Greetings,

Internet Marketing Expert Michael Rasmussen sent me this lengthy but inspiring email.
I am sure he does not mind that I share it with you:
The following text in quotations was what he received from one of his readers.

“I’ve tried everything I know of to try.
Nothing works.
I’ve been scammed more times that I can count.
People have stolen my money and given me nothing.
After a few years of this, I don’t have any hope anymore.
It’s all a big lie. I give up!”

Believe me, I know how that guy feels.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I felt exactly the same way myself.
To say that was awful would be an understatement.

There really IS a lot of bad stuff out there in the Internet marketing industry.
There really are junky products that promise you the world and end up leaving you frustrated, and poorer.

I won’t say I’ve seen it all, because nobody really has, but I’ve seen most of it.

But this person’s problem is deeper than that.
His problem is negativity.

I know it’s easy to be negative when you get disappointed, or cheated, or misled.
We’re emotional beings, so having some negative feelings when those things happen is natural.

If you want to succeed, though, you need to get past negativity in a big way, and you need to do it soon.

There’s a LOT of fluff out there about getting rid of negativity in your life.
There’s a lot of fancy sounding stuff about having a positive attitude, using positive self-talk to improve your results, and so on.

Just because some of that stuff is too fluffy to be practical doesn’t mean the idea is nuts.

The simple fact is that you have a choice in life.
You can be positive, or you can be negative.
I won’t claim that you always have to be happy.
That’s crazy.

I will say, based on my own experience, that if you want to succeed, you need to be more positive than negative.
But you know, a positive attitude, while it’s important, can only take you so far.

It’s vital to think positively, stay on the bright side, not overreact to problems and all the other stuff you’ve heard about having a positive mental attitude.

But here’s the big life lesson I learned about positive thinking as I’ve built my own business…

Progress trumps a sunny attitude.

That’s a critically important lesson to learn.
You can try to have the best attitude in the world, but if you’re just sitting there making no progress, you
won’t be able to keep smiling for long.

What I had to do was figure out how to keep up my positive attitude by actually DOING something.
Fortunately, it’s not as hard as you might think.

The first thing you need to do is to set small, relatively short-term, achievable goals.

Achievement helps you stay positive.
It’s easy to prove this to yourself by picking a very small project you need to do around the house, maybe cleaning out a coat closet or something like that.

Finish the job. It doesn’t have to take hours.
It might take just a few minutes.
When you’re done, I guarantee that your sense of accomplishment will go up, and you’ll feel a little bit better about yourself.
That helps you stay positive.

The next thing to do is to attack your goals with a certain mindset…
treat any setback as you work toward your goal as an opportunity to learn.

All of us fail sometimes. We don’t achieve a goal, or it’s harder than we thought, or it takes more time than we thought.
That’s life.

If you encounter a setback, recognize that they’re inevitable, they hurt…
and they’re one hundred percent necessary if you ever want to succeed at anything.

Don’t just settle for being disappointed, though.
Treat the setback as a learning opportunity.

I can tell you from my own business that I’ve learned a ton from the mistakes I’ve made, and from the road blocks I’ve run into.

I remember back when I was just starting out, I made so many mistakes with an “opportunity” I came across that I was about ready to give up on my dream to make a living online.

When I look back on it, though, I learned a TON from that.
I dug into why it didn’t work.
I reached out to others to try to figure out what I did wrong.
That one experience taught me a huge amount about running my own business, and some great
relationships came out of it as well.

The next thing to do while you’re pursuing your goals is to surround yourself with positivity.

I know that sounds corny, but you need to know something…
negativity is like a disease.
If you expose yourself to it too much, you’ll probably get sick.

You need to fight that. Here are some simple ways to do it:

* Read positive stuff.
Read books about success by Brian Tracy and others.
Look at what successful people did, and how they handled failure and disappointment.

* Surround yourself with positive people.
One of the things that guy I told you about earlier probably did NOT do is surround himself with people who would encourage him not to give up.
You NEED to do that.
And sometimes (not all the time) that might even mean not spending as much time with a particular family member in your life who drags you down.

* Keep a record of the goals you achieve.
I told you to have small, achievable goal.
Make sure they’re measurable, too.
Keep track of what goals you achieved and when.
Whenever you get discouraged, pull out that list and see how much you’ve done!

None of those things is that hard to do, but if you don’t actively do it, you can find yourself spiraling down into negativity in no time.

And the final thing you need to do is find your own ways to stay positive.

This is different for everybody.
It’s highly personal.
Some people are naturally more positive than others, so it might be easier for them.
But here are some simple ways you might consider:

* Get an inspirational quotes calendar and keep it in front of you all day.
When you get down, read the quote and it can perk you up.

* Record affirming messages to yourself when you’re feeling very positive, then listen to them when you’re feeling negative.
That will feel a little awkward, but nobody knows you like you do.
You’ll tend to listen to yourself more than anyone else.

* Find somebody to hold you accountable.
This could be a friend, a family member, a religious leader…
anybody who will agree to do it.
When you’re feeling down, let that person encourage you to start thinking positively again.

Those are pretty easy to do, and they really do work.

That said, remember that positive thinking only works if you’re telling yourself the truth.
If you’re lying to yourself, it won’t help.

If you’re telling yourself that you succeed all the time, your brain knows that’s not true (it’s definitely not true for me!) so don’t lie to yourself.

In the end, I believe positive thinking is really about failing fast and learning from your failures.

Failure is part of life.
You’ll make mistakes, you’ll be disappointed and not everything will work out great all the time.

The mistake you can avoid is giving up hope too soon, because you’ve let yourself slip into negative thinking almost out of habit.

Focusing on the positive in the ways I’ve suggested will help you stick to your plans, achieve your goals and create the online success you’ve been after for so long.

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Great email, don’t you think?

Best regards,
Marcus