Master Your Mind, Mind Your Master

If you’ve ever been a fol­lower of Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich,” then you’ve cer­tainly heard of the con­cept of the Mas­ter­mind Group.

The con­cept is quite sim­ple: find peo­ple you want to asso­ciate with, and try to meet with them reg­u­larly. Peo­ple who you admire and trust, who are sup­port­ive, and whose opin­ions you value.

But there’s a big dif­fer­ence between what Napoleon Hill teaches, and the way most groups today are formed. (And in that cat­e­gory I include blogs and forums, too.)

In fact, par­tic­i­pat­ing in one may hurt you. And per­haps do so with­out you even know­ing it.

Mas­ter­mind Groups are great. They can become sound­ing boards to bounce your ideas off of, hang­outs to learn new tips and angles from, and com­mu­ni­ties that allow you to share tips and advice with.

And a whole lot more.

But here’s what I mean when I say they can hurt you. First, let me quote Jim Rohn, who once said:

“There are two parts to influ­ence. First, influ­ence is pow­er­ful. And sec­ond, it is sub­tle. You wouldn’t let some­one push you off course, but you might let some­one nudge you off course and not even real­ize it.”

Mas­ter­mind Groups may be great, but not all groups are mas­ter­minds, either. You got to be care­ful, and care­fully select those groups you want to join (or peo­ple you allow in your group).

And that includes care­fully select­ing those blogs you wish to sub­scribe to, or forums you wish to par­tic­i­pate in.

Many peo­ple auto­mat­i­cally assume that a group of peo­ple want­ing the same thing is the same as a group of peo­ple doing the same thing or think­ing the same way.

Not true, and I’ll come back to this.

The premise behind Hill’s les­son is not to have a group of like­minded peo­ple, but a mas­ter­mind group. The dif­fer­ence is sub­tle, but significant.

A mas­ter­mind is an alliance of peo­ple who have achieved the same things you want to achieve, whose busi­ness or suc­cess you want to model, or whose income you want to dupli­cate. They are “mas­ter­minds,” hence the term.

And granted, some have ide­olo­gies you sup­port and believe in, and per­haps some you wish to fol­low, debate with or dis­cuss on.

How­ever, in some cases many peo­ple in the group may be where you are or they may believe in the same things, but they may not nec­es­sar­ily want the same things or share the same goals.

When I see peo­ple start groups (or blogs, or forums, or what­ever), they turn out to be more sup­port groups than mas­ter­mind groups. They assume their group is a “mas­ter­mind” just because it’s com­prised of like­minded people.

Emo­tion­ally, that may be grat­i­fy­ing. But finan­cially, it can be dev­as­tat­ing. Why? Because when you start grow­ing, you are no longer of “like mind.” You become the outcast.

Either the group will shun you or attempt to pull you down to their level, or you will stagnate.

(In here, I’m NOT talk­ing about groups that encour­age healthy debates and con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms, which are pow­er­ful, pro­duc­tive and insight­ful. And I’m not talk­ing about indi­vid­ual thinkers within a group, either. What I am talk­ing about is the group mind­set that can be detri­men­tal to your own.)

Why can this hurt you?

Blame it on peer pres­sure that can cause you a great deal of dis­tress and doubt, that can sub­tly influ­ence you and take you off course, or that can dis­tract you and cause you to lose your vision and aban­don your ideas… with­out you even real­iz­ing it.

Or blame it on the fact that you are learn­ing what obvi­ously doesn’t work (at least, for you), or shar­ing unpro­duc­tive tech­niques that can only sti­fle your goals. Or your motivation.

Again, as Jim Rohn noted, “Let the views of oth­ers edu­cate and inform you, but let your deci­sions be a prod­uct of your own conclusions.”

Some peo­ple get so wrapped up in debates and col­lec­tive ide­olo­gies that they fail to see the for­est for the trees. They ana­lyze and pon­tif­i­cate. They debate and argue. They whine and com­plain. And they leave money on the table, never accom­plish­ing much.

They “study the roots while oth­ers are pick­ing the fruit,” as Jim Rohn said.

Here’s a true story:

I was abused by an alco­holic father. This caused me to grow up with tremen­dous emo­tional dif­fi­cul­ties.

(Although that became the spring­board, which moti­vated me to suc­ceed. More on this later.)

I con­stantly sought approval and feared rejec­tion — a com­mon prob­lem among chil­dren of alco­holics. In fact, I feared it so much that I became ago­ra­pho­bic and antisocial.

So to fight my fears, I left home at a very young age and dove into sales in order to fight my fears dead-​​on. (What bet­ter way is there to fight the fear of rejec­tion than sales, right?)

At first, I failed miserably.

I even declared bank­ruptcy at 21, because I was liv­ing on credit card debts and loans just to pay the bills. And even to buy food. (In fact, I once lost every­thing in what seemed to be a sin­gle week, includ­ing my home, fur­ni­ture and car. I was lit­er­ally forced to sleep at the local YMCA.)

When I first started out on my own, I was told to “join a group.”

“Good idea,” I thought to myself. So I joined a local group of peo­ple who met weekly. Peo­ple who were like me.

They were based on A.C.O.A. (Adult Chil­dren of Alco­holics), an off­shoot of Alco­holics Anonymous.

It was a great group, the guys were fun to be with and they were incred­i­bly sup­port­ive. But one problem:

Group meet­ings usu­ally start off with each peer dis­cussing their week, how their week went and what they were thank­ful for.

But the prob­lem was, they were all pub­lic ser­vants (not busi­ness own­ers) who hated their jobs, yet jus­ti­fied their scarcity mind­sets and their jobs by speak­ing against entre­pre­neur­ship, mar­ket­ing and sales.

And how do I know this?

(Before I share this with you, please note that this is a com­men­tary about my spe­cific group, not ACOA in gen­eral. And being in Ottawa, which is the cap­i­tal of Canada — much like Wash­ing­ton, D.C. — the vast major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion works for the government.)

Over time, although it was a strug­gle (believe me, it was!), I started tak­ing courses. I started lis­ten­ing to tapes. I started attend­ing sem­i­nars. And yes, I finally started mak­ing sales.

In turn, this started build­ing my self-​​esteem and my self-​​confidence.

One week (and I remem­ber that week as if it was yes­ter­day), I hit the jack­pot. Up until that time, it was my biggest week in sales. I had just made a $5,000 com­mis­sion paycheck.

(Con­sid­er­ing that this was close to 20 years ago, and the fact that I was dead-​​broke, this was indeed the jackpot.)

I was so proud. I was moti­vated. I was ecsta­tic! So ecsta­tic, in fact, that I couldn’t wait to share it with my group.

But when my turn came at that week’s meet­ing to speak, the group lis­tened and looked at me in com­plete and utter dismay.

You could feel a chill in the air. You can see frowns on my group mem­bers’ faces con­tem­plat­ing this hor­ren­dous act I have just com­mit­ted. And it was so silent in the room that you could hear a pin drop.

After I was done, and after what seemed to be an eter­nity, you could hear grum­bling and mum­bling from across the room. They all started rebuk­ing me for my new­found success.

I was dev­as­tated. In fact, the per­son who spoke after me (and remem­ber, we were to only talk about things we were thank­ful for), “Jack” said this:

“I hate it when peo­ple make that kind of money. I’m so thank­ful that I don’t, because it enrages me to see how an NBA star can drib­ble a ball down a court and make mil­lions, while there are starv­ing chil­dren in under­de­vel­oped countries.”

(Not his exact words, but pretty darn close.)

And here I was, a per­son who sought approval being scolded by my group for hav­ing a suc­cess­ful week.

What I didn’t know at the time, how­ever, was that Jack changed my life. His words were bril­liant. I say “bril­liant” because shortly there­after I had an epiphany.

At first, I didn’t react or rebut. I felt so down­trod­den and reviled by my vitu­per­a­tors that I kept quiet for the remain­der of the meeting.

Later that night, I thought about some­thing I ini­tially should have said, but was later glad I didn’t, which was:

“But Jack, maybe that bas­ket­ball player is a phil­an­thropist. And thank good­ness for those guys, because mil­lion­aires give more to char­ity, per capita, than the crowds of thou­sands who come to watch them play (or buy their prod­ucts, or what­ever). Take Bill Gates, for example.”

I’m so glad I didn’t say any­thing because they would have rebuked me fur­ther. But after some reflec­tion, this became the “a-​​ha!” moment that opened my mind.

It changed my life.

It’s when I started to learn more about this whole con­cept of an abun­dance men­tal­ity (as opposed to a scarcity mind­set), now made famous by the movie The Secret.

Which also led me to seek out and join Mas­ter­mind Groups of peo­ple who were not like me but were like who I wanted to be.

The rest is history.

Nev­er­the­less, the point is this: there is a dif­fer­ence between a sup­port group and a mas­ter­mind group. And when select­ing a mas­ter­mind, don’t just stop at what the group is about. Learn who they are and where they want to be.

There’s an old say­ing in my native French Cana­dian, which goes:

“Dis-​​moi avec qui tu te tiens, et je te dirai qui tu es.”

Which trans­lated, means, “Tell me who you hang around with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

So who do YOU lis­ten to? Who do you hang around with? And who’s web­sites (or who’s blogs) do you inter­act with? What forums do you par­tic­i­pate in?

If you don’t like who or where you are, don’t go where you don’t want to become. As Richard Bach said, “Argue for your lim­i­ta­tions, and sure enough they’re yours.”

That said, here’s an inter­est­ing read that totally cap­ti­vated me, and I wanted to share it with you. Don’t be turned off by the fact it comes from an Inter­net mar­keter, because it’s actu­ally some­what of a scathing report on the nature — and future — of Inter­net marketing.

Mike Fil­saime may be a good friend of mine, but his report does bring some insight­ful crit­i­cisms about trends and processes that, admit­tedly, I’m just as gui­tly of.

He cov­ers issues such as over­done prod­uct launches; the overuse of “hype;” the preva­lence in reverse-​​engineered prod­ucts and saleslet­ters; and the growth in user-​​driven tools, con­tent and inter­ac­tiv­ity (such as Web 2.0).

(And it also sup­ports some of the points I’ve made, here, and have been post­ing about on my blog of late. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the sec­tion about join­ing joint-​​venture groups.)

It’s one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing reads I’ve come across in a long time, and I highly encour­age you to read this free report.

In clos­ing, here’s a bril­liant quote from Mike Fil­saime pulled from the report, which made the most sense to me:

You want to cre­ate a ser­vice that keeps blood pump­ing into people’s busi­nesses rather than a ser­vice that requires peo­ple to eval­u­ate the profit they are get­ting from the infor­ma­tion you provide.

About the Author

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