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Occasionally you need to go back and become a beginner in what you think you already know.
I don’t really know… I only know when I am doing it.
I have, supposedly, got good at tens of things over the decades I have been alive… But my life is showing that good is not good enough.
Maybe in some things I am masterful, but in others I am just good… or somewhat good.
And this is what is going on in my life… and maybe in yours?
So I started with the best motivator: I put a substantial (for me) amount of money on a ‘test’ of getting customers, new customers from Facebook.
The fact that I think of Facebook poorly, the fact that I think Facebook people can’t like me and what I do is immaterial.
I now have invested my money in that, and I’d better earn my money back, or say good bye to it: my opinion doesn’t matter.
This is the way of forcing myself to act, even though I have no faith, I don’t want to do it, all the whining that comes naturally, this is the way to get your motivation high enough… Just like the boys in some famous author’s book threw their hats over the fence that looked to high to climb… but climbed through to get their hats.
One day a boy comes across a dead-end road, and all there is between him and where he wants to go is a high fence. He doesn’t know how to get to the other side. What happens next?
A villager comes along and sees that the boy is trapped. He grabs the boy’s hat and throws it over the fence!
– ‘Hey, why did you do that?!’ he shouted at the elder villager.
– ‘Well, son. Your hat’s over there, and I can see that’s where you want to go. Now, you gotta go there.’
– ‘But how?!’
– ‘Your hat’s over there, so if you want to see it again, you’ll find a way.’
The wise man walked off, and the boy scratched his head. Sure enough, some time later he found a way to climb this hurdle before him.
So this is a methodology I like to use. I have said before, but my ‘machine’ doesn’t like to lose. I am motivated by disgust, or ‘no f…-ing way’ so this is perfect for MY type. But in my thinking, this is perfect for anyone, just make the hat something you would really hate to lose.
So after years of only reading fiction, I buckled down, and started to read Dan Kennedy… who is although funny, easy to read, write about business, marketing, not spies, and detectives… lol.
Anyway, Dan Kennedy, Gene Schwartz, I have even jumped on a 30 day challenge to create a course. Not because I don’t have a ton of courses already… I do. But because reading Dan Kennedy I am starting to see the gaps in my understanding what I am supposed to do if I want to be successful in this thing, called a business.
Honestly, I spent a lot of money and a lot of time over the past 35 years, so one could say that I got an education, but only when I went back to beginner mode did I start to see how much I have missed.
So spending money on a course is not a hat over the fence… not in the least. I did, and never actually did climb through… I camped out on this side of the fence, and created a business that needs me to work a lot, for not much return. Yeah, I am not too proud to tell you.
I have been told by many people that I was sitting on a gold mine for years. In this business, and in other businesses I’ve had.
But sitting on a gold mine and effectively mining that gold are two different things. Unfortunately to me.
So I am back to being a beginner, and I am going to mine a little more this time, with the correct tools. Probably I’ll get another 10 percent to my 10 percent I got the first time around.
That is actually the most you can get when going through a process…
My teacher, Ben Settle, has a habit of reading a book 10 times. It sounds weird, but his numbers show that he is on the right track… he has sucked most of the marrow out of the books he has read. How much? 40%, says Source…
I am at 10%. My own students are at 7%. I could tell my favorite analogy here about men with small things… but I won’t… even if you appreciated it, I’d feel funny putting it out on the big world wide web.
But truth be told, most people, men or woman, myself included, are bringing knives to a gun fight… not very bright.
When I did the first growth course sessions, or was it ‘what’s the truth about you’ sessions? When I asked people about their resources, most came up with less than what make a good dinner, let alone a successful life.
And I am not much better off. I still work myself to exhaustion, but I don’t feel like a slave, at least. That is what 20% bought me… lol. Quite shabby, if I may say so myself.
So I am going for 30%, or if I am very attentive, for 40%… 40$ here I come.
I also have another trick up my sleeve to force myself to do the work. I enrolled a student of mine who is interested in marketing and business to do a course I paid for, that has something to accomplish every day of its 30 days.
So, for example, yesterday i went to bed without doing that day’s assignment. No problem, I thought, I’ll do it in my head… and I did. But lucky for me, he sent me his assignment, thank you, and asked for mine. Double thank you… so I whipped out a notepad file, and did the assignment on my stuff… And to my utter surprise, what I saw I had never seen before. It is not that it wasn’t visible, I just never looked…
So, for me, this little 30-day course already paid for itself, but I still have my hat over that darn fence… and it’s going to take, probably, all I’ve got to get that money I threw over that fence, to be able to make money for me…
I thought you would be curious how people you learn from do life differently from you.
This is one BIG example for that.
Now, how could you get your own percentages up, so you don’t behave like a sieve… but you actually capture much of what you supposedly learn?
There are 225 million pages on the internet attempting to answer the question: How to retain what you read?
What they don’t say is that retention is not the problem, Capture is.
What do I mean?
You don’t hear what is being said/written, because your taking to yourself in your head drowns out what is being said.
You talk about yourself. You talk about the material. You talk about the speaker/writer. You say: I know that. You say: why would I need this. You say: this is boring… and you end up with 1-10% of what was said.
So what is there to retain? Not enough to write home about it.
To stop talking to yourself has two phases: 1. stop listening to the automatic chatter of the mind. 2. catch yourself talk… and return your attention to what you are reading, what you are listening to.
Without doing phase 1 you can’t do phase 2… At least I have never seen that done.
I teach phase one in a little course, The Amish Horse Training Method.
My guarantee to you: without mastering that, you’ll never amount to much, no matter how much you read, no matter how many courses you take, no matter how smart you are.
I don’t guarantee that you’ll learn to tune out the mind-chat… but you can. It is all up to you, just like most anything you’ve been blaming others for.
You CAN learn it… the question is: will you treat this course like everything else you’ve bought and did nothing useful with? Even if you listen to it 10 times, it won’t do it for you. YOU have to do what there is to do.
Imagine having a horse, an Amish horse, and explaining to it that he can safely ignore the noise on the highway, it is not personal. Do you think that will help the horse from bucking when an 18-wheeler heads towards it in the opposing lane? hell no… the horse needs to be trained. And so do you.
I, and millions of people know how to meditate… you close your eyes, and you attempt to not think.
How many succeed? Muscletest says: 1%…
So don’t be stupid. Get yourself trained with the simple audios I provide.
Train yourself to ignore the mind chatter!One more thing: In the Validation Challenge I measure the percentage of what you hear or read that actually heard by you. And I activate the capacity to listen… Even though this is only one third of the challenge, I think it’s worth signing up and have me activate the capacity while you practice and train with the Amish Horse Training Method, and measure your progress every day… sometimes I miss a day, when I am too spent… but mostly every day. I add this as an upgrade for the course.
