A typical military boot camp follows a time worn tradition of breaking you down as an individual, and then rebuilding or molding you into the person the military wants.
I know, it sounds Machiavellian, or at least a bit heavy-handed. But the process has been proven effective over generations of recruits and numerous wars. The first step in this process removes your identity by shaving your hair off and then putting you into a uniform without name tags. In the Air Force this process was known as going from a Rainbow (where everybody arrives in various colors of civilian attire) to a Pickle (shaved head and green uniform). Female recruits do not have their heads shaved, but there are plenty of other subtle ways the military deprives females of their individuality.
As you progress through boot camp you are slowly given back your identity in the form of name tags for your uniform (you’re now a Canned Pickle), job titles like Dorm Chief and Squad Leader, and brief excursions into the community where you can show off your uniform and gain a sense of pride.
Throughout this forging process recruits are constantly faced with the threat of expulsion from the group for non-performance or a “failure to adapt.” Fortunately I survived boot camp with flying colors and never lacked for motivation in the performance of my assigned duties—but this motivation did not translate well to my life as a civilian, or to a crazy belief system I once accepted as the gospel truth.
I can remember as a child thinking that I was the luckiest human being on earth. I had a good family, a roof over my head, and three hot meals a day served to me. Like most of us in America, it is easy to take the simple things in life for granted, and it is easy to either forget or ignore the fact that most people in the world do not have these advantages.
But that is not what this chapter is all about. Instead, I want to share with you how my belief system was shattered and I came to realize that to get ahead in this world, and achieve my financial goals, I would need to take action myself.
I know a lot about how the lack of personal motivation, misguided intentions, and a poverty mindset can set you up for failure. Let me tell you about growing up under the delusion that the world “owed” me a living, and that simply wishing for good things in my life would make it happen.
I was the living example of the grasshopper in the “Grasshopper and the Ant” story where the grasshopper spends his summer playing, while the ant worked to store food for the winter. As you know, come winter the grasshopper managed to be taken in for the winter by the ants, where he earned his keep by playing music and entertaining the ants.
By the time I was in my mid twenties I came face to face with the fact that other people my age were achieving financial success, and even retiring from their jobs before 30. This “awakening” made me realize that I was not destined to become wealthy or retire early simply because I wished for it, and felt I deserved it.
One day I stumbled into work and learned that my co-worker Derrick, had quit without notice. Shocked, I visited him at home that evening, expecting to find a disgruntled, or at least depressed young man hanging out on the couch.
I parked in fRont of his house just in time to see him tossing a whiteboard into the trunk of his car.
“Derrick, what’s going on?” I asked.
Derrick smiled and shook my hand. “I’m on my way to a presentation.”
Confused, I asked him about quitting work and how he would survive. Derrick answered me by inviting me to attend what he called an “opportunity meeting.”
I did not join Derrick’s opportunity that day, and I’m not suggesting that an opportunity like Derrick’s is right for you, but the lesson that night changed everything I thought I knew about how to make money, and how to live. The events of that night also led to a paradigm shift in my belief system, and set the stage for a life long love affair with the small business industry.
I made a deliberate effort to learn how and why people younger than me were achieving success, and with a little help from books by people like Tony Robbins and Napoleon Hill, discovered that success is not just handed out to people, it is earned.
I spent the next 20 years of my life grinding away at my goals, and in some cases realized temporary breakthroughs, but success was elusive…
…I had found the personal motivation to make an effort, but something was missing.
The missing ingredient was direction. My headlong rush to achieve my goals led me in any direction the wind blew, where I frequently exhausted my energy and resources on poor business and investment choices. In a sense, I was still chasing that entitlement, poverty mindset, dream of instant success.
About 8 years ago I finally settled into a long term strategy of careful investment and consistent action to build my businesses. In my experience, the harder you look for a shortcut, the more you will find yourself struggling.
Take it from me. I have spent decades learning about personal motivation and how to escape the poverty mindset of a sheltered childhood. If you are serious about achieving a goal, or perhaps building a profitable business and retiring from your job, find an opportunity or investment you can get passionate about, and then commit yourself to taking massive action to create success for yourself.
Don’t be like the grasshopper. They only thrive in myths and nursery rhymes.
Day 4 Assignment
Humans are not designed to work like ants; however, lounging around waiting for a handout like the proverbial grasshopper is not an ideal situation either. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium where you can achieve success, and not kill yourself in the process.
For today’s assignment I want to challenge you to create an empowered goal that will help motivate you to take decisive action to achieve a specific objective. I use the term “empowered goal” intentionally, because I do not want you to simply write a goal statement that read something like, “Make a million dollars within the next five years.”
Goal statements like this are an utter waste of time. Instead, let’s borrow a technique I learned from Viktor Frankl.
Viktor Frankl is a Nazi concentration camp survivor and developed a psychological counseling method he called “logotherapy.” Using logotheraphy, Frankl realized people were more inclined to get things done if they focused on short term goals and action lists. So, rather than simply say you want to make a million dollars in five years, a better approach would be to focus on the specific tasks necessary to achieve that goal, and then break those tasks into small chunks.
Consider this empowered goal statement:
“Create and hand deliver 500 flyers for my office janitorial business to local businesses during the next 30 days.”
This is a specific activity that you can visualize, wrap your arms around, and complete. Plus, if your long term goal is to build a janitorial empire, this activity directly supports that goal.
Write a short term empowered goal today that will help you move towards your long term objective.
David Bach was voted “Favorite Financial Advisor of 2011” by www.bankrate.com, and while I did not place a vote in this selection, I have to agree. After Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen, Bach has influenced my financial and business thinking more than any other author.
In one of his free videos at YouTube, he talks about “not making your finances automatic” as the number one mistake most of us make when it comes to our finances. Based on what I know from reading his books, the concept of making your finances automatic pertains to both “making money,” and “spending money.”
As part of your boot camp training, I want you to read his short book, “The Automatic Millionaire,” and then visit YouTube and do a search on his name. I can assure you an hour or two spent with David Bach will give you the knowledge equivalent to a 40 hour college course in money management.