Success University 02 (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

[winston]

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*** Article: Responsibility - What It Is and What It's Not - By Valery Satterwhite ***
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A client of mine, let's call her Susan, called last week and was very excited! She was absolutely jubilant! I asked her what happened that she was so thrilled about. Her response was surprising at first. But, the Universe does work in miraculous ways. You'll see how as you read this story.

What was her response to what she was so happy about!?!

"My husband forgot my birthday!"

And, yes, she was very happy about this event.

I was taken aback for a moment for this was not the response I was expecting. I asked her to explain how his 'forgetting her birthday' made her so happy.

She responded that very soon after the initial realization, and 'upset', that her husband forgot her birthday, she thought about our many conversations about 'responsibility'. So, instead of empowering and listening to her Inner Critic, playing into the drama of the upset, she simply asked herself, "What did I do, consciously or unconsciously, to cause this event to happen?" She decided to empower and check in with her Inner Wizard. Yay!

And the answer to that question became crystal clear to her.

She knew that her husband, while wonderful in many ways, was terrible at remembering dates. He'd forget his own birthday if you didn't remind him. So, instead of reminding him ahead of time, Susan simply said nothing to see if he would remember her birthday -- knowing that there was a good chance he'd forget the date.

She set herself up for this upset to happen. What was her motivation? After some consideration, Susan realized that his forgetting her birthday would validate and empower her Inner Critic. The Inner Critic, after all, loves to be right. Susan's Inner Critic always minimized her worthiness and ability to be loved. Her husband forgetting her birthday would prove to herself that she was right to think the way she did about herself -- that she was not worthy and no man could ever truly love her.

Do you see a Victim in this story?

Yes, the empowered Inner Critic holds you hostage as a Victim to the drama it serves up to 'be right'.

However, by taking ownership of her responsibility to the forgotten birthday, Susan had an epiphany that blew the limiting belief out of her age-old 'story' about herself that ran her life. Once she realized the role she played in the forgotten birthday event, Susan also knew, with certainty, that she [and she alone] manifested the events in her life. If she changed how she thought, her life would change -- in dramatic and miraculous ways.

No more Victim!

This realization empowered her and gave her serenity. She felt a major shift within her that gave her the knowing-ness that she was, indeed, worthy and loved. Worthiness and loveable-ness comes from self, first and foremost. Once you value your own worth and love yourself, you no longer set yourself up to be invalidated.

(That 'shift', by the way, is the reconnection with and empowerment of the Inner Wizard.)

[millionairemind]

Profiles in Greatness - Martin Luther King Jr.
Standing Up for Justice

Amy Anderson January 6, 2009

Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t graduate from high school. He skipped the ninth and the 12th grades and went on to Morehouse College at 15. While at college, King met regularly with civil rights leader, theologian and teacher Howard Thurman, who had attended Morehouse with King’s father. In his travels, Thurman conferred with world leaders, including Mohandas Gandhi. In their meeting, Gandhi expressed his belief to Thurman that African-Americans might have the opportunity to spread the message of nonviolence throughout the world. His message was heard loud and clear, thanks to a young boy from Atlanta.

After King graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology, he attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. In 1955, he received his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University. While finishing his doctorate, he married Coretta Scott on the lawn of her parents’ home. The Kings’ family grew to eventually include four children.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

It didn’t take King long to step into a leadership role in the civil rights movement. One year after becoming pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. A few months after 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and comply with the Jim Crow laws of the South, an African-American woman named Rosa Parks took the same stand. Parks was arrested, and King led a boycott of the bus line that lasted 385 days. During the boycott, King’s house was bombed and he was arrested. But the nonviolent protest worked: The United States Supreme Court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that racial segregation must cease on all Montgomery public buses.

"Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus."

In 1957, King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of civil rights activists and African-American churches. The SCLC carried out nonviolent protests that were widely publicized in print and on television, effectively raising the importance of the civil rights movement to the forefront of American public opinion. King led marches for voting rights, labor rights and desegregation, sometimes facing violent resistance from authorities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were triumphs for the SCLC and King.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

In 1958, King was signing copies of his first book Strive Toward Freedom in Harlem, when a woman approached him and stabbed him in the chest. X-rays showed that the blade was on the edge of his aorta. The next morning, a story in The New York Times stated that had King so much as sneezed, he would have died. The civil rights leader received letters and cards from the governor of New York and from the president and vice president of the United States, but it was a letter from a young girl that he claimed meant the most to him. It read:

“Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

King would later craft part of his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech based on this letter, saying, “And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze…. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.”

“And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.”

The 1963 March on Washington set the stage for a dramatic moment in the history of the United States. King established himself as a legendary orator, and the public awareness of the civil rights movement reached a new level. More than 250,000 people of all races attended the event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination through nonviolent means. And in keeping with his beliefs, he began to vocalize his opposition to the war in Vietnam, despite hostility, continued death threats and aggressive surveillance by the FBI.

“And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

On Feb. 4, 1968, King delivered a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Two months later, the same speech was read as his eulogy. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a national U.S. holiday in 1986. But it was not the awards or the accolades that King was most proud of. As his own words stated at his memorial:

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long…. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that’s not important…. I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody…. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

[winston]

Where do You Look for Inspiration? by Kelea Piper

The Webster's online definition of Inspiration is:
A divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation: the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions: the act of influencing or suggesting opinions.

If you think about it, the world would be in a very different place if people did not become inspired by something or someone. From the greats to the average Joe-the-Plumber (I had to give a shout out), in my opinion, inspiration makes the world go round.

Just to name a few...

Thomas Edison, once introduced to the town library at age 11, decided he was going to read every book in the library. He very much enjoyed reading Isaac Newton's famous book, Principia. The book inspired him to be like Newton, who delighted in proving things for himself through his own experiments.

Bill Gates says, "For as long as I can remember, I've loved learning new things and solving problems. So when I sat down at a computer for the first time in seventh grade, I was hooked. It changed my life and after 30 years, I'm still as inspired by computers as I was back in seventh grade."

Oprah Winfrey revealed that as a girl, her biggest inspiration was her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Benton, because "she was the first person that I really could see believed in me."

Michael Phelps played the rapper, Young Jeezy's, songs to prepare for each of his races at the summer Olympics and walked away with a world record of 8 gold medals.

The electric guitar was patented by George Beuachamp in 1936. Beauchamp's inspiration came from a business stand point. He wanted to mass produce medal body guitars. After a frustrating falling out with his cousin in law and business partner, along with the Depression, Beauchamp needed a new project and a new company. He thought about the possibility of an electric guitar and attended night school in electronics. A true pioneer of electric instruments, Beauchamp never lived to see the electric guitar reach its full potential. I just have two words...Carlos Santana.

So then I ask you, have you ever inspired anyone? Do you look for inspiration? If your answer is yes, then you believe yourself to be a credible source that has the "power to move someone's intellect or emotions." That is a huge concept, my friends. Find what inspires you and take that inspiration to the next level. Internalize it. Nothing ventured - nothing gained. After all, the greats were all Joe-the-Plumbers at some point in their lives.

[winston]

If you have the ability to desire it, the Universe has the ability to deliver it. You’ve just got to line up with what you want, which means—be as happy as you can be as often as you can be there, and let everything
else take care of itself.

Excerpted from a workshop in Asheville, NC on Sunday, April 25th, 2004

All Is Well

[winston]

Negative emotion is your indicator of resistance, while positive emotion is your indicator of allowance. And they are on the same meter: allowance; resistance. Allowance; resistance.

Excerpted from a workshop in Monterey, CA on Tuesday, March 20th, 2001

All Is Well

[winston]

Don't You Dare Quit! by Mike Brescia

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Today's Empowering Quote
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"When I was first diagnosed as HIV positive, I was really scared. I didn't know what it really was. But once I understood what I had to do, I wasn't afraid any more." -Earvin "Magic" Johnson

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Today's Empowering Question
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"What information do I need in order to proceed ahead confidently without fear?"

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Today's Fast Session
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Today's message is about hope.

When Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV, like many people in similar situations, he thought it was a death
sentence...and that it wouldn't be long.

Many situations like that can cause a feeling of hopelessness. I know. We all know.

But when things look down, that's the time to start looking for answers. You simply must. When it appears
like you have no way out, what do you have to lose by sucking it up and putting everything you have left into
beating the odds? What?

Never count yourself out. It's almost ALWAYS too soon to count yourself out.

In doing the research for our program I Am Healed Now!, I was amazed to read study after study showing what the mind has done to heal the bodies of people who were left for dead. Doctors are often left scratching their heads when someone who isn't "supposed" to recover comes out of it. The word 'miracle' is often used.

Surely they are miracles, but these miracles often leave clues. Success at ANYTHING leaves tracks. God helps those who help themselves, right?

The body and mind are one. What the mind imagines (visualizes), the body carries out. And not just in
healing itself.

Success in any venture is no different.

This is something you do all the time. You visualize thousands of times per day. You're so USED to visualizing
everyday events so often that you may not realize that you're doing it, but you are. It could be something as
simple as going to the kitchen to get an apple. You picture it and then you carry out what you pictured.

The key to ultra success is to visualize like you do all day long, but for the things that you want in life. Your
goals. Your aims. Your dreams. This is where faith comes in too. This is where your already great visualization skills will help you succeed where you'd be tempted to think that you can't.

But most importantly, (and this is the most difficult part), when some verification comes that what you've
visualized hasn't quite happened yet the way you want, you MUST NOT quit. You must keep going, and make your vision stronger than ever.

Winners don't quit. That's why they win.

If you've been a quitter until now, admit it and get off your backside. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start
up.

You're going to fall down dozens or even hundreds of times. That's life. But DON'T you quit... even if at
first it appears hopeless.

When successful people in all areas of life are talked about, they are often called people of vision. They see
what they want or they imagine the conversations before they succeed. They keep the vision and the discussions in their mind. That is what keeps them going in the face of defeat after defeat.

I get letters daily from people who say they lost hope. I say they lost hope LONG before they recognized it. Listen to your inner voice right from the beginning of tasks and journeys. Are you telling yourself it won't work? Do you tell yourself that you can't? Listen to yourself all day. Every minute.

This isn't only about health. It's not just about business. It's about your every moment.

If we were never to have another minute together, ever, and you were only to take this one last bit of info with you and you used it religiously, then you would have a skill that could carry you to heights that you can't even dream about right now.

This skill of awareness of your thoughts and pictures would not only give you success today, but prepare you for even greater successes tomorrow as well.

Join me. See what you want clearly. Keep the visions there. Visit them often, preferably when you're very
relaxed with your eyes closed...

... And miracles will happen; every day

[kennynah]

"When I was first diagnosed as HIV positive, I was really scared. I didn't know what it really was. But once I understood what I had to do, I wasn't afraid any more." -Earvin "Magic" Johnson

he died eventually,,,,unfortunately.... i guess he faced death squarely...but what other choices did he have....

and so...what exactly was he saying?

[winston]

No one can deny you anything. Only you deny it through your vibrational contradiction.

Excerpted from a workshop in Boca Raton, FL on Sunday, January 12th, 1997

All Is Well

[winston]

Four Important “Yes, Buts…” About Success to Keep in Mind by William S. Cottringer, Ph.D.

“Success is often what is left when you empty your toolbox of the failed solutions that are past their opportunity, but hard to give up.” ~The author.

Two very good cases have been made about our main purpose for being here in life. One comes from the best wisdom of early philosophy, theology, and spirituality and the other comes from the current positive psychology movement.

The first says our main purpose is to live a good life by worshiping God and treating our neighbors as ourselves.

The second says our purpose is to be genuinely happy.

I believe that our primary purpose is really more about growing, learning, and discovering how to be truly successful in what we are doing (in either of these three things or any other ones) and how we are using our life to live out that purpose.

There is certainly no shortage of good information about the topic of success (undoubtedly too much; nearly 400 million hits on Google now), but here are four important “yes, buts…” about success to keep in mind.

1. Our main purpose in the ‘game of life’ is to be successful, but often our whole life is a series of efforts to first define what success is and to secondly discover how to go about being successful, both by the painful trial and error method. Most of the confusion has to do with clarifying what our purpose really is. And then the challenge becomes figuring out how to live out that purpose for the best results, and staying focused on that single priority without getting sidetracked with all the amusing distractions that can easily capture our wandering attention.

2. There is no getting around the practice of defining our own success in comparison with what others achieve, but that “keeping up with the Jones’s chase” seems never ending. And, sooner or later we all have to find our own private, personal definition of what success really looks like in our own back yard. In the end, success, just like happiness, turns out to be what you get from doing what you have to do to get it. Like anything else of great value, we are the only ones who know if we really have it our not; it either is or it isn’t and there really is no in between that somebody else can judge for you.

3. The rules to being successful in this game of life have already been pre-established and a major challenge in life is to discover what these rules are, especially how to do that. Using the right rules in the right way leads to success, and not doing that leads to everything else. It really is that simple, but we can waste a lot of valuable time by trying to invent our own rules with subtraction or addition or waste even more time by not learning from our failures and continuing them.

But then again, the way to know what something really is, is to know what it really isn’t first. The road to that path can be long, windy, bumpy and full of dead ends for some of us. And of course our ego pride in being right about all of this, often keeps us from seeing the real truth, in spite of our incorrect and incomplete perceptions, beliefs, thinking and conclusions which we rarely want to confront or admit to.

4. Being positive, optimistic and hopeful about success is crucial in bringing it about with whatever purpose you have or whatever means you are using; but being this way all the time is easier said than done. Often, you have to become more aware of your own thinking and feeling and start catching yourself in the act of thinking and feeling subtle hints of negativity and doubts, which are sabotaging your success efforts. Revising such subtle negativity into more positive energy can be a slow and painful process (just like I am trying to do here!)

Sure, there are degrees of success, but when these four “yes, buts…” are recognized, accepted and put into practice, the shades of doubt begin to dissipate.

Here are four useful tips on how to keep these four important “Yes, buts…” in mind to be more successful:

1. Keep thinking about what it is that you ultimately want from life (asking why until there is nothing for the answer to hide behind), or what you are now doing at hand, until it becomes crystal clear beyond any second-hand agendas. Then ponder upon how successful you are being in knowing what that really is, what progress you are making getting it, and how all that makes you feel.

2. Start weaning yourself away from the popular “bell-curve” mentality of comparison with others and begin to focus on what it takes to make self-improvements to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Be sure and appreciate any gains you make, no matter how small.

3. Think about the value of slowing down and noticing the connection between what you currently think your purpose is, what you are now doing to live it out, and the actual results you are getting—all in a completely open, frank and honest way. Do this with all your thinking and feeling to notice the presence and impact of subtle negativity.

4. Never forget where the potential and opportunities for being successful come from and continually grow your humble appreciation of this ultimate reality that makes everything possible, including this article.

[winston]

Who Are Your Role Models? by Mike Brescia

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Today's Empowering Quote
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"If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and our remorse will not permit us to enjoy them?" -David Neiswanger

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Today's Empowering Question
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"What tiny step can I take today that will get me another degree closer to overcoming the fear that stops me?"

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Today's Fast Session
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The strange thing about education is that you never know where you'll get it and what shape it will take.

I know that a lot of people have the mistaken belief that who your parents are and what happens to you during your first few years dictates what you can and can't become in life. I hope by now that, even if you haven't reached your potential, you've grabbed onto the belief that you CAN change anything about yourself you wish with the right attitudes and actions.

I know far too many people now who continue to teach me every day that growth can and should continue right up 'til the day we die.

I recently came across a study by psychologist Robert O'Connor on socially withdrawn pre-school children. He
wanted to see if he could reverse the pattern of social isolation in children so that it wouldn't create persistent difficulties in social comfort and adjustment through adulthood.

He created a 23-minute video with 11 different scenes. Each one began by focusing on a solitary child who watched the other children participate in an activity. In each scene, the child joined the group to the enjoyment of all.

O'Connor then went to a number of pre-schools and selected the most severely withdrawn children and showed them his film.

The results were dramatic... In each case, these children immediately began to interact to the same degree of sociability as the normal children in the group. And what was even more astonishing was that a
follow-up 6 weeks later showed each of these children, who had viewed this single video only once, were now leading their schools in levels of social activity.

On the other side...

...the control group, the socially isolated children who didn't see the video, were as withdrawn as ever.

What this study and others like it strongly suggest is that when we have fears and barriers to achievements, it's important that we see other people similar to ourselves succeeding in spite of their difficulties. This teaches our brains that if they can do it, so can we.

Marketers have known this for years. But what I want for you is to be able to control your own thoughts, beliefs and actions as well as the commercials do.

I know this probably sounds like a broken record by now, but here I go again... Read the biographies of successful people. Read about the people who were born in the back rooms of shanties, people who couldn't afford shoes, yet rose up to levels of success that they alone believed they could achieve.

When you meet people who obviously have achieved some degree of accomplishment, ask them how they did it. Find out their beliefs. Tell them what you want to do. Almost without exception, you'll hear from these people that, while the effort was rarely easy, you've just got to believe that it's in you to achieve great things.

One thing I found out from all my mentors (even if they were only my mentors for 5 minutes) is that they like to be asked about their struggle to climb the mountain.

Ask people about their success and you'll likely have their attention for a good long time. Once you do,
possibly your only challenge then is keeping the conversations from stretching into the night.

My point is this... Just like those children, who probably thought, 'Those kids could do it and so can I,' you can do whatever you want to achieve, too. And there's hardly anything as motivating as seeing a person who crawled from desperation and poverty to become a happy-to-be-alive success story.

Use the power of role modeling. It will never let you down.