Did you know the guy who invented the radio (Marconi) was thrown into an insane asylum when he told his “friends” that he could harness sound and transmit it from one place to another without anything in between. They thought he was nuts.

(tangent: It IS kind of nutty when you think about it! You can listen to a radio station while driving your car or talk to your friends on a little piece of plastic with NOTHING (visible, anyway) there.)

Now, imagine if the people we admire so much decided they’d only do what the people around them thought was reasonable/possible/appropriate. Our world would be kinda boring. We owe all the great advances of our civilization to people who were brave enough to close their ears to all adverse suggestions, eh?!?

As Harry Truman says: “How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he had taken a poll in the land of Israel? What would have happened to the Reformation if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s right and wrong and leadership.”

George Bernard Shaw says it beautifully as well: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

So how about you? You need to close your ears a bit (a lot?) more?!?

DREAM ON!!!

Do you think you can become great? Coupla things on that: 1) EVERYONE can become great; and, 2) As per Ford, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Too often we look at those we admire and think it must have been their destiny to achieve greatness. Something in their genes or astrological chart or just sheer luck.

Huh? That’s just a REALLY weak excuse for us failing to step up to our own greatness.

As Wattles says, ““It is within the power of every man to become great.”

And the great Paulo Coelho echoes that when he says, “I learned the most important lesson of my life: that the extraordinary is not the birthright of a chosen and privileged few, but of all people, even the humblest. That is my one certainty: we are all the manifestation of the divinity of God.”

YOU HAVE SEEDS OF GREATNESS IN YOU!

I hope you already know that and I hope you have enough strength to work on yourself till you manifest it and most fully give yourself to the world. Why? Well, we need it. But, more importantly, YOU need it! As Abraham Maslow states: “If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.”

You might be thinking, “Oh, but me? I can’t possibly be great. You should have seen how I was raised.” Or, “Not for me. I’m in prison.” Or, “Me? blah blah blah blah boring story blah.”

Whatever. You only need to look at so many people like Oprah or Malcolm X or 50 Cent (OMG. Former thug drug dealer turned artist turned future billionaire simply rockin’ his greatness!) to anyone else you wanna pick who had way worse circumstances than you and turned it around.

Of course, the STATISTICS will tell you that you won’t do it. But who gives a *%$# about statistics? If one in a million make it, those are great odds. How many of you are there? Just do it. :)

So, I’ll pick up my megaphone one more time: “IT IS WITHIN YOUR POWER TO BECOME GREAT!!!”

*stops yelling and sets the megaphone down* :)

Campbell: “All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time--namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ~ Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth

Amen. How about some (mountaineer) W.H. Murray and (transcendentalist) Thoreau mojo on this idea that when we really follow our bliss, magical things begin to happen?!?

W.H. Murray: “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!””

Thoreau: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with license of a higher order of beings.”

(So: What’s your bliss? And what’re you waiting for? I say: “Go for it!” And I echo Grandpa Joe who says: “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid.” :)

Are you asking people around you whether or not you can chase a big dream or follow your heart? First, be careful with that. Few people will give as wise advice as Campbell. Most will tell us to be “reasonable” or fire us up with a false confidence that we can do it and see results NOW!!! (Um, not so much.)

Patience! Diligence! Persistence! Then? Well, yah. Go for it! As my Vipassana teacher, S.N. Goenka says, “Work diligently. Diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently. And you’re bound to be successful. Bound to be successful.”

How about Epictetus, the former slave and renowned Roman Stoic Philosopher: “If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

How about Malcolm Gladwell in his new book, Outliers. (Great, fun read, btw. Finished it in one 5 1/2 hour sitting recently.) He looked at the world’s greatest “outliers”--those peeps at the edge of the bell curve (really far from the norm/mean). One thing he found that separated ALL of the truly GREATs: they’d put in about 10 years or 10,000 hours of diligent work/practice before they became outliers.

Did you know the Beatles played 8 hours a day, 7 days a week at a strip club in Germany and logged in more live shows in a brief couple years than most bands EVER play? They *totally* transformed their mojo through constant practice and then landed in the US. Rock stars. But no one talks about how HARD they worked.

How about Bill Gates? Did you know when he was in high school he’d SNEAK out of bed to go to the University library where he programmed from 3-6am. His mom wondered why he was waking up so tired in the morning. The world experienced the fruits of his genius around a decade later when the computer started going mainstream.

How about violinists? Did you know one of the main reasons why someone is either a concert violinist performing solos vs. a less prominent (yet professional) violinist vs. a violin teacher vs. an amateur is how many hours they’ve committed to their practice? Yep. (Magic #? 10,000 hours of *committed*, diligent practice time for the soloist.)

Part two of this Big Idea: You’ve gotta LOVE what you do to put in that much effort. Hence, the whole “follow your bliss” thing. There’s NO way you’re gonna log in that many hours consciously striving to improve your craft doing something you hate. Not gonna happen. It’s also not gonna happen if you’re doing it simply for the external rewards. At some point, you’re gonna get burned out and walk away unless it’s what *really* sets your heart on fire.

So, what do you love doing SO much, you’d joyfully put in 10,000 hours and even PAY to be able to do it?!?

(For me, btw, it’s reading and writing and living and sharing these truths! :)

Campbell: “I’ll tell you a way, a very nice way. Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. This realization of life can be a constant realization in your living. When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, “Oh, I want to know what So-and-so did”--and don’t bother at all with the best-seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem--but he hasn’t said anything to you.” ~ Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth

Love that. This is pretty much how I’ve picked the books I’m reading. When I fall in love with an author I tend to read all of their stuff (I’ve read nearly all of Coelho, Abraham-Hicks, Dan Millman, and most of Campbell, Dyer and Deepak and a *lot* of my other favorites). AND I love going to the back of their books and looking at their recommended reading lists and then IMMEDIATELY Amazoning the ones that resonate with me/I noted while reading.

How about you? Are you *really* diving into the authors you dig and then reading the peeps THEY recommend or are you kinda skimming the surface of a lot of the “best-sellers”? Also, WHO CARES if we can quote a poem or cite the date so and so said this about whatever if the authors haven’t said anything to us and we don’t LIVE the truths?!? The ONLY reason to study this stuff is to LIVE it, eh?

So, two lessons in this Big Idea: 1. Go deep into the authors you dig and really soak ‘em up! 2. LIVE the truths you are studying! :)

(P.S. Did you know Campbell spent 5 years reading 9 hours a day? Yep.)

“Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word “Sat” means being. “Chit” means consciousness. “Ananda” means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.” I think it worked.” ~ Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth

I don’t about you, but, like Campbell, I can get confused about what proper “consciousness” or proper “beingness” is all about. What feels good? MUCH easier to follow.

Of course, even that can be challenging as we’ve been so conditioned to simply do what we’re told when/how/where/why someone else decides; but deep down, we KNOW what makes us feel good. Now, we may or may not have the courage to actually LISTEN to what our heart’s are telling us, but we know. :)

Ayn Rand says this about it in her classic The Fountainhead (see Notes): “Why do they always teach us that it is easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves. It’s the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.”

And Carlos Castaneda (see Notes) shares ancient Toltec wisdom as he tells us that we must follow a path only if it has heart. He says: “But how will I know for sure whether a path has a heart or not?’ ‘Anybody would know that. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.”

Love that. So, how about you? Are you on your path with heart? Are you doing what you want? Are you following your bliss?

Sometimes we don’t know *exactly* what we want (and, in fact, our vision of our ideals is ALWAYS beautifully evolving as we outgrow some past ideals and generally evolve). At those times, it’s often best to simply get clear on what you know you DON’T want! How ‘bout a quick check-in:

These are things that make me feel giddy/blissful (!) to be alive: ___________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

These are things that, well, don’t make me feel quite so blissful! ___________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Now, what can you do to create a life in which you’re spending more and more time in your bliss zone and less time in your “don’t need to spend my precious hours on this spinning green ball doing THAT” stuff?

What SPECIFIC steps can you take to follow your bliss more? Starting today?!? I can (and WILL! :) do these 3 things:

1. ____________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

2. ____________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

3. ____________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

“We are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms. We are built that way. When we have no personal goal which we are interested in and which “means something” to us, we are apt to “go around in circles,” feel “lost” and find life itself “aimless,” and “purposeless.” We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Prescription: Get yourself a goal worth working for.” ~ Maxwell Maltz from Psycho-Cynernetics

Genius.

So, what’s your *major* goal right now?!? Do you have one? Are you moving toward it?

If not, imagine riding a bike. Only imagining NOT going anywhere. Try sitting on the seat, without letting your feet touch the ground and lemme know how that works out for you. Bikes were made to MOVE and, as Maltz says, “A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It is no wonder you feel shaky.”

Love that. If you’re feeling funky, check in and see if you have a goal that really inspires you. My hunch is, the worse you feel, the less likely you have a compelling goal. Good news is that’s EASY to change. Set a goal that inspires you--could be something as mundane as cleaning your house while listening to great music or an athletic goal like doing a triathlon or a big goal like starting a new biz or relationship. Whatever it is, go for it!

Habit. Did you know the word originally meant clothes or garments? Love the way Maltz describes our habits “fitting” our personalities.

So, how are YOUR clothes, er, habits? You rockin’ the style you wanna be seen in or are you still wearing tattered, mis-fitting hand-me-downs from a less evolved version of you?!?

Know that if you want to change your personality, the fastest way is to change your habits. Time to clean out your closet and go shopping for some new habits!

Shopping spree: What ONE new habit do you need to develop in your life?

Closet cleanse: What ONE old habit needs to go?

Have you ever watched a professional hypnotist at work and seen him get people under his spell and then get ‘em to do some *wacky* stuff? It’s amazing to see.

Maltz shares a bunch of examples--from a championship weight-lifter who was hypnotized and told he was so weak he couldn’t lift a pencil off a table (and then couldn’t!) to a football player who was told his hand was stuck to the table--and therefore, he wasn’t able to lift it! He describes another set of experiments where people were POSITIVELY affected by hypnosis (e.g., simply telling people they were strong increased their strength).

Now, the fascinating thing to remember here is that their ACTUAL strength was not affected. However, the power of our subconscious mind is SO powerful that when we simply BELIEVE something, it works in mysterious ways to make those beliefs reality.

Stunning.

So, Maltz makes the point that we’re ALL hypnotized to some extent or another. We’ve been conditioned by our parents, friends, television, etc. to believe certain things. The question is: Are these beliefs the ones we want running the show?

It’s time to “dehypnotize” ourselves and re-program our minds with the beliefs we WANT running the show. As Maltz so beautifully says: “Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you change your beliefs.”

Have you watched “The March of the Penguins”--the French documentary that tracks the march of the emperor penguins to their breeding spot in the Antartic?

If you’re like me, you had to be shaking your head in AWE at the amazing intelligence that guide those beautiful creatures year after year after year after...

Maltz calls that their “Success Instinct.” It’s that somethin’-somethin’ that KNOWS. And, it’s not just in penguins or squirrels or other animals. It’s in ALL OF US. We have a latent drive within us that KNOWS what’s best for us.

Deepak talks about it in his Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (see Notes). It’s part of his 4th Law: The Law of Least Effort. He says, “Grass doesn’t try to grow, it just grows. Fish don’t try to swim, they just swim. Flowers don’t try to bloom, they bloom. Birds don’t try to fly, they fly. This is their intrinsic nature.”

In his classic As a Man Thinketh (see Notes), James Allen captures this intelligence in his amazing wisdom: “The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

And I even named my last business after the Dutch word for “seed” (Zaadz) because I’m so in love with this idea that there’s a force that’s much bigger than us that’s driving us to become what we’re destined to become. (In fact, that James Allen quote was on our stationery. :)

So, the point here is simple: you have a success instinct. Nature has equipped you with an intelligence that is FAR greater than your conscious/rational mind. It’s called your “subconscious mind.” And, that’s why the sub-title to the book is “A New Technique for Using Your SUBCONSCIOUS POWER.”