Neil Morgan is a colleague of mine who is working with our friend Ken Kragen, the manager of many superstars and conceiver and organizer of projects such as “We Are the World”, “NetAid”, “Hands Across America” and parts of “LiveAid”, on a spectacular new project called “Hands Around Our World”. Neil reminded me of the following great advice.
It is from an old audio tape from the eighties from Tony Robbins. Hearing it again I thought it was very insightful for these economic times. I’ve summarized some points below;
We all have our tragedies, some worse than others but it’s how we deal with them that matters. By managing these 5 key emotions it will assist you in achieving wealth and happiness.
1. You must learn how to manage frustration – Frustration is one of the greatest silent killers of dreams on the planet but you’ve got to learn to handle it, how to use it and how to break through it. A lot of people often say I’m too frustrated to try again; frustration is what stops people and more importantly it turns a positive attitude into a negative one. A negative attitude wipes out self discipline. It takes away the desire to make you do what is necessary to get something done. How many times have we worked on a big sale and put everything into it and then people come back and say they changed their mind, this is frustration and it happens to everyone. You need to learn to turn frustration into fascination. Change your attitude, change your state of mind and look at it from a different angle. People say if you get more success you will get less frustration, well that’s rubbish so if you can learn to manage frustration and control that emotion you are well on your way.
2. You must learn how to manage rejection – This is the second biggest killer of dreams, if there is anything you want to create in life such as developing a new product or idea I’ll guarantee you’re going to have to face rejection. Did you know Sylvester Stallone was turned down over 1000 times for his Rocky script, sometimes many times by the same agent, people said he looked stupid, he sounded stupid but he didn’t give up and people that don’t give up realize that the key to success in life is achieving massive amounts of rejection. The more rejection you get the more acceptance you get and more success you get, it’s a numbers game. People that learn how to manage frustration and rejection are in the minority in our culture but these are the people that do very well.
3. You must learn how to handle financial pressure: Financial pressure can weigh on you and create enormous emotional stress but the more you earn the more you tend to spend. Billionaires still have enormous pressure. You need to learn to manage the money you have, don’t let money be your master, you need to master it. Relationships break down because of it, friendships breakdown because of it. But it is simple, in life the more people you serve and the more people you help the more that will come to you, which is what you need to focus on. If you change your thinking processes and focus not on what you get but on what you can give, money will flow and the pressure will ease.
4. You must learn how to manage complacency. So you might be doing well but you must not live in your comfort zone, it’s not by what you get but what you become that makes you happy. You must continue to grow, don’t get too comfortable it’s a killer. Learn to judge yourself by your goals and not by your peers. Pay careful attention with who you associate with, the people you associate with is critical and plays a major role in what you are willing to accept and impacts your values. It’s been said the 5 people you talk to most in a week is a reflection of your life. Don’t let negative people infect your mind. Put yourself in a position to growth.
5. Always give much more than you expect to receive. This is the formula for wealth and happiness – if you can focus on what can I give you’ll never have to worry about what I can receive, as you’ll always get much more back. When you love what you do it’s not so much of a task. The secret to living is giving. Put simply if you focus on selling you’ll do ok, but if you focus on how to change lives through your work and the service you do on a daily basis and give people the emotions they want through your personal product then you will become wealthy.
Great advice in the 1980’s…great advice now. Thank you Neil.
I run a rehabilitation program where we get prison inmates to write poetry to help them cope with their emotions. I call it Prose and Cons