Feed your Mind, Feed your Wallet

I attended and extremely special event last night.  It was Keith Kochner, the famous speaker/ mentor who runs and owns MentorFish (http://mentorfish.com/), an online mentor exchange of sorts.  What was wonderful about last night was the message he sent, not the "ra ra" pump-up type but the "here are the facts" type.

The basic premise?  You need to feel your mind with knowledge if you ever want to have anything you desire.  It breaks down to four categories, and it's never money.  Chase money, and you may get money, but "those who can only handle little will receive little".  Instead, he proposes to chase knowledge.  What good is having lots of money if you don't know how to save it, invest it, make it work for you?  Why waste time learning on the fly if you can learn prior to having it and then be better equipt to deal with it when you do have it?

His take?  The four key factors:  Focus, Value, Pace, and Exchange.  Your focus is what will drive you to where you will be in 36 months.  That's called the "pace".  Everything you do should be for who you want to be in 36 months.  Not tomorrow, not in 3 weeks, but in 36 months, because that's often the shortest time frame to see the benefit or affect of what you did today.  Therefore, your focus has to be so rock solid or you won't end up where you wanted.  If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.  If you want to be somewhere specific however, you can't will it through entitlement and the feeling of "well I ought to have it, so I should have it now" but rather through focus and discipline.  So protect your focus!

Then, through that you create value.  You create value in what you're doing, in who you are, and in where you are going.  You can only grow to become as big as your vision.  Think about college. If you envisioned yourself graduating college, you probably did if your focus was strong and you stuck with it for the 48-60 months it took.  Same principle with everything else. 

The exchange was the coolest part, and that's where the MentorFish website and membership come into play.  He shows you how to swap the stories you tell yourself for ones that will actually benefit you.  Ultimately, though, you hold the power to decide where your life is headed.  One many's tragedy/excuse was another man's tragedy/fuel for changing himself and the world.  Which one are you going to be?