• One man lives in a trailer park. He is an obese, unhealthy smoker who seldom reads books of any value and spends most of his time playing computer games and whining about the government, upon which he relies for his income.
• Another lives in a nice home, provides for his family, loves his work, develops his mind, stays in shape, and has big goals.
• They were both abused as children, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and suffered hardships.
• They are twin brothers.

Circumstances Reflect Philosophy

In Ayn Rand’s amazing book, “Atlas Shrugged”, which I am reading for the third time, John Galt says that one is “remaking the earth in the image of one’s values”. He shows that the construction of our circumstances is an ongoing process. Our values and beliefs are the result of our philosophy. Your circumstances reflect your philosophy and self-esteem.

The loser in the trailer park didn’t end up there one day, suddenly, buy accident, as if by magic. His philosophy directed his choices, which took him down that road. The winner also built his lifestyle – choice by choice. Millions of volitional choices got both these men to where they are today. There is no mystery.

The Sum Total of Your Choices

Your lifestyle and circumstances are the sum total of the choices you have made in your life. Where you will be in the next few years, and where you will end up, is your choice. You hold your future in your own hands.  Every cent you earn and spend is your choice.

Ask the man in the trailer what he thinks about man’s responsibility, about freedom, the role of government, business, and about “luck”. He will explain his philosophy to you. Look at the books he reads, the places he goes, the things he does, the people he mixes with, what he does with his time, and you will see his philosophy. The same goes for the man who has a good life.

Anyone Can Change

Can the man move out of the trailer park lose weight, and create a life of success and happiness? Of course he can, but his philosophy would have to change. His philosophy makes him happy playing the role of a nicotine-addicted victim. He does what he enjoys doing!

• He prefers the company of drunkards and losers to winners.
• He loves feeling sorry for himself.
• He hates the idea of taking responsibility.
• He doesn’t WANT to change; if he did, he would!

His is a philosophy of collectivism and socialism. He believes the world owes him a living, and he blames his family and the world for the fact that he doesn’t have a nice house like his brother.

We like to believe that people can change, and they can. But we need to understand that most of them WON’T change, because they don’t want to change, and often because they don’t believe they CAN change.

You Can’t Give or Force Change

You can’t solve someone’s financial problems by giving them money; you have to teach them to MAKE their own money.  But you can only do that if they WANT to earn more money themselves. Chances are, they expect someone else to earn it and GIVE it to them – they are parasites.

Change is Simple

If you WANT to change your life, it’s actually simple. Find someone who has what you want, someone who has created a lifestyle that you want for yourself, and then adopt their philosophy.

I personally modeled successful men whom I admired, learned their beliefs and values, and emulated them. I adopted the philosophies of men like Paul J. Meyer, Jim Rohn, Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, and Winston Churchill, and then I refined my philosophy into one of Objectivism, as portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged.”

Leonard Peikoff said,

“The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era’s dominant ideas. In times of crises, these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught.”

Most of us depend on our own limited, fear-based, scarcity-oriented frame of reference when it comes to our perception, interpretations, and choices. We’re unaware that we are dealing with a miniscule amount of information, and therefore severely limiting our choices.

Explore Fearlessly

My ex father-in-law, Peter, was a brilliant man, a real-life rocket scientist, and a crazy Hollander. He had an amazing brain and could read four books a day. Perhaps this explains my daughter’s high IQ, but I digress.

Peter’s mind eagerly leaped over boundaries and explored the unknown like a young collie dog off the leash in a forest. And because he fearlessly exposed his brain to every possible philosophy and insight, he continually expanded his frame of reference and deliberately questioned his own conclusions and interpretations. One has to have high self-esteem and loads of courage to do that.

Why Everything Looks Yellow

We are all conditioned by our education, environment, culture, past experiences, and families, and we are all locked in to one or another cult, and all this conspires to limit our awareness of the options and alternatives available to us. So we tend to operate and make choices within a very limited sphere of possibilities.

Like a goldfish in a bowl, compared to a fish in the ocean. Like a prisoner in a cell compared to a world traveler. Like the average person. Life and business is a magnificent buffet, with millions of exciting food options laid out before us, but the blinders we wear and the shackles we choose restrict us to a diet of broccoli and green bananas. We’re like people wearing sunglasses with yellow lenses – everything looks yellow.

How to start becoming aware of your limitless options and potential:

1. Read the right books especially books that disagree with and challenge your present philosophy. Free yourself from preconceived ideas and “hardening of the attitudes” by looking at the opposite. If you’re a capitalist, talk with a socialist. If you’re religious, talk with an atheist. If you love meat, talk with a vegetarian. Expand your mind.
2. Mix with the right people. Open-minded libertarians, freethinking rebels, bums, millionaires, artists, and outcasts will teach you more than college professors, mystics, and male schoolteachers (men amongst boys and boys amongst men). Learn from people who have already created what you want, and especially those who disagree with you.
3. Travel widely. It amazes me that people restrict their travel and repeat the same destinations, when there is a great, big, exciting world out there to discover.
4. Ask lots of “What if?” questions. What if everything you believe is wrong? What if the most important person in your life died tomorrow? What if you lost your main income source? What if you were suddenly paralyzed? What if you won millions of dollars? Play with your mind. Climb over the fence of reason and run around with brave and silly explorers in the field of the unknown and forbidden.
5. Challenge your present philosophy. Have the guts to start asking the hard questions. Why do you believe what you believe, and how is it helping you to live a life of joy, fulfillment, and adventure? What cults do you belong to? Start asking, “Why not? By whose authority? How can you prove that?”

It’s YOUR Life.

Freedom is a choice.

• We don’t fear failure per se – we fear the opinions of other people.
• The only one whose opinion counts, is YOU. It’s YOUR life. And you only get one.
• Stop allowing scalawags and parasites to steal your joy.

A free life starts with the attitude that makes it possible. Ayn Rand said,

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world – to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we REALLY want.”

Decide what you want out of life, discover what beliefs are stopping you, and break free.

In regards to money, wealth, and business, the best system I have found, and that which offers me the greatest potential and freedom, is to broker Joint Ventures.

1.  Multiple Joint Ventures running simultaneously.

We understand how one Joint Venture can feed another and open new possibilities, how some fail and some work, so we’re always running a number of Joint Ventures at the same time with the least amount of time possible. We realize that we can create unlimited wealth through Joint Ventures.

2.  New Joint Ventures being added regularly.

We don’t sit back when we have a comfortable, residual income from multiple sources – we continually add new Joint Ventures. We are realistic and understand that Joint Ventures don’t last forever.

3.  Joint Ventures that are not working being aborted and scrapped regularly.

When we see that the JV or the JV partner is not working out, we don’t hesitate to walk away. Especially if we see dishonestly, greed, ego, or other agendas. We look for patterns.

4.  High standards and expectations.

We don’t look at small, impotent Joint Ventures, and we expect our partners to be as     professional, production, and punctual as we are.

5.  Very selective whom they partner with.

We don’t deal with unknown people – we prefer to work on a referral basis. We do our due diligence and we’re careful with whom we associate.

6.  Specific requirements before considering a JV.

Simplicity, potential, time, risk, cost, integration possibilities, the people behind it and their track record and resources. We don’t leap blindly and emotionally into every new venture, because most of them are not good. They have to meet our standards to even be considered.

7.  Fast decisions, most of them “No.”

We don’t have to think about a Joint Venture for a long time – after getting the details, we make fast decisions. We stick to our commitments and get things in writing.

8.  Massive action taker.

We don’t sit around waiting for things to happen – we make them happen, follow up, make calls, take action, and WORK. We expect our Joint Venture partners to do the same.

9.  Professional, well-prepared, positive attitude.

We have high self-esteem and it is reflected in our grooming, dress, behavior, communication, the people with whom we mix, and our preparation and follow-up.

10.  Always learning and helping others.

We are generous, friendly, and straight-talking. We like helping others to help themselves and we’re always open to learning new things.

It’s like sugar in your gas tank, poison in your pop, the worm in your apple – the one flaw that can cripple even the best Joint Venture, and something to be avoided at all costs.

The reason why many newbies to Joint Venture brokering fail is their choice of Joint Venture partner. Because of their low self-esteem and confidence, along with their limited belief and low aspirations, they approach people by whom they don’t feel threatened. (This is the same reason why network marketing newbies try to recruit losers.)

Think about it:

When you try to set up Joint Ventures with copycats, counterfeits, wannabe’s, and “managers”, you’re not dealing with real decision makers.  Sycophants, sidekicks, mimics and morons cannot make a JV work – they don’t have what it takes. If they did, they would be the head honchos, the chiefs, the principals. But they’re not. They talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk. They’re just parasites and pawns, and they with frustrate you and fail you.

Deal with the Top Guy

Smart JV Brokers know that the higher you go, the more you grow. Deal with the top guy, the president of the company, the real deal, and you will find your Joint Ventures flowing and flourishing.

• They make good decisions, which they make fast, and they can pay their way.
• They have a track record of success, and that is a clear prediction of their future with you.

Winners are generally generous and upfront – they will tell it like it is and practice what they preach – that’s how they got to be the owner of the business. The posers and pretenders will sabotage and scuttle your lucrative JV.

How to Access These Winners

The way to get to the top people is to create a really good, complete, professional presentation that requires no money, no risk, and little time from the other party, and pushes all the right buttons. It should be logical, short, and sweet, understandable, and concise.

Most of all. It needs to have high, residual potential. After all, the JV is about money, leverage, and results – it’s not about you, so don’t get your self-esteem or lack of experience slow you down and lower your expectations.

Go to the top dog, not the concierge. Pitch your JV with the focus on the bottom line and his or her interests – not your own. And stop trying to sell yourself – successful people don’t have to convince others that they are successful.

Here are a few red flag words that will chase off any winner:

• “Integrity” the bigger the loser, the more often he will use this word!
• “I am honest”
• “I will try / do my best”
• “If”
• “I hope / I guess”

If you have done your homework and you have the right training and support, you will speak easily and as an equal.

You may feel important by dealing with losers, but you will become important by dealing with winners.

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” ~ Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)

One thing that stops most people from achieving their goals is the fear of failure, embarrassment, loss, or anything that they currently have and don’t want to lose.

This fear will prevent them from moving forward – the perceived threat and pain – until the pain of their present condition or their approaching condition exceeds the potential danger that they fear.

By examining the things you fear, you might get perspective and change your mind about whether or not that fear has the power you currently bestow upon it.

• What do you fear?
• How can you diminish that fear?

Fear Failure?  Try This.

For example, if you fear failure, think about this: If there was nobody else in the world but you, no other people – would you fear failure? No, you wouldn’t. Because you don’t fear failure per se – you fear the opinions and ridicule of other people.

And anybody who likes you and cares about you would not ridicule you if you failed – they would help an support you, so why worry about the opinions of people who don’t like you or care about you?

Fear Loss?  Try This.

If you fear loss:

• What do you have to lose?
• What is the risk factor?
• Specifically, what would happen if you incurred that loss?
• Could you cope with that loss?
• Is the reward of facing your fear worth the risk?

Think objectively, not emotionally. Write down the pros and cons. Be rational.

1. How can you reduce or prevent the risk?
2. How can you change the situation, protect your assets, or shift the risk?

Fear is usually illogical and based on our conditioning and self-esteem, instead of hard facts. We assume a whole lot of things that are generally not true.

How a Professional Evaluates Risk

Imagine an engineer, and architect, or a scientist evaluating a risk. Would they cry, wring their hands, get angry, shout, hide, or rant? Probably not – they would get out their calculators and have meetings with other analytical people, draw diagrams, make plans, discuss the situation, and find a solution.

The architect doesn’t start whining, “But what if the bridge falls down? What if the floor collapses? I’ll be so embarrassed!” Analyze your fear, get the input of experts, talk with people who have been that route before and succeeded, and then make a logical, adult decision.

The “What if?” Game

Play the “What if?” game. It works well if you write things down.

• What if that person dies?
• What if this project fails?
• Exactly what would I do?
• What steps would I take?
• What would happen?
• Whose advice I need?
• What would I do?
• What could I do?
• Why would I make that choice?
• What would my alternatives be?
• Exactly what would this cost?
• How do I arrive at that number?

When you view life like a monopoly game or a chess game, you can override your conditioning, bias, self-talk, beliefs, and fears.

When you align yourself with successful, mature people who have experience in the field, it gets even better, hence the Mastermind effect of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Club and the DollarMakers Women’s Club – create a support system that will help you avoid the pitfalls of emotionalism, mysticism, and negative conditioning. Together, we can do amazing things.

Most Fears Never Even Happen!

The things you fear are not always all they’re cracked up to be. Several recent studies indicate that over 85% of all that we worry about never happens. Our minds tend to make mountains out of molehills.

Fear is not bad – it’s a warning light that we should consider, and when the warning light goes on in your car you don’t start crying, get paralyzed with fear, or sell your car; you take it to the shop and get an expert mechanic to check it out, or you take the time to read the manual.

• Sometimes,  an inexpensive item or a small adjustment is all that is required.
• Sometimes, it’s more expensive, but less expensive than a seized engine.

Consider the situation calmly and you will find that all you have to fear, as a smart man once said, is fear itself.

• Do things often, inexplicably, fail for you, while working for other people?
• Do you feel that you’re climbing an impossible, icy mountain, while others seem to skip effortlessly to the top?
• Does everything you touch turn to grime or to gold?

Does Guilt Have It’s Hooks In You?

Do you have relatives that put a “guilt trip” on you when you succeed? “How dare you sail the Caribbean while your family needs money?”

Do you feel guilty when you do well, while others are suffering?

Do you self sabotage to prevent that feeling? “How can you drive that smart car while your brother doesn’t even have a car?” Does this sound familiar? “How can you live in that nice house when millions are homeless?”

Is Wrong Philosophy Robbing You?

We earn money and succeed in life in direct proportion to our self-worth, or self-esteem.

When your philosophy tells you:

• that you are worthless, bad, undeserving, and greedy because you like to enjoy the money you earned,
• or that money is bad, and that you should, in fact, sell what you have and lower your standard of living so that you can give your money to others,

you have a rotten philosophy.

Guilt and the wrong philosophy rob millions of people of success, wealth, and happiness.

It’s ALL How You Look at It

The way you INTERPRET your life, circumstances and opportunities, is what will determine your success or failure in life, and your philosophy or world view is that filter by which you interpret your life.

You have built the life you have brick by brick, whether it is a good or a bad life, by the choices you have made. The same applies to others.

The “Robin Hood” philosophy of robbing the rich to give their hard-earned money to the “poor” parasites out there who made bad choices, is the seed of socialism. Tax the rich to pay for the sloth of the poor.

Are You Letting the Past Undermine the Future?

The bad choices you made in the past don’t have to continually undermine your future. Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

You can Break Free from guilt, self-sabotage, and disappointment by changing your philosophy. When you change your philosophy to one that empowers, one that is based on personal responsibility and objective reality, you will find your life changing dramatically for the better. The anchor of guilt is cut away, and you can soar to unprecedented heights.

What Works Best for Me

Of all the philosophies and options out there, the one that has worked best for me is that of Objectivism.

• It provides me with the tools for freedom, success, happiness, and self-fulfillment.
• It sets me free from false guilt and the attacks of the looters, moochers, and parasites.

Self-discipline and the right philosophy improve your self esteem, you feel you deserve the best and you realize you are entitled to the life that you create. Altruism, collectivism, and mysticism will rip your happiness from your hands, steal your joy, and rob you blind. In fact, those philosophies are designed to blind you to the potential you have for love, success, wealth, and creativity.

Build the Life You Want

• You can build the life you want and be free of guilt and condemnation.
• You can be free and happy, and when your philosophy changes, you will find things falling in to place – fast.
• You can live with virtue and integrity, and make all your dreams come true.

It’s not too late to break free.

Everything in your life is a trigger of some sort – the things you see, hear, feel, taste, read, and touch, the people you mix with, the places you go, the things you wear, what you eat and drink, your car, your home – everything is affecting you, whether you know it or not.

Peak performers carefully monitor their input, associations, diet, and environment. They control their self-talk, and set high standards for themselves.

Making the Right Adjustments

• You know how you feel if you wear dirty or creased clothes, if you don’t groom yourself well, if you spend time with losers, or if you don’t get enough exercise or sleep.
• And you know how you feel if you associate with winners, wear smart clothes, look your best, and go to top restaurants.

When you feel good about yourself, it’s because you have systematically created that situation, and you will achieve a lot more. Simply making the right adjustments in your life will go a long way to improving your self-esteem, and we earn money in direct proportion to our level of self-esteem.

How We Learn:

• Taste 1%
• Touch 1.5%
• Smell 3.5% (yet it is the most emotional sense)
• Hearing 11%
• SIGHT 85%!

Because visual triggers are so important (ask any advertiser), I designed a few triggers you might want to take advantage of.

Carefully Design Your Environment

My office is very carefully designed to visually trigger motivation, work, belief, optimism, feelings of well being and success, joy, and peace of mind.

I remove anything that has a negative trigger for me. Photographs of people who hurt me get removed and replaced.

Everywhere I look, I see multiple triggers.  I surround myself with:

• Gifts from people I like, respect, and love.
• Reminders of past victories.
• Reminders of future promises.
• Symbols of success and strength.

Our entire home is like that. Rika and I are careful about our triggers, and we’re highly disciplined. Cleanliness, orderliness, and high quality are important to us.

Do Some Spring-Cleaning

Take a good look at the triggers in your life, from people to things, and do some spring-cleaning. After all, it is spring, and every day is the first day of the rest of your life. Create an environment that makes you happy, healthy, and successful.

Think of a specific amount of money that would make a dramatic and exciting difference in your life.

Now imagine that you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that you and your entire family would be tortured to death in a horrible manner (think of the movie, “Saw”) if you didn’t achieve that specific, exciting financial goal within exactly three months.

What would you do?

Could you achieve that goal?

Imagine your beloved kids having their podgy little paws severed, and you’ll quickly start making new choices. (Did that get your attention?)

More importantly:

• What would you do differently?
• What would you change?
• What would you stop doing?
• What would you start doing?
• Who would you call?
• What would you suddenly be prepared to do under those circumstances that you refuse to do now?

Most of us are too lazy, content, comfortable, and timid to do things outside of our comfort zone, and we allow our low self-esteem and fear of embarrassment to keep us from the wonderful achievements that we could accomplish.

It’s About Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Instead of sending you to a shrink (who is usually even more screwed up than we are), putting you through a motivational seminar every morning of your life, or chasing you around with a large, spiky stick, I suggest the easier route is to take the time to imagine the terrible consequences of remaining in your comfortable little molehill of mellow, yellow mediocrity.

When you play this game, you start to see all sorts of real options you might not previously have had the guts to confront.

Is It You Can’t or You Won’t?

You see, our biggest barrier isn’t the fact that we can’t accomplish something, but rather the fact that we won’t, because of our fear of other people’s opinions. Scary, I know, but true. We don’t fear failure per se; we fear the reactions of others if we were to fail. “What would they say? I would feel so embarrassed!”

How much more embarrassed would you feel if you learned that you had six months to live (watch “Breaking Bad”), and you had been too bashful, self-absorbed, and apathetic to provide adequately for your family when you had the opportunity?

Try this one: Imagine you get hit by a heavy truck while meandering across a busy street in the rain, so you’re confined to a wheelchair and can’t speak, and your fifty-something, arthritic wife has to work as a shelf packer at Safeway in the day and a cleaner at MacDonald’s at night to support your pathetic asset? (Problem is, there are so many useless men already living off their wives…)

Consider Your Real Alternatives

Playing head games frees us up to consider our real alternatives, to weigh up our present use of time and resources, and to think outside the box. We need to mentally exceed our pain threshold in order to imagine the unimaginable.

Playing this “torturous consequences” game allows us to peek out from under our moldy old security blanket and realize that we’re using around 4% of our potential, and that the lies we’ve been telling ourselves about what we can’t do are really just self delusion.

Think of Ricky Bobby in “Talladega Nights”, when he convinced himself he was paralyzed – a hilarious hospital scene that has a serious ring of truth to it. We all suffer from self-deception. When he stuck a real knife into his thigh to prove his point to his friends, he had a painful awakening.

Make Your Excuse Irrelevant

Yes, you can achieve magnificent goals, and all the barriers are just in your head. DollarMakers teaches how you can achieve any financial goals with no cost or risk, so all those weak excuses are no longer relevant. If only you can believe it to be so. Hence the dramatic imagination game.

If you have a vivid imagination and take the time to really get yourself into this head game, you might be amazed at what you could accomplish. Suddenly, you would do things that you currently avoid like the proverbial plague, not because you can’t do them, but because you fear the opinions of people who really don’t give a damn, don’t care, don’t notice, and don’t matter.

Get over yourself, get over your mental barriers, and get down to the bank to cash in on your grossly underutilized potential. Some once said. “THINK and grow rich…”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said:

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”