Revenge

Recently heard in some movie: Revenge is the best motivation. I wish it were. Boy, do I have a reason to wish for a revenge! And I do -- just not badly enough, I guess.

The funny thing is, though, when it comes to a revenge some people (the warriors) choose to win by becoming successful -- way more successful than their adversaries can ever imagine; others (the haters) prefer to win by sabotaging their adversaries' success; and the third group (the sorry asses) does neither. The sorry asses simply open their mouthes or sharpen their pencils and vomit their lies all over their adversaries' lives.

The first method is the most constructive one and can be used for business or personal motivation. The second one can be fun for a short while, but mostly does nothing constructive. This type of revenge is often used by people who desperately need another hobby. And the third method is used by brain dead folks who are incapable of anything else.

Nepotism

Nepotism is an unofficial taboo topic in business and success publication. Not that books and magazines don't mention family ties at all -- they mention it casually as if "connections" played no or very little role in a successful career of a person in question.

Lets take Donald The Trump, for example -- Great Trump as some people call him. I don't know what's so great about him, but whatever. A son of a successful real estate developer simply continued family tradition. Where would he be without his father paving the way? Who knows...

An heir to the Estee Lauder fortune and the head of the global Estee Lauder advertisement, Aerin Lauder -- where would she be without family ties?

Clans in Big Business (Big Politics, Major Motion Pictures, etc.) are so numerous, it's almost a miracle when someone without strong connections manage to get in on this game.

The nepotism in business isn't a problem. The problem is with all those "success" articles that shamelessly distort the truth of how that success was achieved. They create a Cinderella story, a hard-work-will-get-you-anywhere story, where there is none.

Donald Trump I've mentioned already. Another one is Tony Robbins story - a legend of a poor fat boy who suddenly believed in himself and achieved impossible. A lie, if there was one. Before Tony went to work for himself and became famous, he worked for many years for a a legendary motivational speaker Jim Rohm. That's where he learned his presentation skills, motivation skills, that's where he perfected his public speaking. So see, there was no sudden revelations, no overnight motivations, no self-made man Tony. Jim groomed Tony, then Tony left Jim and went on his own. It's not a bad story, just not such a glitzy one.

I used to subscribe the Success magazine. Then, I got tired of being lied to. Some people think that a pretty lie isn't a lie, but a motivational story. I have my doubts about it being motivational, but it's certainly The Story That Sells. That's why they concoct them by the dozen.

Routine

Sometimes I wonder where people get their strength to go though with daily routine. To get up at 7 or 6:30 in a morning, get dressed, have for breakfast the same thing they had yesterday... Then again, maybe it's not strength.

I had an interesting conversation with the psychologist who specialize in child development. She said children like the same stories to be read over and over to them because it's comforting. Because when they know the story, they feel mastery over it, they feel in control -- a perfect routine if there ever was one.

To say I was surprised is to say nothing. My parents read me stories too. I loved it. And... I wanted a new story each time -- not an old one. Maybe I was born without a routine gene -- a mutation of sorts. A routine which is comforting to other people is irritating to me.

But isn't the whole world -- Western and Eastern build around a routine? How well, then, people without a routine gene survive in it? I'd like a statistic, please. We know, of cause, about successful ones - Leonardo daVinci, for once. What about the rest of us?

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Photo: Mnemonick

Fear: Summing It Up

As Rich Schefren recently noted, we are always just one obstacle away from our dreams. I thought about it for a while, looked around at people I know or knew in a past, and looked at myself... Guess what? As far as I can see, he's right.

What I disagree with, though, is the way Rich "handles" this obstacle. He kind of says, Ok, you are one obstacle away from your dream. Now, go figure out what it is.

After I read his Entrepreneurial Emergency, I spent a few hours trying to figure out what my obstacles are. I came up with four of them, while still not being sure whether those were my true obstacles or the derivatives of them. There was nothing to check them against. It didn't seem to be very logical not to have clear guidelines to such an important matter.

And then I had an "Aha" moment. When I say "then" I don't mean "right then". The "Aha" happened a couple of months later, but it was like the final piece in a puzzle. Suddenly everything became clear and logical. THERE ARE ONLY TWO CANDIDATES FOR THE POSITION OF AN OBSTACLE: HOW WE THINK and WHAT WE FEAR. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but always one of them is dominant. And the rest of what might look like obstacles are just the resulting effects of either one or the other.


There could be numerous ways of erroneous thinking (some of them are listed on the chart here), but there are only two basic things we fear. Think about it: no matter what object or situation we are afraid of -- public speaking, failure, spiders, etc. -- it always comes to two basic things -- fear of pain (physical, mental, emotional) or fear of death.

So, there you have it:

There is only one main obstacle that stays in a way of your dream. And it's either mental in a form of erroneous thinking or emotional in a form of fear.

As fear of death is rather unlikely to become an obstacle to building an internet business, there is only one other fear that could get in a way of fulfilling an entrepreneurial dream -- fear of pain.

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Photo: basic.ru

Motivation

Ask me to save someone's day, be a hero, and I'll be working like a dog. Ask me to do the same work for my career advancement or a financial gain and each step I'll have to take will feel like an enormous and painful effort. The majority of people have it the other way around.

I don't know how I got to be this way -- no one with the hero complex was around when I was growing up. But the question is, how can I work this thing into my motivation for building an internet business?

I am coming up with a big fat blank.