In network marketing we are told that the power of duplication is the key to growing a larger organization. It is, but that is if we are doing what is necessary to be worth duplicating. If you are doing the steps necessary for building a successful sales organization and you teach others how to do the same, and they do it, you can see exponential growth that over time can make you wealthy. The challenge is, and you can ask yourself this question: “am I doing what I should be doing? Do I set goals for myself? Do I work on my own personal development? Do I read inspirational books? Did I make a list of prospects and did I contact them? Do I operate from a mindset of contribution, thinking first about how I can help others and not focusing on how much money I can make from the efforts of others? What can I do to help others succeed?” Giving attention to contribution is better than operating from a sense of greed.
I also learned that if I were to set a goal for the highest level in the company, find out how others have achieved that goal, focus on that goal and method for part of a day, then let it go and go to work like my hair is on fire finding people who would be willing to duplicate my efforts.
DUPLICATE ME?
QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
Whenever I start writing here, I am never sure what I will say until my fingers start moving over the computer keys. Prior to that, I ask my Higher Power, who many of us call God, to give me the words to say so that I can at least help someone improve their life. I also used that before making major decisions, before painting a painting, or before making a speech. If Divine guidance is involved, I have a better chance of saying and doing the right thing. The hardest parts of this is keeping my head out of it and not trying to figure out what to say. So this is what I am doing now. What I have learned to believe is that when we relinquish control to the Almighty Power, life gets easier. The hard part of life is when we live it without turning our will over to this Higher Energy. Trust is the other part of the equation. When we choose to do this we have to trust that what is coming through us is the right thing. Here is where I choose to let go and let the words come through. I have learned to believe that every man, woman, and child can do this and if they want to be truly happy, they have to learn this as well. Maybe this is what they call the “Quest for the Holy Grail.”
WE ARE ADAM AND EVE
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When I came out of my coma in ICU at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, after having a double lung transplant, I was hallucinating and experiencing a dream that seemed real to me, of many different situations morphing from one to another. It seemed that I was really experiencing seeing stones turn into people, walking through walls into other scenes, people turning into soldiers who are killing each other, people making love, people being happy and singing songs, etc. The stories never ended they just ran one into another. When the hallucinating eventually dissipated after a few days, I started to think about why I was experiencing these stories. I realized that it is similar to our lives, and our lives are just stories that we created, appearing that they are really happening, but are merely a figment of our imaginations being drawn into a physical experience. Why was I having these vivid dreams? Doctors said it was as a result of anesthesia, and many patients reported having them. I don’t know. I believe that life gives us lessons to help us realize who we really are. I also believe that I experienced these stories to show me how well indoctrinated with garbage, received through all of my senses, that my subconscious computer mind was inundated with. Just mental crap that I have given some attention to during my lifetime. This crap surfaced at a unique time when I was mentally vulnerable to seeing it as real.
I wondered if this is the way I experience life, how many others do the same. Probably we all do. What makes us different? Or are we? Mark Nepo, in his wonderful “the Book of Awakening,” says “imagine that each one of us is a spoke in a wheel, and, that each spoke is essential in keeping the wheel whole, no two spokes are the same. The rim of the wheel is our living sense of community, family, and relationship, but the common hub where all the spokes join is the one center where all souls meet. So, as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core, I come upon the one common center where all lives begin. In that center, we are one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both unique and the same. For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all—that moment of unity is the atom of God.”
Through my experience with pulmonary fibrosis and getting my health back through a double lung transplant, I have come to realize that we are all one. No matter what we have experienced in life, we all see the same beauty and feel the same pain even though we act and speak in different ways. “I know now that each being born, inconceivable as it seems, is another Adam and Eve.”
PROSPERITY IS A STATE OF MIND
Prosperity and abundance are a state of mind and of being. I learned that if I expect success, opportunities for success will come my way or appear to me, and if I ACT on those opportunities, the success usually comes as well. There are also subconscious beliefs that can set us up for failure as well as success. Deep set beliefs that “I am not worthy of success,” or “I don’t deserve to keep this,” or “I don’t really care about money and abundance, I just want to earn enough to live on,” will all give you what you say, and when that happens one may wonder why they are not having prosperity even though they work hard to earn more. We all deserve to have all the abundance that we want, the problem for most people is that they were trained to believe that they are not capable or don’t deserve abundance by those who were their mentors growing up. We all have thoughts that were conditioned early in our youth. Some of those thoughts are self-inhibiting, and if we are to achieve more than we have in the past, some of those habitual thoughts need to be overridden and replaced by new thought habits that empower us to grow. That can be done by practicing thinking and saying what we want as if it already happened. These are called affirmations or positive self-talk statements that concentrate on our goals and dreams. If we make this kind of positive self-talk a habit, we will experience more and more success and abundant living than if “we keep doing what we always did.” Which is also the definition of INSANITY: if we “keep doing what we always did, expecting different results.”
WE ARE CONNECTED
I do know that there is a Supreme Energy or Higher Power that many of us call God, that permeates all things, and that we were made in the image and likeness of that Supreme Being on an energy and spiritual level. This Supreme Energy is all powerful and capable of whatever it chooses to make happen, and since we were made in its image and likeness, so are we able to make whatever we want to happen to occur, mainly through concentrated thought and the intense feelings those thoughts bring. When we are tuned into or operating in harmony with this Higher Power or are “being in the zone,” we create on a higher level than when we are blocked through fear from being in that “zone.”
There are many disciplines that are designed to help us to get in tune with this Higher Power , such as Yoga, QiGong, transcendental meditation, walking in the forest, quietly sitting by a waterfall or the ocean as well as the many other meditative teachings that bring us to the present moment and sometimes lead us into a state of peace and bliss. It is in this present moment when time does not exist that we can see the “face of God,” and know that we are part of this Grand Force. This Force can be compared to the ocean where we also are a drop of the water from that ocean, and are like in kind. We are not “the ocean” but are made up of the same elements and therefore are part of that ocean.
COMPASSION
COMPASSION
We need compassion for people. If someone seems grouchy or nasty, they are not bad people, they are just people who have had their hearts broken. What we must do it learn how to listen to others without judging them. Everyone is a good person or wants to be, even if their behavior is not liked by many of the people that make their acquaintance. People build up shells of protection around themselves because they have felt hurt in the past. Once they know that you care enough to listen to them, they often open up to you and let you know their real feelings. Once they know they can trust you, you can help them.