"IF YOU GIVE UP BEFORE YOUR GOAL HAS BEEN REACHED, YOU ARE A "QUITTER"
"QUITTERS NEVER WIN- AND A WINNER NEVER QUITS"
If you happen to recognize this quote, it is from the timeless wealth bible by Napolean Hill, THINK AND GROW RICH. Many network marketers and new MLMers are instructed to read this book as one of their first assignments when taking on the task of building an organization in a network marketing company and with good reason. The book calls for self-analyzation before one can even begin to think about attaining the attributes , skills, and most importantly, the mindset necessary to attract wealth.
The one thing that I would like to address in this particular blog is the FEAR FACTOR, the greatest leading cause for people to fail in business and in life. We all suffer from it in one way or another, but THINK AND GROW RICH breaks it down into 6 basic fears that hold us back from achieving our true potential. The following are named in order of their most common appearance:
POVERTY
"This fear paralyzes the faculty of reason, destroys the faculty of imagination, kills off self-reliance, undermines enthusiasm, discourages initiative, leads to uncertainty of purpose, encourages procrastination, wipes out enthusiasm and makes self-control an impossibility. It takes the charm from one's personality, destroys the possibility of accurate thinking, diverts concentration of effort; it masters persistence, turns the willpower into nothingness, destroys ambition, beclouds the memory and invites failure in every conceivable form; it kills love and assassinates the finer emotions of the heart, discourages friendship and invites disaster in hundreds of forms, leads to sleeplessness, misery and unhappiness--and all this despite the obvious truth that we live in a world of overabundance of everything the heart could desire, with nothing standing between us and our desires, excepting LACK OF A DEFINITE PURPOSE."
"The fear of poverty is, without a doubt, the most destructive of the six basic fears." And the 1st biggest reason people fail in network marketing.
CRITICISM
"The fear of criticism robs man of his initiative, destroys his power of imagination, limits his individuality, takes away his self-reliance, and does him damage in a hundred other ways. Parents often do their children irreparable damage by criticizing them...(which I might add causes life long hurdles of self-esteem issues which lead to failure) For me, this is the 2nd biggest reason people fail in network marketing. They spend too much time caring what other people think of them or how they will judge them for being involved in network marketing, especially those people judging being namely family and friends. I think that once you've made the commitment and I mean TRULY MADE THE COMMITMENT to achieve greatness in your business, you have to take on a "DEVIL MAY CARE" attitude....strap on a little "CRAZY" and grow a really, really "THICK SKIN". Then and only then, can you set goals and achieve greatness while laughing like a "crazy fox" all the way to the bank.
ILL HEALTH
I'm not going to dwell too long on this one...do everything you can to protect and insure your good health by developing good health habits and discipline over self. I think one of the first things you have to address when getting involved in network marketing is self-disicipline. This means different things to different people, but for me it meant taking physical and mental inventory and start to "fix what was broke" such as my eating and drinking habits so that I could lose the weight I needed to lose to improve my self-esteem. Then, mentally, I had to plug into the self-improvement system that was provided for me from my company...reading and listening to motivational speakers; people who had overcome many of their obstacles and fears and had achieved tremendous success through self-mastery.
LOSS OF LOVE
"This fear is the most painful of all of the fears and it probably plays more havoc with the body and mind than any of the other fears. Careful analysis has shown that women are more susceptible as rule to this fear than men. Symptoms of this fear are:
1) Jealousy: the habit of being suspicious of friends and loved ones without any reasonable evidence or sufficient grounds; general suspicion of everyone, absolute faith in no one.
2) Fault-finding: the habit of finding fault with friends, relatives, business associates and loved ones without the slightest provocation.
3)Gambling: the habit of gambling, stealing, cheating, and taking hazardous chances to provide money for loved ones, with the belief that love can be bought; the habit of spending beyond one's means or incurring debts to provide gifts for loved ones, with the object of making a favorable showing; insomnia, nervousness, lack of persistence, weakness of will, lack of self-control, bad temper.
The more you fine tune and hone yourself, you will discover that everything listed above is:
A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME! Being happy with who you are and loving yourself is the blueprint for being able to truly love others.
OLD AGE
"This fear grows out of two sources. First, the thought that old age may bring poverty." This is so relevant in today's society, because so many people find themselves unable to retire. Many who thought they had planned well and saved, lost their lives' savings in the last market crash. Others have no nest eggs or savings, and must be forced to work until the day they die as a supplement to their small social security checks. What a sad commentary to face at the twilight of their years. Everytime I pass a greeter at Wal-Mart, I strenghten my resolve to not let that be me a decade or so from now. "Another contributing cause of fear of old age is the possibility of loss of freedom and independence, as in old age may bring with it the loss of physical and economic freedom". What steps are you taking right now, to make sure that your parents or yourselves don't find yourself in the "poorhouse" in your later years?
FEAR OF DEATH
Finally, the fear of death, stems from the unknown or lack of faith generated by having no real religious convictions on the subject. The belief that there is eternal life and that this life is but a fleeting moment in the scheme of things, is the very thing that sustains most people who attend an organized religion or have a innate sense of there being something beyond the grave.
Unfortunately, those with no such convictions or notions, fear death as either being just the END with nothing beyond, or perhaps even believe in eternal damnation for past sins which can paralyze and leave a person feeling hopeless, unmotivated, and unfulfilled.
To those, I would just say, read, study, pray if you feel inclined to do so, until you have the FAITH and the COURAGE to sustain you to that day when you leave this planet.
I'm not quite sure why I felt compelled to write this blog. I think I intended it for those who are in the same boat as I am; individuals who have made the decision to be independent and free from financial worry by committing themselves wholeheartedly to the network marketing world.
OVERCOMING OUR FEARS is the biggest hurdle, because it takes a tremendous amount of tenacity and conviction to achieve success in this business. My next blog is about the myths and misconceptions of MLMs and network marketing. I hope you will return for the next round.
