iMindShift with Steve Chandler

Stupid Question Number One: Do I need a college degree to make good money in today's world?

      Credentials were vital in the old world---the world of my father and mother. 

     You'd apply for a job and people would say, "Where did you get your degree?" or "What's your degree in?"

     "Alcoholism," I would say.  "Bankruptcy and divorce."

     And you know what?  They didn't care.

     Oh, they weren't exactly happy with my credentials.  But they moved quickly to the next question-the question they really wanted to ask----"Can you help us?"

     Yes, I think so, or at least let's do a pilot seminar, a trial workshop and find out.  I ended up training more than 20 Fortune 500 companies that way and a couple hundred smaller businesses, schools and organizations.

     Not because of my credentials.  But because I could help.  I could serve.

     That's good news for all of us today.  It's no longer who you know or what your credentials are, now it's WHAT YOU CAN DO!

     This allows you to build your skills and deepen your professional strength any way you like.  It's all online now.  What do you want to learn how to do?  It's all right there.

     A woman client told me not long ago in subdued, breathy tones (the kind of voice reserved for the most sacred stories of suffering and victimization, stories that have formed the helpless robot), "I am sad that I never had the education that I should have had.  Not being given that educational advantage, my ability to get a high-paying job has been limited."

     And I could hear the hushed reverence in her voice as she described the tenets of her victim religion.  It was deeply personal for her, and the fact that she was "sharing" her weakness with me was an example of how "authentic" she had learned to be.

     Except for one little thing.  One flaw in the presentation:  it was all nonsense.  She could have learned anything any time including now.  This now, yes.  This very minute inside this very day today.

     People hire you today because of what you can do.

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    Why not think big??

     So if the Coaching Prosperity School was a success, as it was, why not think bigger?   Why not always keep thinking bigger?  Not out of greed, but out of keeping my brain alive, active and growing?

     Almost a physical thing.  Fending off dementia by practicing the discipline of thinking big.  Like an entrepreneur thinks.

     So how about the All of Humanity Prosperity School?  It expands the target market dramatically.  And it eliminates a lot of the pacing and cursing and worrying I had been doing.

     Remember, that one of the guiding principles of wealth creation is not to worry.  And the best way not to worry is to have a project you are engaged in.  Without a project, you descend into worry.  Your "project" becomes worrying.  The mind has to spin somewhere, and if it can't gear into a creative project it will look outward and worry about other people and the world at large.

     As I was.  Worrying about political matters and the recession and the depression.

     So my project became the All of Humanity Prosperity School.  And you can sign up for the school yourself by Googling the Wealth Warrior Movement or going here: (http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html) 

     That's it.

     That's the school. 

     Do you qualify for admission?

     Are you part of humanity?  Doesn't feel like you are at the moment?  Not a group you'd like to be associated with?

     So why am I even saying all this (risk all!)?  This shouldn't be inside a blog, this should be outside as an ad, (I'll put it there, too!)

     Because we have become afraid to sell and communicate our value.  All of us.  So why say that in a blog and then be afraid in that same blog to do it?

     Remember the doctor in the village.  The doctor was shy and unassuming.  He didn't want people to think of him in a certain way, so he kept to himself and a little girl died whom he could have saved.

     Maybe I could save someone, too.

     Maybe someone does better with audio than with books and I had a program with lots of webinars and audio programs about how to create wealth but I was too afraid to mention it inside my blog because of what people would think.  I would be like the doctor.

     Plenty of people don't read these days.  They don't like it.  But they listen.  They listen in their cars, they listen on the treadmill at the gym, they listen on a walk through the woods.  They listen in bed at night.  That's why I make so much audio.  My clients use the audio.

     My next audio is going to be about the doctor's fear of self-promotion.  It's related to an earlier audio I made on PLEASING vs. SERVING.  How we confuse the two.  How we stay broke because we confuse the two.  How our communications and bad time management are focused on pleasing people and winning their approval instead of serving people and receiving payments for the service.

     My next program will be about your SOCIAL SELF vs. your PROFESSIONAL SELF.

     We sure know how to socialize and relate to society.  We have been trained in that 24/7 since we were children.

     "Be good!" Mother used to say.  "Thank your Grandma," Father would command.  All day long we were trained to develop that social self so that it could be consistently pleasing.

     But things go wrong when we are older.  We give away too much in negotiation.  We become horribly weak and impotent at self-promotion.  Worse, we believe self-promotion is immoral.  Disgusting, even.

     "Don't brag!" Father used to say.  "Don't look so conceited."

     Telling the village that you were a doctor and a very qualified one would have gone against all your years of training and programming.

     Talking about audio programs in a blog carries the same taboo:  "Right there he entered the sleaze zone!  His credibility was lost right there.  Previously I had seen him as an altruistic man, out to heal the planet's poverty, but talking about his audios showed me who he really was.  He is Satan."

     But how can you (yes, you, from now on I'm talking about your self-promotion, not mine)…how can you help anyone with your product or service if they don't know about it?  How can you do something for someone (serve them) if they don't know what you can do?

     Let people know who you are and what you can do.  If you are a personal trainer, everyone should know.  If you have a blog you are writing why hide that?  If you are the best receptionist your company has ever had why not let that person at the party who said she was just named president of a local company-why not let her know that you are a great receptionist?  In case she is ever looking for one.  How else can you really serve her?  By staying inside your cottage like the doctor while the screams echo through the night?

     This was a huge hurdle in the journey toward making money-for me and my clients.  Recognizing how that humble social self kicks in automatically throughout the day. That sweet, unassuming, self-deprecating SS [social self] interacts with everyone who communicates.

     In the old days your name would tell people what you did.  John the carpenter, soon just became John Carpenter.  Steve the chandler (maker of candles) soon became Steve Chandler.  The moment John Carpenter was introduced, the person could say, "Can you come fix my roof? I'll give you six chickens."  It was a world where your skill or service was who you were.

     It still is.

     No wait it's not. Today how good we are at sucking up to people is who we are.  John Apple Polisher.  Steve Bootlicker.  Suzy Teacher's Pet.

     The great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Society is a conspiracy against the manhood of each of its members."

     And his old school definition of "manhood" applies to women too, today, because it means "strong, independent, free-thinking individuals."  Someone who lives guided by inner (freely chosen) principles instead of outer people to please all day.

    The All of Humanity Prosperity School.
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     How your social self is devastating to your income.
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     FIND OUT HERE: 
     http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html 

 

How to Stop the Lies and Start Creating Money for Yourself

     I have started an inner circle, a club, a group, call it what you will, and people are joining it so they can get emails, webinars and powerful audios and ebooks all on the subject of creating wealth.

     It has been set up to help people make money.

     It's based on the excitement I feel for my new book, Wealth Warrior.

    GO HERE to check it out and join up:  http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html 

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     The TRUTH is we CAN create great wealth, and the LIE is that we are powerless and unskilled in the area of money.......

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     When I wrote The 17 Lies, I was writing about clients I had.  

     It was really interesting to me that clients (coaching clients) I had, who sat down to work with me, really wanted to have a better life and wanted to make more money and wanted to succeed more or have better relationships-whatever their project was.

     But the first thing we had to get out of the way is how they were disconnected from reality.

     In other words, when they weren't really living in the real world---and I mean the real world in a positive, wonderful, kind way---when they weren't appreciating how the world was lining up to really help them with their project. 

     When they weren't appreciating how the world was actually lined up to help them with their wealth project, we would have to take away the lies that disconnected them from the real world.

     In other words, they were telling themselves things that weren't true and because they weren't true, they were very confused and out of alignment with what was possible.

     So, for example, let's say I tell myself that Mexico is to the north of me and here I am in Arizona and I want to go to Mexico and I tell myself Mexico is up north, to get to Mexico I need to head north and I start driving that direction.

     Now that's not really true that Mexico is north of me and because it's not true, all the things I try to do are going to fail.

     In other words, my goal of getting to Mexico is not going to work out for me because my basic belief that it's to the north is incorrect.  I keep telling myself it's to the north, but it's incorrect.

     I had clients who kept telling themselves things that weren't really true.

     And because they were doing this, they were disconnected from their real power, their real strength, and their real resources.

     So my first job in coaching people was to help them see how the world really worked and how they were lying to themselves.

     I use the word 'lie'  because it's the opposite of the truth, but "lie" kind of suggests that you are doing this deliberately, trying to sabotage yourself, afraid of success and all that.  

     That's not really true, it's just confusion; and I used the word 'lie' because it was really dramatic (you know, you try to write a book that has some drama so it will sell).  Fortunately for me this book has sold quite well and I've been very happy with it and so many people over the years have come back to me either through e-mail or letters or calling (leaving a message) telling me this book has meant a lot to them because they found in reading it that they themselves were telling these lies.

     The beautiful thing about these lies is once you can really see them, they are no longer your internal belief system so they no longer run you-they no longer drive your life with all this mis-perception.

     Notice what happens when you believe (for example) that Canada is to the south of you.  You now head south hoping to get to Canada and (oh my goodness) you're not in Canada at all. 

     So this is why the lies must be dealt with.

     These 17 lies were the ones that my clients told me the most often and the ones I really had to work with because I found them in my own life.  In other words, these were lies (these 17) that kept my own life totally stuck for many years, spinning my wheels---confused, not succeeding, not achieving, and certainly not knowing how to create wealth.

     I mean for years and years I had no clue.

     I had no strength in that area, I didn't know how to apply my imagination to it, so I was really lost when it came to making money.  And this all got turned around (fortunately for me) and what I would like to do now is turn it around for anyone willing to join my Wealth Warrior group and receive the teaching. Not just teaching. Inspiration too. And motivation. And wake up calls.

     Lie # 1 is:  It's who you know.

     In other words, all power is outside of me, only other people can grant me success; and knowing the right people or knowing enough people is the key to me being successful.

     This is a carryover from childhood where we are programmed to see that our guardians- whoever they are, the two parents, or two guardians, the adults running our lives when we are kids-----that these people have all the power and in order to get what I want whether it's food, or money for candy, or baseball cards, or money for video games-whatever it is, I have to please these people outside of me.

     So I'm now conditioned going into adulthood to believe it's just who you know.

     When I coach people they've got all these things going on that are designed to have them know more people.

     They've got marketing things going on, they've got branding and niche things going on, and they've got all sort of ways to get out there and network and meet more people, and they think somehow if they meet enough of the right people, that alone will put them in a better position to make money. 

     This really is not true.

     Because your success when it comes to creating wealth is not about who you know.

     It's about what you do.  How you serve.  That's the key to your success.

     So, if you create something wonderful and beautiful---whether it's an iPad or a bestselling book or a bakery shop or a service coaching people---anything in the world, it's what you do.

     It's how you serve that brings you wealth because these people---the people who you thought were the most important in the world---will tell other people about you.

     So it's not just who you know.

     All this obsession with getting other people to be impressed with me, and won over by me, and thinking it's a numbers' game, is folly. That's not really it.  What I want to do instead is serve people so well that they tell people and those other people come for my product or my service. 

     And that's the key to creating wealth.

     Therefore I've got to get this thing called IT'S WHO YOU KNOW out of my system because I waste so much time, connecting, connecting, connecting on Facebook, e-mail (whatever is the latest-by the time this blog comes out there will be new things and Facebook will sound laughable like My Space or 8-track tapes).

     I don't care, the principle will always be the same.

     It's not who you know, it's what you can do; and not only what you can do, but what you DO do.  What you actually do each day to serve other people.  That's the key to creating wealth.

     Go here and understand how the OTHER 16 Lies ruin your chances of becoming successful if you don't eliminate them: http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html 

 

How to profit from being wrong

  When my grandson was five years old he came to me one day and said, "I love being right." 

      I said, "Do you?"  

      "Yes, I love being right." 

      "I like being wrong," I said.  

     And he stopped and he looked at me ... stunned ... and he said, "You like being wrong?"
  
     "Yes."  

     "Why do you like being wrong?" 

     "Because when I am wrong, I can learn something.  When I'm right, I don't learn anything."

     And he thought for a minute and he started to smile, and he said, "I'm going to like being wrong now, too!"

      I said, "That would be great."
  
      So later it happened that I saw him (maybe a month or two later) and he had a little friend with him and he said, "That's my Lalu" (he called me Lalu---that was his funny grandfather name for me)  "That's my Lalu, that's my grandfather, and he likes being wrong."  

      The other kid looked at me in amazement that I liked being wrong.  And Kathy, my wife, was with me at the time. She looked at the boys and she said, "That's why he's happy so much of the time."

      And oh how funny that was.

      But this illustrates something that I think is really important in the area of wealth creation and learning how to prosper.  

      And that is being OK with failure and getting it wrong and staying in action and building on what I learn from mistakes.  With my coaching clients we call it "Game film."  

      We call it "game film" because I want them to see that anything we talk about in the immediate past can be neutral. If something didn't go their way, say they didn't come up with a sale, or they didn't come up with the agreement they wanted or they didn't have a negotiation go their way, I want to review the conversation they had as if we were watching game film. 

     I don't want to make them wrong or have them feel guilty about how they didn't close their deal. So it's just game film. Just like when a team, after playing a big game, will all gather together the next Monday and watch film of the game that they played.  By watching this game film they can learn so much about how to play next week's game.  They can see where they were out of position and the other team scored.  They can see wonderful things they can learn from.

  I remember years ago one of my clients was Dick Tomey,  head football coach of the University of Arizona Wildcats.  One of the things I noticed about Coach Tomey was that after a game in which his team lost, he always had this strangely energized expression on his face.  His eyes were sparkling and he didn't look exactly .... happy ...  but somehow he looked uplifted.  

     And after his team won a game there was a strange foreboding or brooding look on his face as he trotted off the field.  And I thought that was interesting because most coaches celebrate wins and when they lose they look angry and upset. But he was the opposite, in a very subtle way.  

    So I asked him about it one time and he said, "I see what you mean and I'll tell you why that is.  When we lose I'm really excited about all the alterations we can make and everything we can learn from our film of the game.  I'm ready to go.  I'm ready to really fix this team and shore it up and make it strong for next week based on what we see on the film---all the things we can do differently.  But when we win we get a kind of feeling of being invincible, there's nothing really left to correct, we only need to show up next week.  And I don't like that.  I get upset with that attitude, so I'm worried when we win about how to keep the intensity and how to keep people focused. So that's what you are seeing in my face after each game."

      Whenever clients of mine or I have had some breakthroughs in building wealth,  or when our own careers start to make more money, it often accompanies a new approach to failure and to things we did "wrong" and things that didn't work.  

     Most people try to forget what doesn't work because they have a bad emotional reaction to it. They think "That's too bad and it's sad and I wish I hadn't lost that deal or I wish I hadn't lost that customer," but if I can change that to "Boy, this is terrific, I've got a lot to learn here, there's game film to watch, I'm not afraid to watch it because this customer I lost last week who I wanted to enroll is going to show up again in another identity soon and if I haven't learned how I lost the customer this time, it's going to happen again and again."

     And it's really true that most people who are not doing well financially have patterns of things that keep happening again and again that cause them to not build their businesses.  Part of that is because of their willful lowering of consciousness when bad things occur---like, "I don't want to think about the bad news, I want to move on, I need to stay positive, I don't even want to look at it."

     It was interesting to me that one time Bill Gates of Microsoft said, "We built our company on customer complaints."  Because when the customers would complain about any part of his computer system (or software systems) they would really be fascinated by the complaint and they would stay with it and they would have teams studying the complaint so they could change things and that complaint wouldn't show up again.  

     Whereas most people in business operations try to sweep complaints under the rug or minimize them and try to get rid of them quickly.  Like "Here's somebody who is upset."  "OK, I'll talk to him".   "No, you talk to him!"  "Yeah, he's OK now, I talked to him and he's happy now." 

      They see complaints as an emotional issue.  Somebody's emotionally upset, I want to make him feel better and hopefully it will go away and I don't have to think about it.  

     But there is real gold there.  

     There's a tremendous learning inside of the complaint if I slow down and I can study it like game film.

     Part of creating prosperity is to lose the evaluation of events as negative and positive and see them instead as material ... the way a comic sees things in his life as new material-----something to build on, something to use for a more prosperous future.

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 We just started my inner circle---The Wealth Warrior Movement---so that people who are interested in these subjects can get a wide variety of reading and audio material to help them build wealth and prosperity... you can check it out here: http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html 

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How to become a warrior

 I was not a time warrior. And I was certainly not a wealth warrior.

     Until I was.

     So what happened?

     I reinvented myself?

     I most certainly did (with a lot of help from my friends. Friends who didn't think anything when I sang out of tune. Friends who did not get up and walk out on me.)

     The really deep reason that I wanted to reinvent myself was my realization (and realization for me means making it real for me) that invention was all there was anyway.  

     In other words, I invented my "self" (my presenting egoic personality) to begin with, and when I could see that, that my whole personality- --who I thought I was ----was an invention.  

     It was all made up and it was made up during childhood as various responses to things that scared me.  People accused me, or people scared me, or people threatened me and so what I came back with was a kind of way of being that countered that and made me feel safe.  

     A lot of people have come up with different ways of being that make them feel safe.  Some people invented a really boisterous, bossy, controlling way of being; that when it was refined later in life it became more like a leader---aah, he's a real leader!--- but actually it was invented to counter something.  

    And other people are shy and reclusive and they sort of shrink away----they never say much in meetings, but that was invented too.  It's not as if it is in their DNA to be shy.  It was an invention to cope with or respond to something----or have a safe way of being---a way that wouldn't embarrass them.
      
    So, we invent that along the way in early childhood and then come a few more reinventions around the Jr high school and high school era, so that the huge fear of being embarrassed by our peers gets countered by some refinements and we reinvent again.  

     But here's the problem.  

     After having invented all those ways of being, we then look back and believe that this is the real me-----REAL ME!! It is is not an invention…this is an identity…this is actually sort of a DNA-level identity…it's actually who I am…I have no choice but to be shy… I have no choice but to be a pushy kind of leader type…I have no choice…it's who I am.
   
      But, that's just not true.  

      We can be whoever we want to be in any given situation. 

      And the more we can really see that, and the truth of that, the more fun it is.  Because the more we can say "Wait a minute, I could invent something else that would be even more effective to be in this situation or more fun to be in that situation."

      And so why should I reinvent myself?  Well, because I invented myself to begin with.

      So, do I want to continue to be the "ME" that a five year old and a fifteen year old, and an eighteen year old made up?  Do I want to live with that forever?  Were they the best me?  Were they the wisest me?  They chose those ways of being, and repeated them, and then went back and declared them to be my identify---my very self---DNA level me, no choice.  

      Do I really want to live from a five-year old's perspective of how scary the world was?  Do I really want to live from a fifteen year old's perspective of how scary other fifteen year old's were?  How scary relationships would be?  That would be a nightmare, but it's a very familiar nightmare to most people because they live stuck in a so-called personality that they believe is their identity when it's nothing of the kind.  

     It was a past invention made by an absolutely under-developed emotional system and then gone back and believed superstitiously to be the permanent me and what a wild and dysfunctional system that is.  

     What a wild pattern of behavior I am calling me.
  
     So, when I work with people in a coaching situation, or even working in various groups, one of the first things I want everyone to see is you GET TO reinvent yourself! Not you "ought to," you "have to" or you "should" reinvent yourself.  No, you get to reinvent yourself.  It's a privilege.  It's a blessing.  It's a gift to you.  It's called creative imagination that you are not using right now.  It's a gift that you could use every day if you could see it.

How to mix work and play

     "The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both."

~James Michener
Author of Hawaii

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     Rich Litvin and I are doing a "seminar" for coaches in Hawaii later this year unlike anything we have ever done. Rather than the typical two-day programs, we are expanding it to five/plus. We asked ourselves after sellouts at our London event, our Marina del Rey event, and after my own Coaching Prosperity School filled up and
sold out, WHAT CAN WE DO THAT IS SO FRIGHTENING AND EXCITING almost no one will come?

     We are tired of turning people away.

     So we came up with this plan code named: HELL WEEK. We'll be welcoming people into the room the first day with Elvis singing his disturbing song, Only The Strong Survive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUKP8SF-mYs

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"We say we waste time, but that is impossible.
  We waste ourselves." 
~ Alice Bloch 

     It's time we get honest about this thing called time. Because honesty has a much- deserved reputation for liberation. 

     Working with what's really going on sets us free from our negative imaginary future, and allows us to act now. Bold courage. That's what I advocate, and not for you so much as for me. 

     Because I had a past history of lazy passive inactivity and pure cowardice. Then something shifted and I saw the possibility of making a turnaround. I began to act. Just a little here and there but one does build inner strength this way. And the more one acts the more fun life gets... don't trust that... test it.  

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God is Alive, Magic is Afoot



From Leonard Cohen:

This I mean to whisper to my mind 
This I mean to laugh within my mind 
This I mean my mind to serve 
Til' service is but magic 
Moving through the world 
And mind itself is magic 
Coursing through the flesh 
And flesh itself is magic 
Dancing on a clock 
And time itself 
The magic length of God

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     NEW AUDIO OFFERINGS AND PACKAGES:

     Check these out:

http://www.stevechandler.com/audio.html