Select the people around you with care, as they I hope would select the people around them with care.

When you have decided who should be around you, and that they are not just there by chance but because you want them there, do you listen to those people? Although there is always some chance in meeting people, and if you don’t take some chances you may not meet anyone.

As Napoleon Hill put forth in his book “The Law of Success,” the concept of the mastermind is critical to one’s success. It is almost impossible to be successful by oneself; it usually requires help for most of us. And who we have around us is going to be critical for our success.

How much do you listen to the people around you? What if they are the right people? And how do you know if they are the right people?

Today I came into the office full of energy and started thinking new things, and everyone got me calmed down, started to pull the ideas apart and examine them. This improved the ideas that I came in with making them stronger, and they flowed into much better ideas. If I didn’t have the mastermind of people around me, I would only have my own ideas which are not as good as the many.

How much do you listen to the people around you? If you have picked the people out and you trust them, do you listen to them and make your decisions on your own, with the help of their good advice?

Beware of people that would like to share with you all of the secrets of the world without impute as to what would be the best thing, without really looking at what would be best for you.

Don’t Let the Fear of Failure Hold You Back

Now that we have the right people around us and we therefore have a good group to search for the best ideas, when do you give up on an idea? When do you cancel a dream?

When people talk about being realistic, reasonable, and responsible- what does that do to the people that they are speaking to?

They think that they are sharing the best for the people around them. That they shouldn’t aim too high because they might be disappointed. I have bad news: you are going to be disappointed anyway. So why not go after the thing that you want the most?

I mean, what does it mean to live life if you are not living it to the fullest?

Do you want to be less, rather than more? Why should you settle for less than you want? Is it because we are afraid to fail?

Who fails? Losers? I don’t think so. The more that you fail the more that you succeed, sort of. You have to learn from your mistakes, but if you are afraid to experiment then how can you move forward?

I speak a lot about the Dream Killers all around you, and the two biggest Dream Killers are you and the people closest to you.

You trust the people closest to you, and so you take their advice.

People that you know in authority, you take their advice to heart, and you believe them.

And of course the biggest Dream Killer of all is you. You don’t believe in yourself from time to time. Maybe not all of the time, but some of the time. Why is that? You need to believe in yourself, or why would anybody else believe in you?

So why do we listen to the people around us? What do they have that we don’t? Why would their opinion be better than ours? So what if they are Doctor so and so? What’s the big deal? What have they done in their lives?

Would you have your attorney perform surgery, or would you have your doctor litigate? What do other people know about you? And why would they know something that you don’t?

Well if you aren’t constantly learning and striving to know more then they may in fact know more- but not necessarily about you.

And why are you stopping yourself from being good to yourself?

Why do other people affect you so much?

I know a lot of people don’t want you to be hurt, so they tell you to be realistic, be reasonable and be responsible, because heaven forbid you put your butt on the line and actually try to do something with your life.

I mean it is your life, right? You should at least be in control of your life to some extent, don’t you think? Or should you have complete control. Unless you are in a prison, or some other institution that has you tied up or behind bars, don’t you really have the opportunity to control your own life?

I know plenty of people who think they don’t have control of their lives, they think something or somebody else has control.

Well somebody else does have control of your life, if you let them. Which begs the question, why do you let somebody control your life, when it is yours after all?

At least that is what I think. I think that your life is yours, not somebody else’s to control.

A lot of people would disagree with that fact. But we are conditioned to feel that way. Ever hear the statements, “In my house we have rules until you move out.” “While you are here we have my rules”. “In this company it is like this,” “In this family it is like this,” “In this society it is like this,” “In this religion it is like this,” “If you want to be this political party it is like this” Etc, etc, etc.

Well, what if it isn’t? Sometimes you have to move. Sometimes you have to leave the family, sometimes you have to have a different faith. We all don’t agree on what is right, so why would you decide to believe someone else without examination of the views put forth?

Yet we do believe something. We decide to believe this or that. But why do we do that? Why don’t we just believe what we want to? For one thing, we decide that to be effective we need to use other people’s experiences. The problem with that is that we can’t measure exactly why the other person’s experience should be trusted, so we make a judgment that it should be, when we could just as easily make the reverse judgment.

You see, the only I thing that I think you need to believe in is yourself, and yet so few of us do. Even the people that have all the huff, one of the reasons they have the huff is because they don’t feel adequate within.

Success Philosophy and Mental Models

If we look at the Success Philosophy model, there are 5 things that I call a base: Do, Be, Understand, Develop, and Gain Education.

Doing is just that- taking a stab a life, being determined to make something happen in your life and never giving up, continuing to move forward. You are being enthusiastic, and persuasive in achieving your goals.

But you just can’t do it, you also have to be it. And I don’t mean anything more complicated than being ready to take action when the opportunity arrives. You must be mentally prepared to seize the opportunity when it comes along.

Your understanding of the world must be different in that you are willing to comprehend facts, interpret truths and realizations of what is good for you. You can’t let other people decide for you, life is too short: You decide.

Develop and have growth over time, unfold a plan that allows you to grow and gain wisdom and cultivate your own personal qualities. You will discover that unexpected potential that you have to grow into a more perfect life condition.

We must gain education to discover and acquire knowledge, skill and competence over our minds and bodies.

This is the beginning of the philosophy of life that governs how and why we live.

Why would you at this stage of civilization give up any of yourself to someone other than you?

I love this, I was talking to a person the other day about raising money for a charity, and we were talking about one of the Jewish foundations in the city and all of a sudden they had to tell me that they were Catholic.

I have no idea what that had to do with anything that we were talking about, but the person I was talking to thought it was important that I know. And the way they said it meant that they were born that way.

I don’t think you are born any way, but instead you were brought up Catholic, or Jewish, or any other religion. But that doesn’t mean that you are that particular religion, only that you were born in that environment and you have decided to keep that identity for your own.

Your environment decides what you believe. If you grow up in a poor environment then you believe you are poor, if you grow up as royalty, as a prince, then you think the world is yours and that you are not poor, but you have a different mental model and different self-esteem, along with a different self-talk model.

If you are poor, why not change your thoughts to being rich? If you can’t see yourself as rich, how about well-off, or anything other than poor.

If you are Catholic, why not think of yourself as something else to see what it feels like in your mind. I don’t care if you are Catholic, Protestant, or whatever else, since we transcend political and religious beliefs anyway, but how does it feel for you. Just in your own mind- no one will know.

Is it uncomfortable for you to move out of the beliefs that you have? Of course it is, but if you want to be successful you have to change your beliefs to fit success, or you will not have success.

So listening to the people around you can be good or it can be bad. If you want to be President of the United States someone close to you may say, “Oh be careful of that, why don’t you try to be something else, you know not very many people become President and you are going to fail, so why don’t you be reasonable about what you want to be.” The older we get, the more we hear that we should be reasonable, realistic, and responsible from the people around us.

And what does that do to our efforts to be better, to do something that we want to do?

It crushes them. All of our hopes are dashed among the rocks. We give up our wishes and dreams and hopes before we ever even try. What kind of a life is that? Is that what you want?

“I was born this way or that way so that is how I am, I can’t change. This is the way I am.”

It just isn’t true. You can be anything that you want to be in America at this time. All you have to do is believe in yourself first, instead of what other people have told you that you must be.

So when someone tells me something good about myself, I say “Yep that is like me”, and when someone tells me something bad about myself, I say “that is not like me, and it is just information about how they saw me in their world. It is not about how I see myself in my world”.

I can’t tell you the number of times people have told me I will be a failure, that I am not good enough, that I shouldn’t think something because it won’t happen for me. Crap.

I have the opportunity to be anything that I want to be and so do you.

Success doesn’t mean that you have to be successful in the way that they think, but instead in the way that you think. What is important to you?

Success is the accomplishment of something that you want to do, so why would you want to do what other people are doing? Why would you listen to people that have different aspirations than you do?

Why would you listen to people who would tell you that you can’t, as opposed to that you can.

Life is very short and death is very long, and being afraid of life and all of its opportunities is a mistake that some make. But why should it be your mistake? Give yourself your own best counsel, and then seek out those that would help you be what you want to be, and you can help them be what they want to be.

Why not talk success instead of failure. Why not talk of bravery, instead of fear. Courage is the state of mind that lets you face and push past fear, and you have nothing to be afraid of.

Do other people tell you to worry about things in your life that they and you have no control over? Why would you even have conversations about things that you have no control over, and that you have no ability to change.

Listen to yourself and other like-people. Move forward, don’t stay still, live life, and don’t be afraid. Choose your friends carefully, and leave the ones behind that can no longer be with you. Be sad for them and you for just a minute, and then move forward and be glad you are with people that believe in you and that you believe in. And then what truth is being told.