The Starting Point

Take a look around you.  Do you like what you see?  What kind of car do you have?  Do you see a happy family that brings you feelings of warmth, love and belonging? Are you alone in a one bedroom apartment and a twelve pack of beer trying to figure it all out?  Personally, I have been in all these situations I mention.

Where you are right now is all your fault, for better or worse.  Where you are right now is the sum total of all your previous decisions.  Where you are right now is your responibility, not only to yourself, but also to your fellow human beings and every living thing on the planet.  What happens to us is not always our fault, but what we choose to do about it is our responsibility.

Wherever you are right now, this is your starting point.  Maybe you've screwed around a lot, screwed up a lot or just never made it out of life's starting gate for one reason or another.  Maybe you are doing great, but now you want to change your direction and do great at something else.   Maybe you were a victim of the recent financial crisis and you never saw it coming.  Maybe you were able to get out from under those investment properties and hold your profits...just in time.

If you like metaphors as much as I do, you'll notice that every day the sun rises as a new day begins.  Every day, you have a new beginning.  Every day, you can continue on a path leading to no where or you can change your direction to a more profitable, more rewarding path. 

Every day is a new day and a new beginning...

One of THE MOST influential books...

Atlas Shrugged is easily one of the most influential books in literary history.  It was first published in 1954 by Ayn Rand and has been heralded by students, CEO's, entrepreneurs,  business leaders and others as one of the most influential books of all time.  I heartily agree. 

One day, I was listening to one of my Jim Rohn audios entitled The Art of Exceptional Living.  At one point in the audio session, Jim challenges the audience to learn as much as they can to read all the books and to read the "towering novels."  He pauses and then says Atlas Shrugged.  It was the summer of 2008 and I was just starting to put everything together as to why my life had not turned out better.  I was being very harsh on myself, but then as I would find later, I was not being harshy enough on myself.  I was finding too many excuses and asking the advice of all the wrong people.  For example, you don't ask your broke friends how to get rich, because they don't know.  If they knew they wouldn't be your broke friends, they'd be your rich friends.  This is one of the novels that helped me develop a sense of morality behind business and to help me realize that it's ok to do well.

For example, one of the greatest things you can learn to do is to reap without explanation...

Back to the topic, it has always been a challenge of Hollywood to produce this novel on the silver screen...so much of a challenge that it has been ignored for many years.  On April 15th (Tax Day), Part One of Ayn Rand's classic an novel Atlas Shrugged is coming to the big screen.  This is something I will probably go see over and over again (and buy the DVD set when it is released). 

Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site Today!

Entrepreneur, John Maxwell's "A Minute With Maxwell" Word of the Day!

This is John C. Maxwell. Enjoy! MBN

Every Morning...

Here's one of my quotes from one of my favorite books.  The book is called Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell.  If you're not familiar with John C. Maxwwell's work,  now would be a great time to do so.  This was one of my first exposures to John C. Maxwell's work, but I know own about five of his books I my library and I plan on adding more.

"An African parable captures the idea very well:

'Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.  It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.  Every morning a lion wakes up.  It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: When the sun comes up you had better be running.'

If you have always had a hard time failing forward, then you have to get yourself moving.  It doesn't matter what has stopped you or how long you have been inactive.  The only way to break the cycle is to face your fear and take action, even though it may seem small or insignificant."