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I discovered something about myself a long time ago: when I get really angry, I learn something about myself.

Let me give you some examples of this. I had someone in my business who would give me a ride to my hotel in his red car when I flew into town. By the time I got out of his car, I would be furious, every single time. When I am writing an article or a book and I get interrupted, I get angry. When I deal with people who pretend to be business coaches or consultants, I get hot under the collar. Why?

A Thieving Leech

In the first instance, I realized that the person in my business was a parasite and a thieving leech who was a two faced, lying SOB who only had his own back pocket in mind. Why did this anger me? After all, there are many two faced leeches around. He was sabotaging my business, undermining me, building relationships with my enemies. After I fired him, he joined forces with the biggest con artists in the city. Here’s the root of the matter: he was hurting my people, the Members of DollarMakers, and abusing his position. I am very protective of my people. I learned that I am a lot more protective of my people than I thought I was.

Interrupting Me While Writing is a Sin

Why do I get angry when I am interrupted whilst writing? I had to read the book, “The War of Art” that Shawn Christenson gave me,  to understand this. I was being interrupted when I am at my most creative, and my train of thought was simply derailed for no reason at all. I am obsessive compulsive. I focus absolutely when I write. When I am interrupted, I have to start all over again. I learned that I regard my writing as my most valuable offering, my most important contribution, a part of myself. I am brutally honest in my writing: I open my heart. You would do better to slap me hard in the face than to interrupt me when I am writing.

Too Many False Coaches

Why do I get angry when I meet sly snake-oil salesmen who sell themselves as coaches and consultants? I’m not talking about the tiny handful of them who can actually do the job - I’m talking about the arrogant, big mouth losers who bought a coaching course and now waste other peoples’ time and money, giving them silly and often dangerous advice. I saw one of them lose eighteen good clients in a row. Why do I get angry? I care about honest, hardworking entrepreneurs who want to be successful and blindly trust shakedown artists.

Which brings me to my conclusion. When you are truly passionate about what you do, you will be good at it, you will believe in it, and you will jealously protect it, like a mother cougar protecting her young. You will get very angry at anyone who threatens your work and your mission. And your anger will cement your understanding and belief. If there is no passion, you’re probably just another mercenary sociopath playing the role of an entrepreneur. See the passion? Feel the heat? There is a scripture that goes, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Anger points to passion, and passion points to perfectionism, progress, and prosperity.

“The greatest wealth is health.” ~Virgil

Money and time, happy relationships, confidence, the achievement of our goals, and peace of mind are not quite as valuable when you have no health. While the former will certainly allow you to “suffer in comfort”,
bad health adversely affects every area of your life, and every area of your life affects your health.

However I believe that drug companies, many doctors, and the snake oil salesmen who are essentially the purveyors of lotions, potions, farcical diets, absurd juices, organic junk and magic spells to relive desperate,
vulnerable, suffering people and hypochondriacs of their hard-earned money, carefully complicate the concept of health in their own selfish interests.

“The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they’ll ease
Your will they’ll mend
And charge you not a shilling.”
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

Here are the facts as I see them regarding health. Use more calories up through exercise than the calories you consume. Let’s apply the following to FAT:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
~ Charles Dickens

To me, that means that if I eat more calories than I use up, I get fat. It’s not water retention – it’s disgusting fat. If you smoke, not only do you offend the people around you who wisely choose not to smoke with your
filthy, stinking addiction, not only do you blatantly demonstrate the fact that you do not care about those you offend and that you are incapable of the self-discipline to quit smoking, but you also make it clear that your real self-esteem is pretty low. Smoking will not make you healthy. Heavy drinking will not improve your health. Eating bad food will have a negative effect on you. Smoking weed will damage what brain cells you have left.

It’s that simple: disciple yourself to eat right, don’t smoke, get exercise, get some sunlight, and get over your weak excuses. AS you discipline yourself, your self-esteem will increase, and this will affect every other area of your life in a very positive manner.

“Joy and Temperance and Repose Slam the door on the doctor’s nose.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It’s basic, common sense. I don’t need to buy your overpriced vitamins on auto ship. I don’t need health club membership. I can drink more water, eat more fruit, and climb the stairs or walk around the lake.

“To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.”
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Good relationships, peace of mind, sufficient money, and good friends will increase your health. Keep it simple and stop wasting your time and money on ridiculous schemes and dreams and quick fix silver bullets that will inevitable prove to b duds.

“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”
~Irish Proverb

Stop making excuses, start making changes, and get healthy. You deserve it!

“I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital.”
~Astrid Alauda

1. TAKE ACTION!!
2. Read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
3. Get Out There and Meet New People
4. Make a List of Goals
5. Forget About The Opinions Of Others
6. Compliment Those That Deserve It
7. Learn to Listen
8. Break Away from Fear
9. Stop Worrying and Start Doing
10. Listen To Your Inner Voice
11. Stop Watching TV
12. Delegate your C items, only do the A and B items.
13. Eat Healthy
14. Be True To Yourself
15. Drop Your Bad Habits and Enhance Your Good Habits
16. Get Up a Half Hour Earlier
17. Implement Daily Affirmations - Repeat Your Affirmations Any Chance You Get
18. Be Your Biggest Fan
19. Remember Good is the Enemy of Great
20. Always Keep Learning
21. Focus Your Energy - Be a High Powered Laser
22. Don’t Be Cheap - Invest in the Tools You’ll Need to Succeed
23. Have Integrity.  REALLY.  People Catch On Fast.
24. Keep a Journal - Carry It With You Everywhere
25. Follow Great People - read their blogs, biographies and anything else.
26. Never Give Up. Never Surrender.
27. Trust In God, and Tie Up Your Camels.
28. Subscribe to a “Word Of The Day” Email.
29. You Can’t Do It All Yourself - Find Great Partners
30. Watch What People Do, Not What They Say They Do
31. Give Referrals, Ask for Referrals
32. Sleep When You’re Dead
33. Send Thank You Cards

Affirmations are essentially a personal self-improvement and self-motivation technique.

Having some Daily Affirmations that you recite to yourself at least twice a day will do wonders to change your life. Changing your life is not difficult, as it is simply a matter of reprogramming yourself. That’s basically what repeating powerful Affirmations do - they reprogram your beliefs and feelings to what you want them to be.

Repeating some really good affirmations will do wonders for you, such as:

• Your thinking and emotional state becomes more positive
• You have increased self-assurance and self-acceptance
• You begin taking more purposeful action
• Enhanced vitality and passion for life
• People treat you with more respect and interest
• You experience greater happiness and joy
• You have a renewed sense of personal power (Just like when you were a kid)

So I decided to release a poster that you can print out, that has my personal Affirmations that I have been using daily for over 10 years.  When I wake up and when I go to bed, these are the affirmations I am saying to myself, in my head.  I even say these on the plane, in the car and even when brushing my teeth.

The Daily Affirmations poster is available to anyone who subscribes to JVBlogger - either via an RSS Feed or via Email.  It’s simple - in the upper right of this blog is both ways to subscribe.  If you don’t know what ‘RSS’ or a ‘FEED’ is, then just subscribe by email - it’s easy!

It is a 2.9mb PDF file - very high quality.  I had my graphic designer put it together for me and it looks quite stunning printed out and on the wall by my desk!

Please let me know what your personal affirmations are in the comments section below, I’d love to hear them.

Entrepreneurs often spend too much time worrying. Statistically, 85% of the things we worry about will never happen. Those things include worries over our past that can never be changed, worries over which we have no control, irrational concerns or fears, and worries about the future. Worrying about something never solved the problem or affects the final outcome in any way.

Worrying Makes Your Face Ugly

Excessive worries cause negative emotions that release chemicals into our bodies which wreak physical havoc - high blood pressure, headaches, heart conditions, and more. I loved Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”. Worry can ruin relationships, make your face drawn and ugly, and affect every aspect of your life negatively. Leo Buscaglia said, “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”  The more attention you pay to worries, like plants, they grow bigger and stronger, until they control you. Someone once said, “People gather bundles of sticks to build bridge they will never cross.”

How do we deal effectively with worry? Action. Pat Schroeder said, “You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.” Face you fears. Shine the light of intelligent, rational, and balanced evaluation on them, and the shadows of fear and emotionalism will retreat. Here’s my personal recipe for handling worry. I have a very vivid imagination, so you should know that I have to carefully manage my tendency to make mountains out of molehills and elaborate expansively on the smallest concerns.

Take Control Of Yourself - Worrying is NOT You

I was walking from a business meeting to my car in a parking lot when I realized that I was in a constant state of worry. I knew I had to take control of things right away, so I took advantage of the fact that there were no people anywhere close and I could have a good, long talk with myself. I have found this to be very therapeutic, talking out loud to myself. I would literally ask myself, “OK, Robin, what is your biggest worry?” I would answer myself. Then I would ask, “Why do you worry about that? What’s the worst that can happen? What if it does happen? What would you, or could you do? What do you fear losing?” and answer all these questions. I would then mentally put each of these worries in a tin can on a big shelf. I would name my five biggest worries (or more, if necessary), put them all in cans on the shelf, then one by one, in my mind, as I walked around that parking lot, I would take the can off the shelf, open it up, examine it in detail, and create an action plan.

For example, if I needed to write a letter, make a call, set up a meeting, or whatever action was necessary, I would resolve to do that, put it on a mental “Action List”, and take the can off the shelf. If there was absolutely nothing I could do to alleviate that worry, remove it, or prevent that which I feared, I would realize that there was nothing I could do, and I would take it off the shelf, too. I waddle around that parking lot for about an hour, until I had mentally and emotionally dealt with all my worries in this way. I talked myself through everything. I had an action plan, I was relieved, I had perspective, I was calm, and I was ready to attack again. I thanked myself, got in my car, drove home, and diligently went to work on my Action Plan. When you confront yur fears and take action to diminish your worries, remove them, or set up contingency plans, you take control of your mind, and therefore your emotions and your life.

Nelson DeMille said, “Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.” You are bigger than your worries. You have a lot more strength that you think you have. You can choose how to deal with your worries - fight, or flight. You can let your worries dominate you, or you can decide to b the boss. Change your self talk, change your attitude, take action, and win.

“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.

Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.

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? 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?

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. How can you reduce or prevent the risk? 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.

Analyze You Fear - Find Out How Bad It Really Isn’t

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.

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.

All You Have To Fear Is…

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 i 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.

Would you like to know the most valuable lesson I learned from Mr. Arthur Honey? Mr. Honey, who was an ex boxing champion and one of the seconds for Roger Bannister, when he ran the first four-minute mile, owned the Continental Hotel. I was his hotel manager. Mr. Honey was a wonderful hotelier, trained in the old school, and a real gentleman. After I completed my Hotel School Training (city and Guilds directed), I managed a German restaurant for a year and was then employed by Mr. Honey. It was the best management training I ever got.

One morning, he asked me why I had not arranged to have the one kitchen’s extract screens cleaned. I had simply forgotten. Here is the gist of what he taught me:

“Robin, any manager who forgets things is not a manager, but a DAMAGER. You may be wearing your morning suit, but when you forget, you are not managing. You will not build trust, respect, and a good reputation if you don’t deliver on your promises. When you forget, you insult the other person and yourself. When you’re late to do what you promised, you further damage your reputation and the business. Forgetting costs money and loses hotel guests. I carry a paper in my inside jacket pocket, and I write down EVERYTHING I need to remember. Anything you ask me, anything the accountant tells me, anything I notice (he used to use a white glove to search for dust), is written on this list. When I return to my office, I transpose the list onto my desk list. I never forget and I always do what I said I would do. That has made me successful. Do the same, Robin, and you will be successful. In my hotel, you will not forget anything, because you represent me. Understood?”

Mr. Honey taught me many valuable lessons (including how to knot my tie correctly!) but this was the one lesson that has helped me more than most of the things he taught me. I worked for nine straight months without a day off for that man - he was the best manager I ever had the privilege of working for. He was absolutely reliable, never compromised, and always delivered. I modeled him and even joined Rotary when I became successful because Arthur Honey was a Rotarian. In South Africa, you had to be wealthy to become a Rotarian. You had to own a business, as well, in order to even be considered as a Rotarian. My entire business and life revolves around lists, and it works very well.

Everything that impacts your mind, perception, choices, or awareness, has only one of two effects: Good or bad. The lukewarm amongst us will jeer at that declaration and allege that there is a “gray area” - losers LOVE that idea. Remember that our limitations are Self-Imposed, and so are our successes.

The fact is that if you are seriously committed to success, everything that you are exposed to will either help or hurt your progress en route to your objective. Winners cannot afford any dilution or distraction. Cyclists shave their bodies. Champions measure their speed in thousandths of seconds. EVERYTHING counts: diet, environment, input, association.

Contrasting Experiences To Learn From

I received an unsolicited phone call today from a fellow who wants me to participate in a public conference call. He asked me what my criteria were to participate or not. My answer was, “When I know whom the other participants in this project are, I will make my decision.” I will judge him by the company he keeps.

I once unexpectedly had to impose on someone with whom I had a business meeting to give me a lift home in his car. Before and during the meeting, he had impressed me with his stories of success and achievement. Until I got into his filthy van, that was. Cigarette butts clogged the ashtrays, papers were spread all over - dirty disarray, a reflection of his real nature - no congruency. End of relationship.

Nourish your success by elevating your standards, expectations, systems, and consciousness through the carefully selected association with people, ideas, input and environment. Exorcise the mundane, the tepid, the feeble, and the inconsistent.

Find mentors and heroes, both dead and alive, who will inspire, uplift, and challenge you.

Adhere to and create environments that are aligned with and congruent with your values, beliefs, aspirations, and expectations. Everything you read and watch, see, hear and perceive, has a consequence. The people in your life either take you towards your goals or away from them.

Nourish your success by paying whatever price is required. Invest in your goals and future. Discover the Real You and regain your old belief and excitement. Read only that which will fuel your ambition and inspire you on your journey. Churchill will trump Stephen King. Associate with those whom you wish to emulate. Practice that which you wish to perfect.

Read the thoughts of the great ones, if you wish to think the thoughts of the great ones, for their words ARE their thoughts. Align your philosophy with that of your heroes. Carefully and diligently remove all obstacles, detractors, and distractions from your path. Fuel your enthusiasm with stories about the accomplishments of winners. Everything counts, and everything matters. Contamination is real. Replace poison with power. You don’t eat donuts if you want to win the marathon.