The activity YOU do toward reaching YOUR GOALS creates the kind of excitement you need to accomplish your goals. Having goals can chase the blues away because accomplishment breeds happiness. I know a lot of people who try to use logic to feel better and it doesn’t work. Can you think of people who you know who do that? I’m sure you can think of dozens we all know many people who do that. Once and a while I’m guilty of that myself it’s just something that needs more attention and self intervention. Logic does not change emotion. ACTION changes emotion and goals create action.

Approximately 95% of all people die without living what they believe to be a successful life. This statistic is in unison with the failure rate at which people set life changing goals and neglect to cultivate those goals into success. This 95% figure isn’t a law. No one is bound to a statistic like this. What this statistic does is reflect a sad truth that only 5% of all people are willing to do the things necessary to cultivate their dreams and life changing goals into success.

Get out a pencil (not a pen) and a sheet of paper. I’m going to teach you an exercise for setting and achieving goals that I learned from a VERY successful entrepreneur; Jeff Olson. Don’t feel constricted by this exercise you can always modify, add to it and make changes later so use a pencil.

This exercise is going to help you envision your success. Envisioning involves doing everything you can to make it real even before it becomes real. You do that by making it physical and involving your senses. When you write it down and make picture boards it becomes tangible. If you say it out loud it becomes more powerful in your mind. The moment you do something beyond the confines of your skull it starts to become real. If you can’t envision life changing success you won’t achieve it. It’s the 95% of all people who are fooled by thinking, “My goals are in my head that’s good enough”. Keeping a goal or a dream only in your mind by definition is wishful thinking, not envisioning. Wishful thinking is like saying, “I’ll give it a try”. Giving something a try just doesn’t cut it. As Jedi Master Yoda Said, “Do, or do not. There is no try”.

There are four parts to this exercise. Write the following down and make sure to leave space between each section…

1.) My Dreams for my Health:

2.) Price to pay:

3.) Plan to start:

4.) One simple daily discipline:

My Dreams for my Health: Be specific, aim high but make them attainable. Be vivid and with a timeline. Without deadlines you leave everything open ended and diminish your chances of reaching your goals. Remember, the longer you wait the more of life you run out of.

Price to Pay: With every dream lived or life changing goal accomplished there is a price to pay, period. Most people aren’t willing to pay the price of their dreams and goals (Approx. 95%) and instead live quiet lives of despair; regret. The price to pay to live your dreams and accomplish your important goals is worth it. It generally includes teeny tiny small sacrifices. On the other hand; the price to pay for regret is far greater than the price to pay for the daily discipline required to reach your big objectives. Disciplines weigh ounces and regrets weigh tons. I.e. A price to pay for a dream of great health could be giving up junk food, postponing purchases, practicing some delayed gratification, initial discomfiture in exercise etc.

Plan to start: The important point is to start. Remember that no matter what has gone on before, no matter how far down the curve of failure you’ve slid, no matter what’s in your past you can begin fresh and new any time you choose. The past can’t be changed but the future can be. Your future will always be determined by what you do right NOW. There is no tomorrow; tomorrow will always be a day away. Your life exists right now and right now determines success or failure in the future. It’s never too late to start. It’s always too late to wait. Very simple philosophies no need to make any of this complicated 🙂 Notice I said plan to START and not plan to get you to the finish line. Initially you need a plan to get out of the starting gate. Your plan will change as you monitor what’s going on and make corrections that keep you on the path toward success.

One Simple daily discipline: It really doesn’t take much but if you do it every day with the compounding affect over time it makes all the difference. The one simple daily discipline could be to workout every day. If your nutrition is bad make a second daily discipline of cleaning up your diet. If you need more daily disciplines add them but be honest with yourself and write them down. The most drastic life changing differences are often the result of the littlest of things compounded daily over time. You don’t need to be a super human here. Anybody can do these things.

Once you have all of that in place create a daily to do list of just a few simple things and check them off every single day. At the top of my daily to do list is “Work out”. Any task that you give yourself, if compounded over time, will make a drastic difference over time ESPECIALLY the seemingly insignificant mundane daily things so make them all work for you. Otherwise they will work against you because there is no middle road. Time will expose you or promote you.

Last but not least keep this sheet of paper out in the open where you will see it several times every day (i.e. computer desk, fridge etc).

If you follow this easy system PLEASE write me and let me know how it has worked out for you. I would absolutely love to hear about your successes 🙂

– Tom

Do you have friends who call you out when you don’t follow through with something you said you were going to do?

Two kinds of friends.

The first kind usually mean well and care about you but will only tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear. They are likely to support anything you do and be all lovey dovey like when you don’t follow through on something you said you were going to do.

The second kind of a friend, like most of the first kind of friends, will care about you but unlike the first kind they will also nurture you by telling you what you need to hear. If you quit on a promise that you made to yourself or anyone else they will call you out on it and try to move you to follow through on what you said you were going to do.

Sometimes we need the second kind of friend. Sometimes YOU need the second kind of friend just to challenge you with the truth about your excuses. The first kind of friendship is more like a poison really and it’s one of the most common poisons in our culture and it’s not just between friends but between spouses and family as well. The intention is good because they probably care about you. But you know what they say about intentions and the road to hell right?

Take on the challenge of surrounding yourself more with nurturing people and watch how your life turns out. A nurturing person will never support anything and everything you do. When you mess up they will let you know constructively and push you to do what you said you were going to do. They will probably push you to shoot even higher because they see value in you before you see it in yourself.

And you should pay that kind of foresight forward! When you see a friend with so much value in them that they do not yet see in themselves you should absolutely communicate that with them and challenge them to tap their potential. You never know whos life you might touch just by believing in them before they believe in themselves and then effectively communicating it with them. That, my friends, is a selfless act that should be practiced more in our culture.

– Tom

Is what you’re doing right now lined up with your priorities or someone elses? Are you building your own dreams or someone elses dreams who doesn’t have much planned for you in return?

Are your daily rituals supportive or unsupportive of the promises you made to yourself and to your family?

What are some of your daily rituals you could swap out that aren’t advancing your life for some daily rituals that will advance your life and inevitably crystallize your dreams and the promises you made to yourself and your family into reality?

Those are the questions that YOU should be asking yourself every day. I do and I’m living my dreams. Otherwise the things you said you’d like to achieve is really just a joke of wishful thinking not to be taken seriously by anyone including the entire universe and it’s powers. When you include others in on your dream, tell them about it, and then don’t follow through then it turns into more of a selfish inaction that can potentially devastate others who might be counting on you to follow through with a promise that YOU made to them.  This seems to devastate children more than adults.  Don’t break a promise to a child or anyone for that matter including promises you make to yourself.

No matter how small or big your life is, no matter what you’ve achieved or have not achieved, no matter how rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, spiritually awake or sleeping, no matter how badly you’ve messed up in your past, you’re either growing or rotting by the daily actions you take brought on by whatever it is you believe in.

Are your daily actions positioning time to be on your side to promote you or are your daily actions positioning time to be against you to expose you? Time is non prejudice it doesn’t have a bias which means if you’re not advancing it’s because of YOU.

The passing of time is your most valuable asset because without time there is no way to get the feedback you need to know if you’re daily actions are working. Whatever you’re DOING the passing of time will take care of the rest.

That feedback that can ONLY be found in the passing of time contains all the information you need to validate if what you’re spending your time DOING is conducive to your dreams, your priorities, and your promises or not. Start paying attention to the feedback of time. It’s telling you if what you’re doing is working or not!

FOR EXAMPLE… If you’ve been working X number of years and you’re still broke then time has validated for you that you’re daily actions are not working. It’s also validating that if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing you’ll always have no more than what you’ve already got. What’s that mean if you want something different than what you’ve already got? It means CHANGE COURSE! And ONLY then time will give you new feedback validating your different daily actions one way or the other so that you may make further refinements, which produces new feedback to meet with new refinements, each time moving closer and closer to your dreams and promises. The key to putting time on your side to promote you is to keep going back and forth between learning and doing in what’s known as the  rhythm of learning, one advancing the other between learning and doing, til you are on a path that brings your dreams and promises closer to you.

Keep making refinements with your eye on the ball and it’s inevitable every time WITHOUT EXCEPTION you will get where you want to be. It’s a natural law of the earth it’s always been and always will be that way. Don’t change and nothing changes. Change and something changes. Pay attention to the feedback through the passing of time to know if it was a positive or negative change then re set your aim and fire again for new feedback. Real simple first grade stuff.

-Tom

Money by itself is stupid in my opinion BUT some of us have got to get over our FALSE altruistic sense of moral value when it comes to money.

– You know in your heart and in your soul that if only you had more money you could afford to put your kids through college.

– You know that if only you had more money you could afford home care for your parents instead of having to put them up in a nursing home, or, taking care of them yourself on top of everything else you’ve got to do and face the real possibility of clinically exhausting yourself.  That’s a real scenario for most people between the ages of 35 and 50 years old.

– You know that if only you had enough money then if something were to happen to your job you’ll be ok and your family will be ok.

– You know that if only you had enough money , god forbid something happens to you, your family will be taken care of.

– You know that if only you had enough money you could afford to eat healthy organic foods and consequently LIVE better and feel better.  If you desire to help others you know you’d be more capable to.

– You know that if only you had enough money you wouldn’t feel the unapologetic squeeze of a merciless economy.

– You know that if only you had enough money then you wouldn’t have to live in the fear that a  paycheck to paycheck life style tends to cultivate.

– You know that if only you had enough money then when an emergency comes up, they are inevitable it’s not a question of if but when, you won’t have to worry about how you’re going to come up with the money.

– You know that if only you had enough money you could buy your freedom and buy back your life to spend your time how YOU want to spend your time and not how someone else demands that you spend your time.

And if you’re feeling ambitious in a humanitarian point of view you know that if only you had millions and BILLIONS of dollars then a LOT of kids in the world who are literally starving to death would be fed and given the medical attention they need.   You know that we’d be closer to the discovery of a cure for heart disease and cancer which we so desperately need.

Imagine if you quit being selfish, you went out there and made as much money as you could and that money was instrumental in finally finding a cure for cancer and heart disease!   Can you imagine how much less pain and suffering would result from that?  I’m not just talking about the agony of the patients stricken with these diseases but I’m also speaking to the pain and sadness of surrounding loved ones.  Most of my grand parents and an uncle, so far, I’ve lost to cancer.  Everyone is affected by this I know all of you are to so I know you know what I’m talking about it’s one of the most relatable things I can think of.

One of my life goals is to make a Billion dollars, donate 99.9% of it to leaving the world a better place than I was born into it, and donating the rest of the .1% upon my own death because I can’t take it with me.  Just imagine if everyone would get over there false sense of altruistic moral ego about money and had desires to make as much of it as possible for the purpose of service toward others.  Imagine what kind of a different world we’d live in.

Here is something about money.  Money isn’t evil.  It has no agenda.  It has no feelings.  People are both good and evil with shades of grey.  Money is not the root of evil or good.  Money is what you do it.  Money has as much to do with fueling evil as does the fork for making a fat person fat.  It’s the philosophy that the person holds that drives money for good or evil.  Likewise it’s the philosophy that the person holds that drives the person to use the fork to cultivate good health or bad health.    It’s the philosophy that the person holds that drives the person to use a tire iron to fix a tire with it or to commit murder with it.    Money doesn’t do anything to people.  People do things to people and some people have a very false altruistic moral ego about money.

I’m not going to vilify anyone who reads this and still has no desire to earn more money.  In fact I am totally fine with it one way or the other.  Mother Theresa was poor and she is among the most selfless people throughout the earths history.  But don’t equate money to moral value because they really don’t have anything to do with each other.

Here is your note of caution…

The thing about having this kind of money is it takes time to build. Years in fact.  I like knowing I’m in the 2 – 5 year plan instead of the 15 to 30 year plan (if you only have a job odds are you’ll never get there anyway).  That time is going to pass by anyway.  Since it’s going to pass by anyway and you have the benefit of knowing it’s going to pass by it’s up to you to decide if your dreams are big enough dreams that you won’t be denied.

In America nothing stops you from being successful and you don’t have to ask for permission to become successful.  In fact it’s quite the opposite.  The tax code in America incentivizes wealth.  I’m living proof of that.  In 2010 if I did not own my own home based business I would have spent SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS PLUS more than I needed to.  Dang right this country incentivizes and creates opportunity.  No one will tell me otherwise.

Take advantage of the great opportunities in which you and I live and live your life in the service of others.

-Tom

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world” – Anne Frank 1952

My job was off shored to India, my health care was taken away from me, I was attending school full time and a half, I had ZERO income, I had virtually no time, my health was in decline… Does that sound like a ‘Lucky’ scenario? I thought I was cursed actually.

The only stroke of luck that I have is that I was born and raised in America. The rest of my good fortune came from my ambition and a willingness to do the things that most of you out there are not willing to do.

Today I have a handsome cash flow, I can do what I want, I report to no boss, I have time, and I have excellent enough health to enjoy my good fortunes. I was able to gain all this PART TIME.  I’m not sacrificing time for money and I’m not sacrificing money for time. I’m not sacrificing health for anything.  That balance IS success. Rich people in poor health and no time are not successful. People with lots of time and no money are not successful.  Success is found only in balance.

Some say, “Tom you’re lucky!”. I appreciate that people are happy for me but I was not lucky by any means except that I live in America.  I had nearly everything working against me two and a half years ago but instead of retreating, drowning in self pity, waiting till things got better, blaming everything else but myself, I cultivated new ambition and a burning desire to act TODAY without procrastination for as long as it took.  Most of you are not willing to do that and that is why I’ve passed up most of you. I actually started at a place much further behind than where most of you are at and I still passed you up because I exercised more ambition and a willingness to do the things most people are not willing to do than you have exercised. How does that make you feel to know there are people out there much worse off than you who are now doing circles around you while you are still waiting to go after your dreams?  Most of you are willing to procrastinate or let your fears inhibit you from doing things you innately want to do. That’s why most of you are behind on your promises and that isn’t going to change until you change first.

The most meaningful part of being an Independent Team Beachbody coach is bringing other people with me out of average and into extraordinary.  The money I’m making doesn’t out rank the importance of bringing other people with me and up to speed on the promises they’ve made to themselves. I’m not selfish in my success it’s not in me to be that way. It is in me to give till I have nothing left until I get a good night sleep.  I’m not retiring, ever.  The more I have the more I’m able to do for you who are willing.  The Team Beachbody coaches in my team are the beneficiary of my all out giving!

It’s also in me to exercise honest tough love and tell you the honest truth even if it makes you angry. If your philosophy is keeping you back, if your actions are wrong, if your way of thinking is devastating you then you need to know about it so we can begin pulling you out of the mess! If you want out of the mess you’ve gotta have the guts to at least see yourself in the mess even if it’s painful. That’s exactly why some people are able to get out of the mess. They have the guts to see who and what they are TODAY so they can get out of the mess of today by becoming the person they want to be for TOMORROW. That’s how some people are seemingly ‘lucky’. They aren’t lucky. They are just willing to do the things most of you are not willing to do.

IF you are willing to do the things that most people are not willing to do then I’d love to work with you. You can be the beneficiary of my expertise and my willingness to give you everything I’ve got so you can get caught up on your own promises.

Here is a sad reality.  Mostly everyone living in America still has a job, is able to make ends meet, are not very happy, and doing nothing about it.  That’s not really the sad part I was referring to.  The sad part is that every single one of those people live in America and aren’t taking advantage of any opportunity out there to gain the things they dream of having.  Now here is the disgusting part.  Remember where I mentioned having the guts to look at the mess of today so you can take yourself out of the mess for tomorrow?  If you fall into this category of wanting more and doing nothing about it then you have to hear this. There are lots of people in this nations past and present who have known devastation, poverty, and adversity that you have and I  have never ever known who took advantage of opportunity that you let slide by and now those deserving people are running circles around you while you still have nothing more than wishful thinking to show for!!  How can an individual who is worse off than you pass you up and run circles around you while you’re not even in the game yet but still just standing their on the sidelines of your own life??  That individual has more ‘skin in the game’ than you do.  That individual has a philosophy that’s driving them forward and you have a philosophy that’s sliding you backwards. “The laws of sowing and reaping don’t say if you need you will reap.  The laws of sowing and reaping say if you sow you will reap.” – Jim Rohn

How many of you out there wish you were in better shape, you’re able to at least walk on your own two feet but not willing to exercise regularly all the while there are people confined to a wheel chair and still doing whatever they can to be healthy?

How many of you out there wish you had more time and money, you’re able to at least make ends meet, you have a roof over your head, and do nothing to take advantage of opportunities all the while there are people living in the same country as you with absolutely nothing but ambition who are now running circles around you?

How many of you experience an emotional set back and then use that emotional setback to keep procrastinating on your promises; all the while the largest success stories in the democratic world are those who were driven by their emotional pains that are far greater than ANY tragedy you’ve ever known?

Why is that???  The sooner you realize it’s not the blowing of the wind but the set of the sail that determines your destination then the sooner you can begin to change the direction of your life.  Position your daily actions so that both positive and negative events in your life act as a stepping stone toward success.  Or let them push you backwards and remain average.

When looking at my own past I am embarrassed for waiting til I was jobless with zero income, no health insurance, no time, and declining health until I finally did something about it.  Even though it was not my fault my job was off shored to India I was extremely embarrassed and felt shame over my situation. I saw my situation for what it was, as painful as it was to look at, and I replaced some bad habits with good habits.  It would not have been possible if I was not brave enough to see ‘it’ for what ‘it’ was so that I knew what I was dealing with to be able to pull myself out of the mess!  That’s exactly how the truth, albeit some times the painful truth, will “Set You Free!”  Free to correct the errors of the past so you can have a completely different future.   So you can set a better sail this year than you did last year to arrive at a more desirable destination.

I hope this helps you cultivate a burning desire in you to do something.  I don’t even care what it is as long as it leads to a positive impact upon others around you. 

Set yourself on fire and let the world watch you burn!

-Tom

I’m so tired of watching the foolishness of Christians blowing up like a balloon saying “god will take care of everything” all the while doing nothing to meet god half way.

“That’s what faith is” says a lot of Christians.

Faith is not about disengaging from your own life only to let god take care of everything. When you step god steps. Stand still god is probably going to stand still. Faith is only putting your heart and belief into something that cannot be observed or measured. Faith is of the metaphysical world. You can’t see it or measure it but you believe it anyway so it is faith. Do you understand faith now?

High cholesterol is measurable it is not faith.  High blood pressure is measurable it is not faith.  Diabetes, obesity, the poor behavior that you model is all observable and measurable it is not faith.  It’s your profound false belief in faith that develops these observable measurable things going on in your body. 

God doesn’t make fake food. God gave us whole all natural ORGANIC foods so that we can take care and HONOR our temple that our soul occupies in our current experience.  Man invented fake food; the junk food that most of you put in your mouths regularly. God did not give us artificial sweeteners and trans fats. Do you think god made artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and trans fats?  Man did all of that.  Do you think god wants you to put that garbage in your body?  Of course not.  That’s why those of you who consume it regularly have all those health problems.

Your body is your temple. Take care of your temple. Honor your temple and your god by putting good things into your mind, BODY, and spirit. You need to actively grow and nurture all 3 every day. Mind, BODY, as well as spirit. Otherwise your faith is dead meaningless faith.

Our kids are dying now at least partly because of the behaviors Christians are modeling. Modeling obesity, diabetes, clogged arteries and sludge churning blood vessels is not godly. If Jesus were around today he’d get all of his food in the all natural ORGANIC whole food section of the grocery store or he’d grow and harvest his own food with no chemicals or un natural fertilizers.  Jesus would not be putting the kind of garbage most Christians seem to be consuming into his mouth. Can you see Jesus eating the kind of food you eat? I didn’t think so. Jesus was the greatest leader that ever lived I believe. And he modeled the behavior he wished for you to model as well. So why aren’t you modeling it? Why are you trashing and disgracing the temple in which your soul occupies in your current experience with the garbage you put into your mouth?  Will you finally at last cut it out and really start honoring your god with your mind, BODY, and soul?

God gave you a potential. We all have a potential and it’s always bigger than we realize. The day you decide you’ve experienced enough, you’re old enough, you’re mature enough, you’re at a place in your life where you’ve decided you’ve grown as close toward your potential as you need to and you’re just going to let your mind, your body, or your spirit stop growing then you are CHEATING, dishonoring, and disgracing the god of your choosing.  The very day you decide to stop taking care of your health is the day you begin cheating god; whom was gracious to give you your potential in the first place.

God didn’t arbitrarily give you potential. Gods plan is for you to live up to your potential. There is a very real and divine purpose behind your potential. I don’t know what that purpose is but it probably revolves around helping people even if it’s just in the form of giving someone hope in the midst of their own struggles. How could you cheat those people you were suppose to give hope to and let your body, or your mind, or your spirit just rot away? Are you really that self-absorbed in your own ego? You inspire and give hope to no one when you do that. That is not what god has planned for you. That’s YOUR DECISION you made on your own without god.

Will you finally step with god and give your faith meaning?  Will you pull your faith out from the status of “dead faith” and actually do something positive every day to feed your mind, BODY, and spirit?  Will you finally do these things and actively begin being part of gods plans for all of us?  Will you finally once and for all and for the love of people around you desperate for hope quit being so self absorbed that you can’t be bothered to take care of your health and begin scoring some victories everyone can see over your own challenges?

– Tom