeating. And there is no better action than consistent action, or committed action. You want to achieve change, so you have to commit until the necessary action steps become a habit for you. It will also serve you best to carry out these actions early in your day when your body is primed for action. Have you heard the saying, ‘The early bird catches the worm’?

5. Celebrate achievements.

Along the way to achieving your goals and resolutions, you will have moments when you pause and realize that you have accomplished many other smaller feats in your life. Respect these moments and give yourself a pat on the back. Acknowledge your progress and efforts and then keep surging forward.

6. Exhaust yourself, but take time to refresh, recharge, and reflect.

I strongly believe that if at the end of an accomplishment you do not feel utterly and completely ‘spent’, that you did not give it your true all. There is no greater feeling at the end than knowing you did everything in your power to get where you are. Exhaust yourself. You will recover. At that point, smile, breathe and relish in the process of rebuilding your strength. You have grown and you have achieved.

7. Respect the process.

Between A to Z, there is a lot. You cannot and will not reach the end in a moment. There is a process of growth, learning, and change to everything. Educate yourself on what you are about to undertake. Speak with someone who has done it successfully already. Understand the required process and respect it.

8. Focus on the important.

I’ve met many persons who, although they are following the steps in taking actions and being consistent, are making the fatal error of not focusing on the right aspects of their journey. Instead of keeping the end in mind, they become consumed by the frustrations along the way. A popular saying is, ‘What you focus on expands’. Give your power to the important. The rest does not deserve a single portion of your energy.

9. Work with deadlines and a sense of finality.

Have you ever met someone who always seems to be ‘getting there’? Don’t be that person. A goal is only effective if it has a frame of a deadline. Operate with this in mind and construct your efforts to end in tandem with this final point in time. Should you happen to know ‘that person’, take a moment to help them reframe their effort to lead to success.

10. Don’t quit.

If you do, you will not reach the end. No one will carry you there if you do not put the effort in for yourself. Nothing more needs to be said about this.

It’s a New Year! Follow these New Rules for your success and chase your goals with New Moves. There’s an Improved You waiting.

Why do we sometimes not progress even though we possess everything necessary to move forward?

Often, simply because we live our daily lives in ‘robot’ mode and neglect to question ourselves, and others, in a way that will provide the necessary answers to aid us in pressing forward in a meaningful way.  And, when we do find the opportunity to ask a question to ourselves or to someone else (and I have been guilty of this), we ask one that completely disempowers us from achieving anything.

Learning how to ask empowering questions leads to receiving meaningful answers that provide us with the ability to create the mindset necessary to overcome a challenge.

Take the example of a student who failed their midterms asking ‘Why did I fail?‘, or ’Why does the prof mark me so hard?‘ Answers to these questions lead to no meaningful change. Instead, had the student reframed their questions into ‘What must I do to pass my finals?‘ or ‘What advice can I ask from my professor so that I understand what he expects from me?‘, then progressive answers would have followed.

Another example is ‘Why am I so broke?‘ or ‘Why can’t I find a job?‘ (*typical 99% of society question – see below) Imagine the answers these people would receive!  But what responses do you think these reframed questions would receive?  ’Am I spending more than I am earning?‘, or ‘Have I honestly done everything I can to apply everywhere that is hiring?‘

*This question infuriates me the most because usually if I ask someone who says this where they have applied to, a list of idealistic employers emerges.  They somehow believe it beneath them to bite the bullet and submit their resume to other places that can produce them with a paycheque!

The art of asking daily empowering questions is a habit.  Practice it and practice often. Also, be assured that there is nothing called a ‘stupid question’. I ask tons of questions daily to myself and to others. In the past,  however, I hesitated to do so due to fear of what others may think, but I eventually realized that, while everyone is entitled to their opinion, I would be a fool to live my life based on the opinion of others.

So ask away and empower yourself daily to unfold the path towards your goals!

I’ll leave you with a basic ’3 steps to instant progression’ which I use in many daily situations:

1. Analyze and assess where you are at in this situation.
2. Ask an empowering question and receive a meaningful answer.
3. Act immediately.

It’s that simple!  Trust me.

 

“Every human has four endowments: self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination.  These give us the ultimate human freedom.  The power to choose, to respond, to change.”  – Stephen R. Covey

I was once a mess, an intelligent mess, but a mess none-the-less. Careless with responsibility and neglectful of my future, I perfected the art of living for the moment and paid no attention to the sordid path I was unfolding for myself.

That is until that future started to become my reality.  Debt, depression, disillusion and despair became the four walls of entrapment I boxed myself into.  Year after year, I traded places with my true self and lived into the life of a false version of self.  I resisted growth, improvement, evolution.

Needless to say, this constant clash between my inherent values and the person I portrayed to the world, led to massive internal turmoil.  My true self was violently pushing its way outward and was fighting valiantly to overcome the negative circumstances, which I had become surrounded by and accustomed to.

This, unknown to me, was the sign that an evolution was on the brink of occurring in my life and it eventually did.

Today, I have come to learn that life is a series of stages. Our lives are the result of past choices and our futures are molded by the decisions we consciously make today.  The most relieving part is that no matter which stage you are on, there is another one waiting for you to step onto.  So, ask yourself, which stage are you living on now?  Are you happy and thriving at this current stage?  If not, do you know where your stage exit is and the path to the next stage?

Change is the pen-stroke of progression or regression.  It leads to evolution, which is the hammer-stroke of adaptation.  As humans, we naturally adapt to our lives and circumstances over time.  We can adapt to remain in our current circumstances or we can fight to evolve beyond them, thereby changing the stage of our life.

My internal self, with all of its inherent values and knowledge of my true self-worth fought and won.

I evolved.  I experienced the evolution of self.

Now, I stand proud as a man on a mission.  I am on the path to becoming a doctor, yet I work full-time, am co-owner of a growing business, and proudly about to sign my name to be part of the development team of a new-born, sport-wear distribution company.

Am I proud of this stage?  Yes, I am!

I have written all of this to convey to you one point; the life you live today does not have to be the life you live tomorrow. You too are capable of the evolution of self.

As Dr. Covey noted, through self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination, you have been given the right to experience the ultimate human freedom.

You possess the power to choose, to respond, to change.

Step onto your next stage, today!

The greatest investment in life is yourself.  Invest nothing; experience nothing.  Invest a lot; experience a lot.

Simple enough, isn’t it?

There’s a curiosity that exists in the investment world where numerous investment products circulate, touting themselves as the next huge success.  This curiosity focuses on one question – one very important question: ‘What is the R.O.I.?‘

Financial Definition: Return on Investment – A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment, or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.

R.O.I. = (Gain from investment – Cost of investment)/Cost of investment

Layman’s Definition: R.O.I.- + positive R.O.I. - keep it and develop it

+ negative R.O.I. - ditch it, you can do better.

If something has a more positive R.O.I. relative to another thing, go for the more positive!

Now, this blog is not intended to teach financial knowledge. Rather,  my purpose is to give you insight into mastering your personal development.  Hence, let’s apply the R.O.I. concept to the greatest investment in your life; you.

In life, every situation and endeavor we find ourselves into has an R.O.I. While it’s impossible to physically ‘measure’ these situations on a numerical scale, we as humans possess a universal scale of measurement – the logical scale, or common-sense scale; truly one of man’s greatest possessions, even though it appears to be broken in many an individual.

A slight digress:

How to tell if your common-sense scale is broken:

1. Did you ever do something that turned out negatively for you?
2. Did you do the same exact thing again and experience the same results?

Then you need to take a look at your common-sense scale.  If it were working well, you wouldn’t be wasting your time attempting unsuccessful endeavours in exactly the same way you did before!

As I mentioned, in life there is a R.O.I. on everything; positive or negative.  Using your common-sense scale as your guide, invest more in positive experiences and you shall experience net positive gains.  Do the opposite and the trend reverses.

Nothing astounding about that, right?  Then why are so many people struggling in their lives?  Again, it’s that common-sense scale, I tell you; it needs re-calibrating in many of us.  I certainly gave mine a good tune-up in the past, so you’re definitely not alone if you believe yours to be ‘off’.

Now, once you’ve successfully differentiated between those aspects of your life that produce a positive R.O.I., focus intensely on them.  Tend to them as an expert farmer tends to his land; constantly monitor them, water them, prune them, and eventually fruit will bear… fruit will bear, in its respective season. Life is like that; we are similar to a growing fruit tree or a developing business.  Be diligent with tending, pruning, and watering and eventually, you will experience a harvest.

Focus not on the return, but on the amount of your investment relative to the importance of the endeavor.  You are the single most important investment, but you are also composed of countless other ‘sub-investments’. Using your re-aligned common-sense measure of R.O.I., focus your energies on investing and developing those sub-investments that reward you the most.  Discipline, attitude, personal-interaction, integrity, and consistency are but a few of those important sub investment areas.

And, heed this extremely important point: Reinvest to experience larger gains.  Just as the expert business man does not spend all of his profits, but instead reinvests a portion back into his business, refocus your personal gains back in your life, and use them to reinvest heavily in yourself.  It also goes without saying that, after experiencing success, you have a duty to reinvest in others and help them develop their own success, but reinvesting back in oneself is a key many fail to implement.

You are your life’s greatest investment:

1. Perfect your common-sense scale
2. Invest in positive life endeavors
   
3. Monitor your life investments like a diligent farmer
4. Focus not on the returns, but on the amount of your investment relative to the importance of the endeavor
   
5. Reinvest, Reinvest, Reinvest

1. Smile. Simply take 30 seconds to isolate your mind from everything else around you and smile.
2. Now focus on the singular thought present in your mind as you smile.
3. Focus on it and visualize it.
   

Chances are, your smile-provoking thought was constructed around a pleasant memory or an inspiring expectation.  Whichever it may be, that simple exercise proves one true point; happiness is an internal experience first.

The true smile begins in one’s mind and radiates outward.  How do we produce that inward true smile?  This topic has been the toil of many philosophers, from Plato to Aristotle.  Enveloped in their writings, arguments, and propositions, the ethics of happiness and the philosophies behind the modes of action creating happiness within the self are what I wish to give you a brief insight into.

Two main schools of thought have laid out a road-map of sorts directing many down the path of happiness.  To obtain that internal state of peace necessary to experience happiness, it has been said that we can either look out for ourselves, or live lives dedicated to the service of others; egoism vs. altruism.

Egoism dictates that what makes a person’s life go best and produces happiness is the satisfaction of one’s internal interests; one ought to, and in some philosophers’ views, can only do, what is good for oneself.  An egoist lives his life best by addressing all of his interests first, with the expectation that others will also look out for his interests.  The universal application of such a doctrine has been the argument of several philosophers because how can we all live addressing solely our own self-interests without conflict developing? And if we all are addressing our own self-interests, then how can others expect us to have their interests first?

I’m an egoist! AKA, me first!

As to how this philosophical stance on life can be successfully applied universally, I am yet to read.  However, from a selfish stance, the art of egoism is present in all of us in some form.  We all have experienced happiness from the satisfaction of our own self interests, but do we do so at the expense of others?  Say no, and I submit myself in worship to you… oh, most holy of humans.  Say yes, and embrace the truth; you are human, and at times your happiness stems from being selfish in seeing your interests through.

Altruism, a more pleasant ethical state to align oneself with, instructs that what makes a person’s life go best and produces happiness is the exercising of one’s moral obligations to serve the interests of others and, if necessary, at the detriment of one’s own self interests. A truly ‘Mother Teresa’ way of living, wouldn’t you say?  The first part of this doctrine does not conflict with the majority of people on this earth’s values; we mostly do obtain gratification and an internal happiness by seeing others flourish with help provided from our own actions.  However, to live a life of true altruism requires neglecting one’s own self-interests when needed… and there lies the problem.  Your egoistic side conflicts with your altruistic side.  How can you truly be happy neglecting your own interests while serving the interests of others?

A question I choose not to attempt to answer.

Instead, I will bare myself first.  I am an egoist actively practicing acts of altruism as the opportunity passes my way. I smile equally as I watch my own self-interest, hopes, and dreams come alive, and cannot live without that warm, fuzzy feeling I get from devoting myself to others in seeing their self interests, hopes, and dreams materialize.  Yes, an egoist actively practicing altruism is who I am.

Which ethical stance do you subscribe to?

Whichever it may be, own it and exercise your interpretation of it.  Do what you have to in order to produce that inward, true smile that will inevitably radiate outwards.

Live your happy life, and do so daily.

Did you know that altruism takes a whipping from another ethical stance which states that altruism has seeds of egoism planted within it?  That we, as humans, seek to act altruistically in order to satisfy our selfish desires to experience gratification in helping others?

To that I say… whatever!  Get out there and smile!  Have a fantastic day!

There is a certain art to the process of achieving results; positive or negative.  Both types are the result of action.

There is a certain art to the process of achieving success or failure.  Both are the result of consistency.

From birth, our individual worlds begin to take form, as we grow and develop habits that define our personalities and eventually shape our futures.  These habits become consistent as they are eventually engrained into our subconscious and lead to our individualities being formed.  As we progress from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood, some of our consistent habits serve to progress us, while others do exactly the opposite: produce regression.  But whether progressive or regressive, the obvious holds true; consistency in actions guarantees results of some form.

As my aim is to provide you with insight into how you can achieve positive results in your lives, I will focus on the process of consistent actions which lead to such results.

Physics dictates that behind every action is a force.  The force driving one to producing consistent positive action is one that many people struggle with: discipline.

This morning before writing this entry, I exercised discipline in completing my daily tasks.  I was present at my 7 am spinning class and also in my 9 am Spanish class.  Right after I spent 1 hour on the phone discussing my prior week’s results with my Dream Coach and mentor.  After 3 hours of sleep last night, I could have very easily remained in bed where I would happily sleep, and very easily I could have found an excuse to not attend class or keep my commitment to being on my coaching call.  But I didn’t.  I have learnt over time that my results are a direct reflection of my choices and my consistent actions.  I also know that any process I repeat consistently becomes easier to complete.  Armed with the knowledge of these two facts, I attack my days in spite of my emotional and mental state and in doing so I know I am strengthening my mindset towards taking action in spite of circumstance.

Now, I’m not saying that there is something wrong with the action of something, say like sleeping in, but ask yourself, “What progressive result am I getting by consistently staying in bed past an appropriate time?” Is anything progressive happening by you taking that consistent action?  If your answer is no, then axe that action!  Get rid of it because it does not benefit you.  Analyze other consistencies in your daily routine and apply that reasoning to all of them.  The resulting changes will astound and inspire you.

Have you also realized that consistency aligns highly with belief in one’s actions, abilities and self? Well, if you didn’t know, now you do.  Think about it.  If you have confidence in your actions, abilities, and self, then your consistent actions will align to exploit your strengths to a maximum.  In contrast, a person occupied with doubt, whether externally or internally focused, exhibits actions of an inconsistent nature.  And just as consistent progressive actions lead to success, inconsistency or constant regressive actions lead to failure.

And as success is a habit, so is failure.

Now, take a moment and ask yourself….. “Which one suits me?”