Seems I’m rant­ing a lot these days, and a lit­tle more opin­ion­ated than the norm. Per­haps it’s my bro­ken back, which is killing me, that’s mak­ing me more sen­si­tive or irri­ta­ble. I don’t know.

But some­thing some­one recently said in my copy­writ­ers forum irri­tated me. And it’s not what this per­son said specif­i­cally, but the mind­set behind it that’s both­er­ing me.

In a thread about an Inter­net mar­keter who was recently arrested (yes, it had some­thing to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity, but it had more to do with refus­ing refunds and avoid­ing cus­tomers than it had to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity itself), one mem­ber said:

“There is NO such thing as an hon­est busi­ness man. (…) Ask any accountant.”

Now, I have no clue as to why this per­son said this. And my opin­ion here is not about this per­son specif­i­cally. Again, it’s about the think­ing process that some peo­ple have when they make such assertions.

Per­son­ally, I believe this view of busi­ness peo­ple is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destruc­tive, too.

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“There are many who are liv­ing far below their pos­si­bil­i­ties because they are con­tin­u­ally hand­ing over their indi­vid­u­al­i­ties to oth­ers. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be your­self. Be true to the high­est within your soul and allow your­self to be gov­erned by no cus­toms or con­ven­tion­al­i­ties or arbi­trary man-​​made rules that are not founded on prin­ci­ple.“
– Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.“
– Miguel de Cervantes

In every­thing you do or want to do in life, you are always gov­erned by law and not by chance. Nat­ural laws are prin­ci­ples or expla­na­tions of why things are the way they are. Prin­ci­ples defined by Web­ster are “fun­da­men­tal laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, how­ever, that is the foun­da­tional prin­ci­ple to all success.

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“Strong lives are moti­vated by dynamic pur­poses.“
– Ken­neth Hildebrand

While sta­tis­tics prove that 90% of heart attacks hap­pen on Mon­day morn­ings, it goes to show that moti­va­tion doesn’t come from work. In real­ity, most peo­ple find them­selves work­ing in jobs they hate.

Some wake up in the morn­ing feel­ing lethar­gic and hit the snooze but­ton one too many times. Some work only “for the week­end” and take more time to pre­pare their vaca­tions than they do their own lives. And some who become “worka­holics” end up work­ing them­selves either out of a job or into a grave. In short, get­ting moti­vated by one’s work is impos­si­ble. In fact, get­ting moti­vated by any­thing out­side of one­self is impossible.

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“Often the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful man and a fail­ure is not one’s bet­ter abil­i­ties or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a cal­cu­lated risk — and to act.“
– Maxwell Maltz

Real­ize that what­ever you choose to focus on affects your qual­ity of life, or what Zig Ziglar calls your “stan­dard of life,” and not just your stan­dard of liv­ing. For instance, if you focus on the future by set­ting goals, you may be forc­ing your­self to remain in your comfort-​​zone and prob­a­bly with­out ever know­ing how far you can really go.

Jim Rohn said, “To know how far we can go is to risk going too far.” To reach your poten­tial there­fore, you will unques­tion­ably need to con­front risks. They are inevitable. They are unavoid­able. You sim­ply have to take them if you want your suc­cess­ful­ness to man­i­fest, and there’s no way of tip­toe­ing around it.

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