Mickey’s Corner: Three Gifts in Three Minutes

Have you ever been to a motivational seminar, and heard the speaker ask, “how many of you want to become more successful?” I love that question, which makes about as much sense to ask as this one,”How many of you would you rather breathe oxygen than anthrax?”

Of course, you want to become successful! No one really wants to be a failure, or at least, no one that I know of. The fact is, if you did not want to be successful, you would not have chosen to be in the financial services profession and you would not be reading this today.

In exchange for three minutes of your time, I’d like to extend three gifts in the form of quotes that I believe will help you capture that success by putting you in control of your life and career.

Wisdom of Earl Nightingale. Many years ago I heard an audiotape by Earl Nightingale, which I still listen to today. The funny thing is the older I get, the truer it gets. His message on this tape, which remains the first and only gold record self-help audiotape ever created, is timeless. On it, he said that the great philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed with each other on many things, but there is one thing they have all consistently agreed upon: “We become what we think about.”

It was what he called, “The Strangest Secret.”  In other words, what we focus on expands. He likened a person without goals, to a ship without a rudder, and that every time a ship leaves the harbor, they have a destination in mind, and like a ship’s captain, we will move in the direction of our most dominant thoughts. He also said that our brain is like fertile land, and it will grow whatever we plant in it, whether it is corn or nightshade, a deadly poison. Positive or negative, our brain will return what we plant, thereby becoming what we think about.

The Law of the Farmer. The second quote is no doubt one that you have heard before. It has come to be known as the Law of the Farmer. It goes like this: “We reap what we sow.”

 

Put another way, everything you do has consequences and a certain cumulative effect.  If you have enough water rushing down a stream at a fast pace, it will carve grooves into rock, even though rock is a firm substance. The cumulative effect of enough wind will knock down trees. The very building you are in right now is only able to stand due to the cumulative effect of each brick. Even the greatest paintings and portraits are merely an accumulation of repeated brush strokes.

 

And so, you must expect the same of your career. Every one of us, whether we want to admit it is a sum total of everything we have done up until this time, and that won’t change a year from now, or even 5 or 10 years. If you want to harvest more in the future, plant more quality seeds now.

 

Secret from the Kinder Brothers. My third gift is really a piece of advice that I never heard put quite as well as it was by Jack and Garry Kinder, of Kinder Brothers International. “Measure and monitor what matters most.”

 

If you truly want to grow, you have to keep score and be accountable. And the main person you have to be responsible to, is the one sitting in your seat, the one who stares back at you in the mirror, as the poem goes. But you’re never going to know how well you’re doing and where you can improve, unless you keep score and critique yourself on a regular basis by measuring and monitoring what matters most.

 

There you have it, my three gifts I give to you in three minutes. Remember to combine them with quality, sincerity, and honesty, as well as strong client relationships. Pass them on as your gift to others, but remember to take them to heart. May your best days be still ahead!  It’s up to you.