Posts from — August 2009

In my research over the last 20 plus years, one of the many questions that I have studied is:

“How is it that some people seem to get extraordinary results in the areas that are important to them, while being within the very same culture, market, family or environment, as others who seem to be getting very ordinary results or in many cases the exact opposite results, by comparison?”

One of the first things that struck me during that investigation was that in every single case, that there wasn’t a direct relationship between the casual surface observations that most people might make of a person such as; between whether they were born into a wealthy family or a poor family. Nor between whether they were good looking or not or even whether they were well educated or not.

During my research I’ve met plenty of people who started off poor; weren’t what society might label as particularly physically attractive and certainly didn’t graduate from Yale, and yet have become very wealthy in terms of financial security and freedom (if we were to use monetary wealth as a measurement). And are very successful in terms of business and relationships and parenting and sports or whatever it was important to them to be “excellent” in.

And I’ve also met just as many people who were born with talents and good looks or into wealth and yet their life is a disaster area of relationships gone sour, money lost, and opportunities wasted.
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Have you ever thought about why you do what you do?

Have you ever wanted to do something or to try something new? But you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it? Like maybe public speaking or joining a new club or even just asking for what you need from someone else.

Have you ever caught yourself turning down an opportunity saying “Oh I could never do that!” or “That doesn’t interest me!” or saying “that won’t work!” to some new suggestion without even stopping to really think about if it will or not?

Or inversely, have you ever caught yourself doing something that you promised yourself you would never do or promised yourself that you would stop doing? Like smoking or eating junk food or saying “yes” when you should have said “no” to someone else’s demands and expectations. [Read more →]