“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt.

Winners say, “Talk is cheap. Your past actions predict your future choices. Show me, don’t tell me.” I agree.

If you’re wondering why your efforts and endeavors usually result in frustration, failure, disappointment, and pain, while other people, working on the same things, make pots of money, this is for you.

If you feel like you’re accident prone, all alone, and your chances are blown, don’t moan and groan – I might just have the solution for you.

Does this sound familiar?

You might be as smart as others who get rich while you get into more debt, you might work even harder than they do, you might be more motivated, and yet your attempts seem to be doomed to perpetual failure. You feel like a loser.

Dumb people are making money and you’re floundering. It’s just not fair!

Same products and services, same market, same pricing, same opportunity, yet while they seem to attract success and wealth, you feel like you’re magnetizing perpetual flops. Why?

Well, it’s not as mysterious as it may seem.

There’s no magical, imaginary demon or devil undermining your success and jumping at every opportunity to pull the proverbial rug out from under your feet. It’s not your age, appearance, education, or parents. It is a lot more simple than that.

The good news is that when you know what has been contaminating your progress, undermining your success, causing you stress, and making this mess, you can remove and change it, and put yourself on the road to health, wealth, and happiness.

A Good, Workable “Success Recipe”

Usually, we earn money and succeed in our endeavors in direct proportion to our self worth or self esteem. Guilt, a poor self image, and mixing with the wrong people (losers) is what generally sabotages our efforts, in spite of our hard work and good intentions.

The solution, therefore, must be to improve one’s self esteem.

The way to do that is through rigorous, sustained self discipline, and a good, workable “success recipe”. This, in my opinion, will “oil the wheels” of your programs and activities, and add jet fuel to what you’re doing. Confidence, enthusiasm, and belief are signs of a strong self image, and they attract great results.

Three major areas need to be addressed:

Area #1 - Your Input

…The people you spend time with and the input you’re exposed to. Discipline yourself to cut the losers out of your life and read good books, like Atlas Shrugged. Do not wilt nor hesitate – remember, self discipline increases self worth, and that increases the old bank balance.

Area #2 - Your Appearance

Look your best at all times, buy good clothes and shoes, groom yourself well, look like a million bucks, act and walk and talk like a successful entrepreneur, “Fake it until you make it”, and don’t hang out in crummy places. Only the best for you, my friend.

Treat yourself as a successful person would treat herself. Look the part, and you’ll start to feel the part. Believe and achieve!

Consistent, persistent attention to doing your best in everything you do will make you feel great about yourself. And when you feel good about yourself, you will start attracting winners and money into your life.

Area #3 - Your Self-Talk

…What you tell yourself – your self talk, and the questions you ask yourself will determine how much success you achieve. Never put yourself down – be your own best friend and fan.

Here are some great questions and affirmations I strongly recommend you use at least ten times a day, every day, until they are a habit. Speak out load, with belief, sincerity, enthusiasm, and commitment:

• I am happy, healthy, and successful.
• I am a money magnet – I attract wealth and great people into my life every day.
• What is great about my life? What do I have to be grateful for?
• I am bulletproof, unstoppable, and strong.
• Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better, richer and richer.
• I am a guided missile on my way to my goals.
• People are fortunate to know me and work with me.
• I am a money machine, a dollarmaker, and a wonderful, generous, happy person.
• How can I double my net worth in one year?

Self discipline = self worth  = a self made millionaire.

When the WHY is sufficient, the HOW is automatic.

Slow? Sometimes agonizingly so.

Frustrating? Frequently.

Arduous? Assuredly.

Tiring? Indubitably.

…But inevitable.

Success is a forgone conclusion, a matter of time, when the WHY is in place; the travail is temporary,the discomfort fleeting, and easy to accommodate while bathed in the light of your magnificent obsession, your WHY.

The Promising Power of WHY

Your WHY in life is your Hot Button, your main objective, your raison d’etre, your glorious goal, your absolute ambition. It is what will get you to a meeting an hour early, dressed to the nines, wearing an infectious grin you find it hard to wipe off your scrubbed face.

It is what will obliterate every obstacle, remove every roadblock, and eradicate anything between you an your goal. Nobody and nothing can stop someone whose WHY is large enough. To a man with a grand WHY, reversals are transient, mere bumps along the yellow brick road.

Succumbing to Mediocrity

Most people have succumbed to the prevailing mediocrity that dulls our senses, robs us of ambition, and waters down our expectations with the pervasive and crippling cynicism that the rulers encourage to blind us from the alternatives to mere survival as we plod through the smelly swamp of somnambulism, compromise and dead dreams.

You MUST Find Your Why

Deep down inside you, your WHY is waiting, glittering, and pulsing.

When you pick it up with hands shaking with excited anticipation, wipe off the pessimism and disappointment, and polish it with optimism, hope, and belief, you will discover the genie that grants any and every wish. That Genie loves you more than anyone else has ever loved you, understands you better than anyone, cares deeply about your success, an believes in you. YOU are the Genie you seek.

Your fuel is your WHY. Find your WHY, and you have broken free.

You Attitude Determines Your Altitude

It’s not the techniques or the teaching - it’s the WHY. It’s not your tools or your skills, but your attitude that determines what you will accomplish in life.

If you want something badly enough, NOTHING will prevent your victory. These are the people I seek - people with a WHY that will not be denied.

The following questions, when seriously considered and answered on an individual basis, will reveal some of your deep motivations and beliefs, interpretations and needs, objectives, fears, and dreams, as well as some of the perceived barriers and pain in your life.

I challenge you to take some quiet, uninterrupted time to sincerely and honestly ask yourself these questions and answer them.

1. If I won five million dollars tomorrow and I had to allocate it within five days, what, specifically would I do with it, and why?
2. If I was given five million dollars and I had to distribute that between five people, not including myself or my spouse, who would those people be, and why?
3. If I had to spend three weeks on a desert island with ten people, dead or alive, who would they be, and why?
4. What would be a good reason for me to commit suicide?
5. Why would I not commit suicide?
6. Why do I hold my present religious beliefs? Do they help me or hurt me?
7. If I had to double my income in three months or be shot to death in public, what would I do differently in those three months?
8. If I had only six months to live, what would I do in those six months?
9. If I had ten million dollars in the bank, how would my life change specifically? What would I start doing, what would I stop doing, and whom would I spend time with?
10. If the world was going to be destroyed and I had to pick fifteen people to escape with me in a rocket ship, who would they be, and why?
11. Repeat the same question for FIVE people plus yourself.
12. Repeat the same question for TWO people plus yourself.
13. If I moved, alone, to a new city, far away, where nobody knew me, and I didn’t have to work (enough money to live comfortably) and I had to live there for a year, what would change in my life and my activities? What new things would I do, and what would I stop doing?
14. If there were no consequences or punishment, and nobody would find out, what would I do?
15. What two things do I fear most, and why? What can I do about it?
16. If I could change two things in my life, what would they be?
17. Which five people do I love the most, and why?
18. Which three people do I hate the most, and why? How would I benefit from forgiving and forgetting them?
19. What stops me from succeeding to a greater degree? What excuses am I making for not reaching my full potential?
20. If I could change the way I think about my life and the things I tell myself about my life and my options, I could break free and be happier. How badly do I want my dreams to come true, on a scale of one to ten?

Someone once said,

“Everybody’s a self-made man; but only the successful ones are ever willing to admit it.”

Frederick Douglass: A Story of Unbreakable Determination

Frederick Douglass’s life seems to be the prototype of the American rags to riches story. Born as a slave, he was deprived of any favorable circumstances. Yet, through hard work and with the help of an unbreakable determination, he managed to free himself and to become one of the most prominent African Americans of his times. He said:

“Self-made men are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success. All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonor, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.”

Reconstructing Your Future

Our past choices have brought us to our present circumstances. We have created who we are and what we have.

Excuses about how bad our upbringing was and the amount of times we were cheated carry no weight, when compared with the hardships overcome by people in far more adverse conditions. Was your situation worse than that of a Second World War concentration camp survivor? Once we have the courage to accept responsibility for our past choices, we can start to reconstruct our futures, no matter at what age.

“As A Man Thinketh”

James Allen, in his wonderful book which had a major impact on my life, “As A Man Thinketh” (download it FREE at www.asamanthinketh.com), he said:

“Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to the light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this – that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within him that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make of himself what he wills.”

All You Need to Achieve Greatness

Having this attitude and assuming the responsibility is the foundation upon which one can build any future one desires, however two more ingredients are required in order to achieve greatness:

• Access to the right people,
• and guidance along the way.

For this reason, I created DollarMakers. What future will you create?

Winston Churchill said:

“I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.”

There are two kinds of people in the world – the prodders and the prodded.

• 1% are prodders – those who make it happen and sometimes feel like they are pulling a train when prodding others.
• The 99% are the employee type who are much like lazy donkeys – if they are not continually prodded, they stop dead and vegetate, wallowing in putrid justification.

Winners…

Winners take the initiative and strike out, whether followed or not.

• They don’t have to reminded, supported, woken up, encouraged, cajoled, tempted, threatened, bribed, begged, or motivated.
• They are internally motivated.
• They will succeed regardless of the circumstances they face.
• They don’t rely on other people.
• They don’t make excuses.
• They don’t need prodding.
• They like this quote: “For every person who doubts you and  tells you that you will fail, try twice as hard to prove them wrong.”
• They succeed in spite of the losers that let them down and attack them, and they never quit. They are like the little engine that could. They persist in the face of adversity.
• They are the optimists, the creators, the producers, the pioneers.
• They make things happen.
• They don’t wait for permission, support, or the best circumstances.

Winners make the world go round.

They hate prodding the prodded, but they understand it’s a necessity of life, like cleaning the oven.

Losers…

Losers constantly look for excuses to retreat, rest, and relax.

• They quickly run out of energy, ideas, resolve, and hope.
• They love quitting and then blaming other people, their circumstances, and the weather.
• They need prodding to breathe.
• They are the parasites, the leeches, the stone in your shoe.
• They are not in charge of their emotions or thoughts, tossed this way and that by the popular fads and fixes.
• They run with the herd, and are loyal only to comfort and instant gratification, much like animals.

The Prodders versus the ProdDEAD

Winners are loyal visionaries. They remember who helps them (and who hurts them.) They attract like-minded prodders into their lives. They tolerate the prodded only to the extent that they have to in order to accomplish their goals, but they have only disdain for those who choose to be victims instead of victors.

Winners are reliable and professional. They don’t compromise or sell out, and they create wealth, health, and happiness for the world. They are the prodders – the true champions – and they shrug off the vilification of the prodded who benefit from their creations yet attack them out of jealousy. They interpret PROD as:

Produce  Results  Or  Die

They are goal-oriented, creative, and self-motivated.

Be the Prod

If you are a prodder, you will relate to this short article. My purpose is to remind you that you are not alone, and that soon, Atlas will Shrug, and you should strongly align yourself with other prodders to be well positioned for that exciting time. Tolerate the prodded for now – they are necessary for the moment. Galt’s Gulch is waiting. Be the prod - the producer.

Start to question, “Are You Happy With Your Life?”

In order to achieve a new situation in life, we have to remember that a mind once stretched will never return to its original dimensions, and that all meaningful change starts with a question.

We have to ask ourselves if the status quo in our lives is what we truly want, and if our present philosophy and world view is going to get us to where we honestly and deeply want to be.

We have to ask ourselves just:

• how free we really are,
• how free we want to be,
• and how our perceptions and beliefs will have to change in order to facilitate the new journey we wish to take.

Beware: We’re Programmed to Not Question

Because the seething herd of humanity is programmed to viciously ostracize those who question the feasibility, indeed the sanity, of blind faith and conformity, we have to summon the courage to ask these questions.

Anything that threatens the current, outdated beliefs of true believers who doggedly hold on to medieval myths, legends, and superstitions is quickly suppressed. You should be aware of this.

The outright rejection of logic and rational, independent thought is the hallmark of the established system of paid slavery, the oppression of freedom, and mass mind control by the media and the mystics, which are owned by banks and managed by their puppet politicians.

Beware:  We’re Programmed to Believe What We’re Taught

We believe what we have been taught to believe, not what we personally, independently  deducted from the facts all around us. We have been told lies to keep us bound, blind, tired, in debt, and afraid:

• “You have to risk a lot to make a lot.”
• “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
• “The root of all evil is money.”
• “You have to work hard for many years in order to be financially free.”
• “You don’t deserve to be rich.”
• “Keep up with the Jones.”
• “Serve your country.”
• “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
• “Self sacrifice is good. “
• “You need to be educated by the existing educational structure.”
• “Don’t question your leaders. We know what is best for you.”
• “Toe the line.”
• “The nail that stands up gets knocked down…”

Nonsense.

Question everything.

Krishnamurti said:

“All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.”

Dependency, exploitation, and attachment are forms of slavery. Only parasites, sluggards, and masochists revel in slavery.

Question everything.

Don’t wait until you’re too old, too scared, and too weak to change. Question now.

Anyone who says, “Mine not to reason why; mine but to do and die” is already dead. Blind faith is not laudable – it’s stupid.

The Path to Freedom

The path to real freedom is not to be found in a cult or a college. Krishnamurti said:

“Most of us begin with certainty and as we grow older the certainty changes to uncertainty and we die with uncertainty. But if one begins with uncertainty, doubting, questioning, asking, demanding, with real doubt about man’s behavior, about all the religious rituals and their images and their symbols, then out of that doubt comes the clarity of certainty.”

Perhaps it’s your time to question, to rethink, and to redirect your life’s path.

When it comes to money, DollarMakers is here to help you achieve freedom through the symbiotic, synergistic, rational, interdependent system of Joint Ventures.

I grew up poor – by the age of seventeen I had lived in eighteen different places, and was drafted into the army. I thought I had a great life, and I did. When I was fourteen, my family lived in two rooms in a residential hotel or boarding house. I had lots of friends and we had great fun. We were poor, but we didn’t really notice it.

Across the road from the “hotel” was a broken down, empty old house, with a circular dam with five foot high, concrete walls, in ramshackle, deserted grounds. The good news was that the water supply had never been turned off!

Turning Poverty into Paradise

I got all my friends together and we decided that we would have a swimming pool. We cleaned and scrubbed that slimy, green dam for five days, drained it, and filled it with sparkling, cool water. It was a dream come true that hot summer. We were so excited, we could hardly contain ourselves.

We cleaned up the “garden” surrounding it, and everyone showed up with swimwear, towels, and suntan lotion.  It was a wonderful summer.

We swam and played and enjoyed ourselves. We could have whined that the rich kids had sparkling, blue, real pools, with pool boys and gazebos, but I think we had more fun.

And we really appreciated what we had, because we had created it ourselves.

You’ll Appreciate What You Earn

Statistically, people who win money or inherit it usually lose it (and many sink into deep depression.) Easy come, easy go. We don’t appreciate what we don’t create and earn.

Instead of whining about what we don’t have, we can turn life’s lemons into lemonade, and create the lives we want.

I know rich kids whose parents worked hard to buy big houses with huge pools, and the kids complained and hardly used the pools.

We’re surrounded by unlimited opportunities, and as far as business goes, the fastest and easiest way to take full advantage of the wonderful gifts lying all around us is through the use of Joint Ventures.