Risky is the New Safe (14 page)

Millions of people around the world are stuck in this self-defeating cycle of sabotage. Consciously they want success, but subconsciously they think it's wrong to even try. And remember, your subconscious mind always wins.

The ego is very fertile soil for creating doubt and fear—or developing faith and belief. You have to be the one who determines which. This goes back to being the thinker of the thought or, put another way, thinking about what you think about. You must become aware of the people and environment around you and the kind of programming you're receiving from them.

To create success, you start at the bottom and work back. You must first take control of the programming you allow yourself to be exposed to. That means sometimes limiting the movies, programs, and even people you are exposed to. And it means that when you know you're receiving negative programming, you consciously counter-program with something positive.

When you have the majority of your programming is positive, it changes your core, foundational beliefs. Having different, more-empowering beliefs allows you to set a higher vision for yourself. Your subconscious mind (the ego) drives you to practice daily habits that take you closer to your vision, and those actions produce a better result.

The well-balanced ego doesn't get dragged out of context by compliments or condemnation. Neither one of those extremes is really going to affect you unduly. When somebody compliments you, you'll accept it, appreciate it, and thank them. If people attack you, you take it in, consider the source and motivation, and if need be, check it out with your support group. In either event you're going to keep moving toward your purpose.

Most people today doubt their beliefs and believe their doubts—don't. Once you have discerned your purpose and follow the steps we've discussed, your ego will naturally channel your energy toward the completion of your mission. Then it's about removing fear factors and doubts. Some of this may come from reducing your exposure to negative people. Be mindful of other people's opinions of you. Don't let their limiting beliefs become yours. You must also be more mindful of the programming you're allowing yourself to become exposed to. You have to be a contrarian and question everything. Just because people have titles, degrees, or positions of authority doesn't mean they are always right. They frequently are not. Always check the premise.

Do you really believe the airlines when they tell you that your cell phone causes problems for the plane's navigation system, but the $2-a-minute service they sell you doesn't? I don't.

Do you believe your government when they say that they want to raise a sales tax temporarily to pay for a capital improvement, and they'll reduce it after that's done? I don't.

You might think if a city needed someone to design their airport, they would commission an architect who had actually been in one, but obviously Madrid, Spain, didn't. (I couldn't confirm this at press time, but I believe J.K. Rowling's idea for the moving stairways at Hogwarts was inspired by the Madrid jetways.)

You probably also think if an airport needed a new terminal, they would hire people to build it who could do so without the ceiling collapsing and killing passengers. But the Charles-de-Gaulle Airport didn't.

Back in the 1970s, our counter-culture heroes like Jagger, Dylan, and Townsend famously warned to never trust anyone over 30. They're about double that now, but I still trust them more than I do the government. (And come to think of it, I never did get those flashbacks they promised me!)

Airline executives believe that a hub-and-spoke system is a feasible way to run an airline. They believe that because someone theorized it, some airline did it, and lots of others followed suit. But there's no rational evidence to suggest it's financially viable.

You might think a general contractor would check the plumbing and electrical connections before he put expensive Italian tile on a wall. But if you do—you never hired the one I did.

Just because someone went to college, studied a lot of books on economic theory, and came out with a PhD in economics doesn't mean they actually understand how it works in the real world. People who can't balance their own checkbook should not be setting government financial policies.

Don't get cynical. Cynics don't attract success. But be willing to be skeptical. Skeptics are critical thinkers; they readily discern negative input and disregard it. Skeptics recognize opportunities that others miss. So analyze all of the programming you receive, even that from your family and friends.

Inevitably, you will be exposed to a great deal of negative programming, so it is vital that you become mindful of it, and program a larger amount of positive programming to weigh the scale in your favor. This means taking actions like finding a good Mastermind group, employing autosuggestion with affirmations, and creating dream boards. It also includes reading, watching, and listening to empowering and inspirational books, videos, and audios. Fear and faith cannot coexist. When you feel fear, profess faith. The prosperity manifestation formula is a simple one:

Everybody's ego changes every day. Yours is always undergoing changes for better or worse because of the nature of your thoughts. In
As A Man Thinketh
, James Allen uses the analogy of our minds as a garden, which can be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild. In either event, it will bring forth something.

If you plant and tend your garden, it will produce flowers or fruits, the things you cultivate. If you don't plant specific seeds, then animals, wind, and other elements will cause random things to fall into it, producing an abundance of weeds and wild vegetation, likely to choke out useful plants. One thing is certain: Something will grow in your garden.

Just as a gardener must tend his or her plot by keeping out the weeds, you must tend the garden of your mind, weeding out the thoughts of lack, limitation, and negativity. You must nurture and tend the thoughts of happiness, success, and purpose.

If you practice gardening of this kind, you will soon discover that you are the master gardener of your success. You will come to the profound revelation that you are not the victim of your circumstances, but the architect of them. That the thoughts you give precedence to will shape your character, create your circumstances, and determine your ultimate destiny.

Control the thoughts you give precedence to and you'll always be moving closer to your goals. You will have a well-balanced ego that can be harnessed for greatness!

Here's something they probably didn't teach you in Sunday school . . . or business school:

Your highest moral purpose must be your own success and happiness
.

If you think that means I'm advocating selling your soul, exploiting others, or becoming a narcissist, I'm not. I am saying that making your own success and happiness your highest purpose is the only healthy, sane way to live. And it's the only way that ensures the survival of the species and the well-being of the most people. In fact, it is the only honorable way to conduct any relationship, business or personal.

Your highest good must form the foundation of your value system
. To make your life, by your own means, according to your own standards, and for your own enjoyment. Anything less than that is harmful to you. And anything harmful to the individual is actually detrimental to society as a whole.

That doesn't mean you won't sometimes sacrifice or subjugate your own needs for others in a relationship, or as parents do for their children quite frequently. The real issue is when that becomes the norm: When you see serving and helping others as more important than helping yourself. It's a sure sign of low self-esteem, worthiness issues, and harmful mind viruses—and that is the fastest way to a life of victimhood, resentment, and frustration.

To be able to give, you must have.

—Mother Teresa

When your own success and happiness is your purpose, you have a productive—and moral—reason to exist. And here's the important thing:

If everyone did this, the world would be a much better place!

Instead of dysfunction, depravity, and codependence, we would have healthy, functional, value-for-value relationships. No one would be asking you to sacrifice for him or her, and you would not ask others to sacrifice for you. That is the way healthy relationships are formed, the way healthy transactions are completed, and the way to conduct business with integrity.

If you tell me your highest good is serving others or even serving God, I think you've lost the plot. In my experience those running around trying to save the world are usually the most messed up people you'll ever meet. Their lives are usually driven by avoidance behavior so they don't have to deal with their own issues. They run around looking for drama, so they don't have time to face their own drama. To the casual observer they look like altruistic saints, but those who know better recognize them for the judgmental, insecure, drama-magnets they really are. At their core, they are desperately looking for acceptance. They think if they rescue enough other people, this will somehow give them the self-esteem they're missing. It won't.

You have to get comfortable in your own skin. No one else can give you that validation. Get yourself in a position of strength and you'll be amazed how much good you can do.

Of course, you'll discover that you do that good for selfish reasons.

If you live your life by the principles we are discussing, you very well may help others and contribute to charity. Hopefully you do. Personally, the number-one deduction on my tax return for the last 15 years has been charity, and I anticipate that it will remain so for the rest of my life. But there are three criteria I look for:

That alone is what determines where I spend my charity dollars. It certainly has nothing to do with who is the neediest or what causes are politically correct.

I support a great deal of causes: The opera, runaway shelters, the symphony, my church, wildlife funds, disease prevention and cures, homeless shelters, scholarships, computers for aspiring entrepreneurs, stage clothes for upcoming singers, and martial arts training for foster kids, sponsorships for amateur sports teams, and holiday presents for hundreds of kids who otherwise wouldn't have received any.

But I do all this for purely selfish reasons, for the happiness it brings me
.

And that is where this all leads to. You know exactly what brings value to you and furthers your purpose, which is a life of happiness. It means accepting that you are supposed to be happy and working toward that end without shame, because you refuse to give in to guilt rackets that are practiced on you.

This is not to be confused with hedonism. The philosophy of hedonism holds that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good. The psychology of hedonism holds that all behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. I'm not advocating either.

Simply lusting after pleasure all the time with no regard for the consequences won't make you happy. In fact, that course will certainly lead to unhappiness, and that kind of instant gratification and self-indulgence will take you away from success, not toward it.

Now this is where the beginning success seeker can become very confused
, because while we are discussing doing things for the greater good, we're not talking about being selfless. In fact, it's just the opposite. We're talking about being selfish.

Ayn Rand is best known for her amazing works,
Atlas Shrugged
and
The Fountainhead
, but her most insightful book may be the lesser-known
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
. Published in 1964, it is a collection of essays woven together for their insights on the philosophy of Objectivism, the nature of a proper government, egoism as a rational code of ethics, and the potential dark side of altruism.

Rand's characterization of selfishness as a virtue brought immediate controversy. When asked why she would choose to use the word selfishness in such a context, she replied to the questioner that she did so for the very reason it scared him.

In the book's introduction, Rand acknowledges that the word selfishness isn't usually used to describe virtuous behavior, but she insists that this usage is a more accurate definition of the term as simply “a concern with one's own interests.”

Like Rand, I also use the word selfish to describe virtuous qualities of character. I take it to mean you value yourself first, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Notice that there is no good or evil implicit in the definition. It simply means that you are well adjusted and sensible enough to meet your own needs first.

Now of course that's not what most people would have you believe
. . .

The collectivism movement sweeping the globe today would have you believe that it is your moral imperative to put the interests of the many before the needs of the one—that you should sacrifice yourself for the greater good. This idea may look good on the surface, but it is actually quite dangerous and will lead you away from success, instead of toward it. Because
we
all are the greatest good.

Self-sacrifice is more than the root of low self-esteem; it is anti–free enterprise and consequently anti-humanity. When the living energy of productive citizens is sucked from them by well-meaning but ultimately malicious entitlement programs, there is no incentive to remain productive. All innovation and development stop and everyone loses.