Internet Marketer Michael Rasmussen has some holiday advice for me.
It’s not the many advice that we getting right now.
Therefore, I feel that it’s good that I share it with you…

–
“I’m sure you’ve seen the typical advice that seems to crush your email inbox every year at about this time.

That advice usually starts with something like, “You need to buy this to succeed….”

Well, no.

I’m not saying you should ignore every great deal you come across this holiday season, but I am saying you should use your head.

And I strongly recommend keeping your wallet in your pocket for a little while.

Instead, give yourself a gift most people who are trying to make an income online never do.

The gift you should give yourself this holiday season is the gift of honesty.

This might make you uncomfortable, but it’s well worth feeling that way for a just a little while.
The results can be phenomenal.

When I say honesty, I mean you need to be honest with yourself about your Internet business.

It’s easy to fool ourselves.
I’ve done it, and I’m sure you have too.
It’s part of being human.

But if you ever want to succeed, you need to tell yourself the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in three areas…

First, review your business in the year that’s coming to a close.

Ask yourself how you did, whether you accomplished your goals or not and where you fell short.

Most people reach the end of each year and find themselves completely confused about why they’re where they are.
It’s almost like they weren’t paying attention for the past twelve months!

The easier explanation is that they’ve simply been busy, usually too busy to assess much of anything.

I can remember years ago being so distracted by the end of the year that I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing.
It was like I was running on autopilot.

That’s a common reality for Internet marketers.
It seems like there’s always a launch of this or that “vital” product, and time is always short.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from mentors in my business is that you just can’t succeed if you’re constantly busy.
You must take some time to work ON your business instead of working IN it all the time.

Take advantage of the traditional retail “lull” time between Christmas and New Years to take a serious look at what happened in the past year.

Second, assess WHY you got the results you did.

This is a little harder than simply reviewing what happened, but it’s even more important.

Ask yourself WHY you didn’t accomplish the things you failed to accomplish, and ask yourself why the stuff that succeeded actually worked.
It’s important to do both.

The first part helps you see what you still need to learn.
The second one helps you see what you already DID learn…
because it worked!

Let’s start with the things that didn’t work out like you had hoped they would.

This isn’t about judging yourself too harshly or tearing yourself down.
I’m not suggesting that you get extremely negative about yourself here.

What I’m saying is, pull no punches.

You have just reviewed the results for the year.
Now that you know the unvarnished truth about how things turned out, try to figure out why things went like they did.

You’ll probably find one of three causes:

1) You made a mistake of some kind.
Hey, we all do it.
Figure out what mistake you made, and what you should learn from it.

2) You didn’t follow through.
This is an easy trap to fall into.
You might see that you started the year with the idea that you were going to do a certain project…
and by the middle of the year, you had forgotten about it and dropped it.

3) Something stood in your way.
This could be an external factor, like a family crisis, or an internal one, like…
(this is where you’ll need some more honesty, in a very deep way).

If you started out with a good plan, but it seemed like you hit a brick wall for no good reason, it’s time to look inside yourself.

Maybe you feared failure.
That’s common, and it can be a killer.

Maybe you thought you actually didn’t deserve to succeed.
That’s also common, and it holds a lot of people back because they unconsciously sabotage their own
success (yes, it happens).

You need to dig into yourself and resist the urge to blame every failure or shortcoming on something else. Sometimes it’s YOU.

But what about the stuff that went well?
That’s the fun part, because it’s where you get to distill the lessons that helped you achieve REAL success during the year.

Analyze what worked and try to determine why it did.

Maybe you took a different approach than you had before, and it worked like a charm.

Maybe you got some help you didn’t get before, and it gave you extra boost you needed.

Maybe you learned a new skill that you didn’t have before, and it gave you a new advantage.

Once you have an idea about why the success happened (and guessing is fine, by the way), try to determine what lessons you can extract from it and apply to future projects.

Third, you need to be honest enough with yourself to realize that you might have some blind spots.

Recruit a trusted friend to help you see those!

Tell him or her that you want some help figuring out why the things that succeeded worked, and why the things that didn’t, didn’t.

Ask for real constructive feedback, even if it’s embarrassing or hurts a little.

Remember, your future success is riding on your ability to be honest with yourself, so be willing to take a risk when it comes to self-assessment.

And don’t think this is only an annual thing.
You can do this kind of self-assessment multiple times during the year, ideally after every project wraps
up.
That can keep you locked onto your success targets.

Just last year I found myself feeling like I was drowning.
I was crushingly busy.
It felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Because I’ve spent years doing this, and I’ve regularly been honest with myself annually about my business, I recognized the danger signs.

At that point, I took a step back so I could see what was going on and why.

What I saw was that I had slipped into the “busyness” trap again in a serious way.
I was so distracted by short-term commitments that I had lost sight of my plans for building my business for the long term.

So I was brutally honest with myself, and then I was honest with my partners.
I told them I was scaling back to get center myself and get back on the right road.

I got LOTS of email from folks telling me how inspirational that was…
because they were making the same mistake.

Like I said, this kind of honesty isn’t something most people ever engage in.
I think it’s why lots of people never succeed at all, or don’t succeed to the level they could.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll boost your chances.

So take some time before this year ends to be honest with yourself.
And next time I’ll tell you what steps to take to make next year a blowout success for you.”
–

Happy New Year and to your success!

Visit my new blog at www.videoforemail.net
Learn Video Marketing And Send Video For Your eMail.

Click on the hyperlink www.videoforemail.net above and I will see you on the other side.

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.

–

Great email, don’t you think?

Best regards,
Marcus

Quotes By Andrew Matthews

“Even the people we most admire often feel inadequate.”

“Is it easy? Usually not. But you don’t forgive people for their benefit. You do it for your benefit.”

“The happiest people don’t worry too much about whether life is fair or not, they just get on with it.”

“A healthy self-love means we have no compulsion to justify to ourselves or others why we take vacations, why we sleep late, why we buy new shoes, why we spoil ourselves from time to time. We feel comfortable doing things which add quality and beauty to life.”

“Nature always takes her time. Great oaks don’t become great overnight. They also lose a lot of leaves, branches and bark in the process of becoming great.”

“You give your best not because you need to impress people. You give your best because that’s the only way to enjoy your work.”

“People who do not love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of a sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can not love others, because love is an affirmation of the living growing being in all of us. If you don’t have it, you can’t give it.”

“There is no shame in finding someone else to be attractive, or good company. Even if they don’t like you, there is still no shame. If you happen to be fond of someone, and they’re not fond of you, it’s OK.. You don’t have to wait and see if they’ll love you back. You can announce it.. Joy in life comes from expressing ourselves, in taking risks and jumping in. Everyone is not going to like you. But you can like who you like.”

–
Click HERE to find out more about Andrew Matthews and other motivational speakers.

Jean Paul Sta Ana has uploaded the full “Who Moved My Cheese?” video on FaceBook.
Do click HERE to watch the video.
Again, I am not sure if it will be taken down.
Watch it while it is still up.

There are 4 characters in the story, who are you right now?
Sniff
Who sniffs out change early,

Scurry
Who scurries into action,

Hem
Who denies and resists change as he fears
it will lead to something worse,

Haw
Who learns to adapt in time when he sees
changing can lead to something better!

Whoever we are now, we all share something in common:
a need to find our way in the Maze and succeed in changing times.

–

I have also extracted the important quotes from the video.

“Change happens, they keep moving the cheese.”
“Anticipate change, smell the cheese often so you’ll know when it’s getting old!”
“Adapt to change quickly. The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you can enjoy new cheese!”
“Enjoy change. Savour the adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese!”
“Be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again… They keep moving the cheese!”

Hope you will find it meaningful.

21) Successful people are simply those with successful habits. - Brian Tracy

22) Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it. – Brian Tracy

23) The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance. – Brian Tracy

24) The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life. – Brian Tracy

25) The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear. - Brian Tracy

26) The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you. - Brian Tracy

27) The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire. – Brian Tracy

28) The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image. - Brian Tracy

29) Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future. - Brian Tracy

30) We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves. – Brian Tracy

and more…

Instead of reading quotes by inspirational speakers, why not let them teach you right at your very home?

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