The only game in town is one you can't play, part 2

(CONTINUED)

June 2008

"You see, most people think that Communism died on November 9, 1989. But it's not true. Communism STILL exists, hidden deep within Capitalism."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The Berlin Wall came down, but the Corporate Wall is still up. Within a corporation, people are living and working under a Communist-like regime. Think about it: you can't complain publicly about the authorities, you can't do anything without permission from "above", you can't get rich through your own ideas or initiative, you are a "prisoner" 9 to 5, they're watching everything you say and what you write by email (yes, they have ways to track every single email you send out or receive)... Those are the very conditions that prevailed under any Communist regime prior to 1989."

"Well, Peter, if that is true, how come people don't quit? The Corporate Wall is not like the Berlin Wall, where they actually shoot you if you try to flee from the East to the West."

"You're right, they don't shoot you in the back as you try to escape, but they have psychological measures that are far more effective. These psychological measures are part of what the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith called "managed public response."

"But who's trying to manage the public response?"

"Capitalists, of course. The government, too. You know, a lot of people talk about "financial freedom" as if it were something you strive for and achieve. But they all miss one important point: it is in someone's interest that you remain a prisoner of what I call "corporate communism." In other words, someone really, really wants you to be financially NON-FREE. This person will do anything to distract your mind while plunging you further and further into debt, so that you have no choice but to sell your labour-power to capitalists.

In fact, there are two kinds of capitalists: the 9 to 5 type, and the 5 to 9 type. Retailers are the 5 PM to 9 PM type: they get you to spend all your money, so you have as little left as possible. That way, you are forced to keep working for the 9 to 5 capitalists!"

"Peter, let me get this straight... You're saying there is a conspiracy among capitalists to keep people dependent on the capitalist system which exploits them?"

"You got it. Capitalists are not necessarily bad people. Look at what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done. They're totally into philanthropy now. Rather, it is the capitalist system that exploits people. If you know about capitalism and business, you will benefit from its genius and you WILL achieve financial freedom, just as I did. But if you don't know about business and capitalism, the system will ruthlessly exploit you till you retire or you die, whichever comes first.

I woke up in June 2000, but I've the feeling many people in my family and among my friends are still sleeping. They still don't realize what truly happened in 1989. And they have a hard time accepting the fact that the corporate workplace is a Communist-like regime."

(to be continued)

YouTube, I tube, we'll soon all tube!

0:03

Fortune magazine mentioned YouTube.com as the success story of Web video-sharing. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, in their late 20s, built a company based on allowing people to share, for free, their video clips with anyone in the world.

They haven't made profits yet, even though they received $11M from a VC firm.

But what a concept. There are tons of business models that can run on this kind of free-for-all video platform.

Ordinary people like you and I can (finally) showcase ourselves, our products and our services to the world!

(www.thisishowyoudoit.com tried something similar, but it is just not easy enough to use).

I mentioned the Dot Pro Revolution before, it's when professionals use the Web (hence, "dot pro") to market themselves, their intellectual capital, their know-how.

More on this later.

What financial freedom requires

People may talk about financial freedom, they may dream about it, they may attend seminars led by experts who achieved it, but at the end of the day, the only person who can truly achieve it is the person who is capable of making ruthless decisions and executing ruthless actions.

Of course, we're not talking about killing anyone or engaging in felonies!

I mean "ruthless" in the sense of clearly seeing what has to be done, and then do it. Clearly seeing reality in the face, without making any excuse for it, and then do what is required to achieve financial freedom.

The first realization is that all employees are slaves. Of course, most employees, especially those who have climbed to middle management or executive level, will strongly deny this reality. Self-denial is precisely the reason why they will remain slaves for the rest of their lives.

I wish I were able to use a word that is gentler than "slave," because I realize it might offend some people. But if you don't control how you spend your time, and where you spend it, and with whom, then you are a slave every week day, from 9 to 5.

The realization that you are a slave will feel painful (so I hope you're reading this posting at least after you've had your first cup of coffee!).

But the pain will go away. I know, I had that feeling in June 2000. That was when I decided to quit corporate Canada for good.

You can either realize you are a slave when you're in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, or even in your 50s. But sooner or later, you will realize it.

If you realize it sooner, then you still have time to learn about business -- which is the best and perhaps the only way (except for winning the lottery!) to achieve financial freedom.

Business is a way to earn more and more money, while working less and less physically.

Don't worry, I'm not trying to recruit you and convince you to join my multi-level marketing (MLM) company or anything like that!

I'm just saying that I've been an employee, I've been a free agent (translator) and I am now a business owner. And trust me, being a business owner is the best.

Not just financially, but emotionally and socially as well.

Emotionally, I feel fierce and savage, like a tiger. I used to feel like sheep before, when I was an employee (no offense to anyone who is still an employee).

Socially, I can meet anyone I want to. I have total freedom on how I use my time, and where I choose to work or socialize. I AM NOT REQUIRED TO SPEND THE ENTIRE DAY SITTING IN A CUBICLE STARING AT A COMPUTER.

What about you?

Suppose you are clear-minded and you realize that as an employee, you are a slave who can never win economically or financially. What do you do?

It would be nice if, in order to secure our freedom, we only had to fight like gladiators in the Colosseum (as in the movie Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe). The reality, of course, is that most people are not as skilled in man-to-man combat as Maximus Decimus Meridius!

So the first thing to realize, after you accept your slave status, is that to achieve freedom, you need TRAINING. Massive, personalized, precise, lethal and effective training.

Going into business is the same as going into an arena, where all the other gladiators have spent all their time and energy and money training themselves so they can kill you with a blow of the sword.

Most people don't realize that business IS lethal combat. This is why over 70% of businesses fail within the first three years, and about 90% fail within five years. (The rate of failure is different for different industries, of course).

Only people who are absolutely clear-minded and accept reality as it is, and DEAL with it, face to face, will succeed in business. This is why the quote from Walter E. Kurtz above is so relevant.

If your perception of yourself (your strengths, weaknesses, blindspots, etc.) is clear and your perception of reality is clear, and your willpower is superior to the other guy, and you are able to execute ruthlessly based on what your willpower dictated, then nothing can stop you. You WILL achieve financial freedom.

We're switching to Odeo!

I have plans to use Odeo (www.odeo.com) in future postings, so subscribers can download podcasts into their MP3 players for convenient listening while driving or commuting.

I will take that opportunity to explain in further detail some of the previous postings, so if there are postings you are particularly interested in, I would be happy to provide further clarifications so you can apply the success secret(s) more profitably in your life.

Thank you.

Imagination over intelligence

Einstein said that imagination is more important than intelligence.

If we don't play with our imagination and let it empower us, even at a metaphorical or psychic level, then we might be disadvantaged compared to others who DO use imagination as a source of creativity.

My above fictitious profile, for instance, serves to excite me to the possibilities open to my career. Most of the content is fictitious, of course, but there is a grain of truth to it.

In any case, I find it immensely rewarding and liberating to create an ideal character for myself. Indeed, once I freeze my intellectual judgment, I am much more free to explore the infinite possibilities open before me, and can envision future achievements that I simply would not have been capable of visualizing, without the suspension of reality or the use of imagination.

Get rich by understanding "exchange"

Getting rich depends on three kinds of things one must exchange with others:

• information
• emotion
• value

Linkedin is not quite there yet, since the system seems to favor or allow only information-exchange.

eBay is better, allowing for the exchange of value (in goods and cash).

But regardless of whether an Internet company will allow people, one day, to maximize or facilitate the exchange of the three things above, it is a good foresight to strategically focus on those things right now.

For instance, no matter what your profession is, it is a good idea to liberally share your expertise with people so as to build your credibility. Blogs can be used, as well as audio sites like Odeo.

You can also increase the trust that people feel toward you, by doing small gestures that show you care. I find it amazing that little things we do (like sending a well-written thank you email) can have such a big impact on how good the other person feels.

Finally, in regards to value exchange, it is easier and easier today to give people free things, especially in digital format. For instance, if you could just summarize your expertise into ONE page (in PDF format) and then share it with friends, family and all your connections, they would appreciate it enormously. Life is so complex now that everybody would feel better knowing that they have experts in their personal network of contacts.

The bottom line is that by finding creative ways to exchange these three things (information, emotion, value), we can build for ourselves a strong, trust-based network of people who can support us and whom we can support to achieve more things in life and to be happier.

Career takeoff workshop

The above is a diagram I quickly drafted for a special workshop I'm giving, called Career Takeoff.

The main idea is that basically, your career is a business and, as a result, you need to analyze, plan, implement and evaluate all aspects of your operations, in the same way that a CEO would do it for his company.

In about two hours, I can draw on a poster a giant mind map illustrating a person's current career status, and suggest ways for her to rapidly get to the next level, so she can move faster toward her ideal career situation.

Monster is making a monstrous mistake

Most of the information that Monster provides is either wrong or misleading. But it's not just Monster, for all similar job boards are making the same mistake.

They focus on the "job" instead of focusing on people's unique "talent."

In my Ideal Career workshops, I ask participants the difference between "your talent" and "your job."

This is actually a trick question: "your job" does not exist. It's always "their job." The proof is that employers can fire workers anytime.

That is, the "job" belongs to the employer (the business owner or shareholders). They lend you a job for a certain period of time. It is NEVER "your job."

If you focus on the "job," then you are focusing on something that will NEVER belong to you.

You are focusing on an illusion. The employer can decide, anytime and without the need to justify it, to take away your job, in which case you end up with nothing.

Your talent, however, is a different matter. Nobody can take away your talent. It's something that God gave to all of us, and we keep it until we die.

So the question is, If everybody has talent, how come most people focus more on their jobs than on developing their talent?

The answer is: Everybody has a talent, but NOT everybody has the courage to develop their talent. Those who do, despite the incredible odds against them, eventually become stars.

Movie stars, political celebrities (Bill Clinton, for instance), spiritual masters (the late John Paul II, Gandhi), social revolutionaries (Martin Luther King), etc.

They are called stars because, as in the old days of navigation on the seas, they shine high up there in the sky to guide us. They tell us: "You too have a special talent. Find it, have the courage to pursue and develop it, and you too shall become a star."

This is their main message. Everything else that is reported in the newspapers or tabloids about them pales in comparison and obscures the real message that great men and great women are trying to tell us.

This is why I say that Monster is making a monstrous mistake. They teach people to focus on the job, when people should instead focus on what is unique and special about themselves -- their God-given talent.

Execution - the discipline of getting things done

3:00

The book Execution - the discipline of getting things done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, is so relevant to business performance and so powerful that a Fortune 500 company I know has made it required reading for all employees.

The essence of the book can be summarized by the acronym F.O.R.K.E.R.:

• Follow through
• Objectives - must be clear and precise
• Realism - plan realistically!
• Know yourself, know your people, know your business
• Expand your people's capabilities through coaching
• Reward doers (and, I presume, fire non-doers)

I highly recommend the chapters of the book which deal with the above principles of execution, which obviously apply to career management as well.

The Internet as instrument of revolution

FROM THE MUSICAL LES MISERABLES, BY VICTOR HUGO

ENJOLRAS

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

COMBEFERRE

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

COURFEYRAC

Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

===

One of the biggest secrets is that the Internet is an instrument of the people's revolution.

When the Web came into being in the 1990s, it was not surprising that companies and capitalists immediately took advantage of that global tool of communication in order to make money.

Now that the Web 2.0 is here, it's the people's turn to seize power.

Web 2.0 applications include Blogger, Odeo, Youtube, etc. These allow people to connect and share content.

However, even with massive connectivity and massive communication capabilities, the people's revolution can only happen with the rise of authentic leaders who are capable of setting a personal example and mobilizing the masses of followers into orchestrated and strategic action.

Bill Jensen (www.work2.com) did a great job of laying the groundwork for a revolution as power is shifting to workers and, in particular, to talented professionals on whom companies depend.

I predict the rise of virtual coalitions of talented professionals, and these coalitions will be so massive, outspoken and articulate that they will command the respect of corporate employers.

After all, every company, no matter how powerful or capitalized it is, is utterly dead every day after 5 PM after its employees have left the building.

The success secret is to carefully study how people use the Internet strategically, because if you know how to leverage the Web to your political, social or economic advantage, you can truly win BIG TIME.

By "using the Internet strategically," I simply mean using it in order to achieve your goals.

Indeed, technology is nothing. It's how you leverage it that counts. I created a term for that: "technoleverage."

In future postings, we'll explore how you can leverage technologies and applications like Odeo, Blogger, RSS, Yahoo! and Google to ensure professional and financial success.

If you connect, but they don't correct...

... it's not good.

Here's what I mean. A better life can only come from better decisions, and better decisions come from learning -- through books, other people, etc. -- how to make better evaluations.

In other words, it's best to connect with the people who can correct you. Specifically, they should be able to correct your thinking.

The most important people are the people who can correct your strategic thinking. This is why they say that having lunch with a CEO is better than talking for five days with a VP. Indeed, rare are the people who have strategic knowledge of the Sun Tzu variety.

Fortunately, most people have valuable knowledge, especially in their field of expertise.

The best question to ask them is: "How do you make decisions when it comes to (here, state a challenge or problem related to their industry, profession or expertise?"

Examples:

- How do you know if a startup is worth investing in?
- How would you decide if you should accept a promotion offered by your boss?
- How would you evaluate a potential boyfriend?

Even in the case of selecting a boyfriend (presumably, out of a group of eligible bachelors), there is a decision-making process that could prevent making big mistakes.

Of course, avoiding making a big mistake doesn't mean you chose the right boyfriend. It just means you avoid choosing the wrong boyfriend.

My point is that in all areas of life, we could use someone who is better than us at making decisions. The more we seek and find those people who can CORRECT our thinking and decision-making, the better our lives can be.

Spiritual power

Does wisdom (that is, spiritual power) come from knowledge (contained in books) or experience (contained in one's biographical path)?

Neither. Power comes from personally tested and rationally verified knowledge.

You can see right away why TV news or any kind of mass medium cannot increase a person's power: you can never personally test nor rationally verify what they are saying. You have no choice but to take it on faith alone.

TV is a modern god.

So what happens when a person reads too much (he/she believes in knowledge) or when he/she experiences too much (believes in action)?

If you read too much, you develop the fear of action. Yet life rewards action, not knowledge.

If you act too much, you develop disrespect for knowledge. Most people, if asked, would value action over "theory." Yet they don't realize theory is the source of everything. Einstein's theory for instance is responsible for the creation of so many technologies and applications we use today.

In short, a knowledge-oriented person might become riskless, while an action-oriented person might become reckless.

The person who is riskless is already dead. He/she has stopped taking chances in life, and no longer feels passion nor adrenaline rushing through his/her veins.

The person who is reckless, fails to learn from every experience due to a lack of reflection on the outcomes. He/she keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over, with karmic predictability.

Spiritual power flows to the one person who acquires vital knowledge, then applies it consistently in real life in order to fully integrate the knowledge into his thinking, knowing and being.

Fortune favors the bold

Peter Nguyen

CEO & co-founder
"Fortune favors the bold." - Virgil

TALENTELLE
Providing the best support to women who want to succeed in their chosen career

www.talentelle.com

===

Above is my official signature at the bottom of every email I send out.

Why did I choose Virgil's quote? And what does it mean exactly?

This: "cosmic outcomes are amenable to influence by emotional intensity."

It means that the intensity of your belief can and will shift the odds in your favor!

Henry Ford put it differently and more starkly: "Whether you think you can or not, you are 100% right."

For Henry Ford, self-belief does more than increase the odds of success. It determines whether you will succeed or fail.

Here's another secret I'd like to share with you, although not everybody will be ready psychologically to hear it: If you hang around with people who don't believe (and who always need to see tangible proof before they believe something -- which is kind of funny, because the definition of "belief" excludes the necessity for proof!), eventually you will also lose your beliefs and your capacity to believe in the magical.

Skeptical and cynical people don't realize that life itself is a miracle. Before they were born, there was nothingness. Then a big bang occurred (often as a result of one Tequila shot too many!). Their soul was born into the womb of an ecstatic mother, and a few months later, their physical body was delivered to this world. If that is not a miracle, I don't know what is!

Once we accept the fact that a human life IS a miracle in itself, it becomes fairly easy to believe that we can achieve anything.

In short, success requires belief + action. The bridge that leads a person to go from belief to action, is called Desire.

Reflex / Knowledge ratio

6:00

"Life rewards action, not knowledge."

This simply means that the more you act (and it's best to act in a timely fashion), the more life rewards you.

Acting at the precisely right time when the opportunity is available, is called "reflex."

A reflex necessarily contains a LOT of thoroughly assimilated knowledge. That is, knowledge that you thoroughly understood and integrated into your way of knowing and being.

Knowledge, however, doesn't necessarily contain reflexes. In fact, most of what we know are junk. Even if the knowledge, at one point, was useful, it quickly becomes obsolete (hence, intellectual Alvin Toffler refers to it as "obsoledge.")

Therefore, the success secret is to try to know less, but have more reflexes or better reflexes.

To have better reflexes (mental as well as physical), you have to train continuously. This is the warrior's way of life. His mind and body are so sharp that an enemy could jump out of nowhere, suddenly and without warning, yet the warrior would be ready to deliver a lethal blow to this foe!

Unfortunately, the entire structure of society -- dominated socially and culturally by the mass media -- conditions us to become passive receptors of junk information every day (TV news, advertising, etc.).

By focusing on the Reflex / Knowledge Ratio, you can take control of your life and your consciousness.

How does it work? Just count the number of minutes that you spend, every day, PRACTICING how to do something productive (writing, speaking, selling, influencing, organizing, etc.). This is the reflex part.

Then count the number of minutes or hours that you spend passively ingesting information provided by other people (TV, movies, magazines, ads, etc.).

Successful people have a high Reflex / Knowledge Ratio.

Work = small money. Digital value = BIG money

9:00

The success secret of billionaires like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates, Jerry Wang (Yahoo!), etc. is that they don't just work. They work on their WORK.

Their work happens to be a digital product (Windows, the Amazon website -- which Bezos reviews all the time, even on Sundays, in order to improve it, the Yahoo! portal).

Most people just work. They cannot clearly identify their work product, therefore they cannot work on it. They cannot improve it. Hence, their income does not improve.

Here's the three-step process recommended by the late Peter Drucker, arguably the father of modern management:

1. First, identify the main task you are paid to do
2. Next, monitor how much time you spend on it every day
3. Finally, monitor your performance at doing that MAIN task in order to improve it. Also try to spend more of your time on it, and delegate / outsource the rest.

If you're a sales rep, sell! Go out there, face prospects, and close deals!

If you're a writer, write! Count the number of words you produce every hour or every day.

If you're a student, study!

I've done the three things above quite well in my life, because I was a bit simple-minded: I only did what I was supposed to do. As a student, I ignored all distractions and just studied until I became the Valedictorian of my high school.

As an account manager, I sold all the time. As a writer, I write all the time (I carry a Palm pilot and a portable keyboard, as well as lots of notepads because ideas keep coming to me at the most unexpected times!).

So in summary, I recommend the following:

1. Focus precisely on what you're supposed to do that creates value for the employer or client
2. Convert that value into a digital format so you can easily distribute it worldwide, in order to become rich
   

The Magic of Thinking Big

As promised, here are a few excerpts from the great book The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D.:

• Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn't stuck with the present.

• Success comes from managed thinking.

• Remember: people who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment. The opinions of these people can be poison.

• How we think is directly affected by the group we're in. Be sure you're in the flock that thinks right.

• To activate others, to get them to be enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself. A man who lacks enthusiasm never develops it in another. But a person who is enthusiastic soon has enthusiastic followers. The enthusiastic salesman need never worry about unenthusiastic buyers. The enthusiastic teacher need never worry about disinterested students. The activated minister need never be distressed by a sleepy congregation. Enthusiam can make things 1100 per cent better.

• Use the dig-into-it-deeper technique to develop enthusiasm toward other people. Find out all you can about another person -- what he does, his family, his background, his ideas and ambitions -- and you'll find your interest and enthusiasm toward him mounting. Keep digging and you're certain to find some common interests. Keep digging and you'll eventually discover a fascinating person.

• Here's a giant reason for making others feel important: when you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too.

• The seed of money is service. That's why "put-service-first"is an attitude which creates wealth. Put service first and money takes care of itself.

Hey! That's exactly my philosophy when I started this blog! :-)

I typed the above excerpts from the book to encourage you to actually buy the book and read it from cover to cover. I've read so many books in my life, but this one is surely one of my top 10 favorites!

Disk professional & compound work capital

I wrote earlier about "disk professionals": people whose work is continuously captured, in digital format, so that they keep working on that work to refine it and develop it.

Windows, by Microsoft / Bill Gates, is perhaps the single best example of "disk work." You can appreciate how powerful the Disk Work paradigm is, simply by realizing that it made Bill Gates the richest man in the world.

Yet, the overwhelming majority of people, all over the world, still operate every day according to the "Desk Work" paradigm. That is, people show up at the office, sit down at their desk, do whatever they're supposed to do, then go home at 5 PM without ever packaging their day's work onto a disk.

The Desk Work paradigm says that your time = money. You are paid by the hour.

The Disk Work paradigm says that the value you create = money. You can create value anywhere, anytime. The only thing required is that your client has to acknowledge that what you produce is indeed value, and your client has to be willing and able to pay for that value.

The bottom line is that under the Disk Work paradigm, there is a mysterious, powerful compounding effect at work. That is, you create something of value on Monday, and then on Tuesday, you work ON that value to develop it. You are continually working on your work! (Whereas the majority of people just work).

Anything in this universe that has a compounding effect, tends to grow exponentially. If your work output grows exponentially, well expect your income to also grow exponentially!

Can't win without business knowledge

"The book The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Reees-Mogg contains some extremely important information on social, economic, and political trends and their implications, and how Sovereign Individuals can adapt their strategies, tactics, and actions to best take advantage of developing and changing situations in the world."

Source: http://www.buildfreedom.com/sovind1.htm

I've read the book mentioned above, not just once but SEVERAL times. It is truly worth reading if you want to thoroughly understand how the Internet is changing the way we create value, and the way we compete for a better life -- the ultimate life being one where you have complete control over how you spend your time every day.

Obviously, most people are still "slaves" to their job or employer. They cope psychologically with this situation through self-denial or through comforting themselves with material possessions or by watching the news filled with stories of death and disaster and corruption ("hey, my life is not so bad, look at all these people mentioned in the news and their misery").

Even as a teenager, I felt I was different from the others. I knew I had a capitalist mentality, not an employee mentality.

If you have an employee mentality (i.e. you expect an employer to take care of your career, you seek security (not opportunity), and you think a paycheck is fair compensation for the amount of life that you give up every day, 9 to 5), it is still not too late to switch to a capitalist mentality.

How long it takes is entirely up to you: it can take five minutes, or it can take 30 years.

Here's a story to illustrate my point.

Bob goes to see the dentist to have a tooth extracted. He asks: "So doc, how much is this going to cost me?"

Dentist replies: "$200."

Bob: "And how long is it going to take?"

Dentist: "Oh, about five minutes."

Bob: "What?! You're charging me $200 for five minutes? Isn't that ridiculous?"

Dentist: "Well, Bob, if that's what's bothering you, I CAN TAKE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE!"

Anthony Robbins wrote about this also, saying that most people mistakenly believe that change has to take a long time. It doesn't. You can switch your mind in a split second.

This is something we teach at Talentelle, the career management company I created with my sister Zoonie. We teach a seminar called Economic Destiny, where we help participants explore the intellectual, psychological and emotional issues involved in switching from an employee mentality to a business owner (or capitalist) mentality.

I created that seminar because I saw so many intelligent professionals lose money and wealth, just because they did not know the first thing about business. They are thoroughly exploited by their employer.

To live and work in a capitalist system like ours and not having business knowhow or not making business decisions, is like playing the Monopoly game but without ever buying any house or hotel! You cannot possibly win.

The rules of capitalism is set in stone. Anyone, even people with PhD in nuclear physics, who doesn't understand business, cannot possibly win and won't likely achieve financial independence.

Fortunately, more and more people are beginning to realize the importance of business knowledge. Every year, McGill University's business school accepts only 1 out of 100 applicants to the full-time BCom programme. That gives you an idea of the demand for business education.

Also, the required GPA to get into the BCom programme is 80%, vs 78% for Engineering School, and vs 75% for Arts and Science.

Desk people vs disk people

6:00

Desk people are office people who, generally, work behind a desk -- sometimes they have an office, but more often than not, they have only a cubicle.

Disk people can work anywhere. Their "desk" is actually a laptop or Palm pilot or any device onto which they can record their work results or cerebral output.

Desk people will eventually lose while disk people may have won big already.

Desk people lose because whatever work that they do, cannot be reused by another person or cannot be sold to millions of people over the Internet.

Disk people, on the other hand, work only ONCE and then sell their "disk", which contains all their work output, to a potentially limitless market.

If you wonder whether you are a desk professional or a disk professional, ask yourself this question: Would you be able to burn all the knowledge you have onto a CD and sell it to someone for $10?

If the answer is no, then you are a desk professional, and your career / livelihood will forever depend on your employer.

If the answer is yes, then you might become extremely rich IF you know how to package your knowledge assets and sell it to thousands of people via the Internet.

4D execution is key to success

If you haven't had the time to carefully read the 400 postings I wrote so far, it's okay. Don't worry about it. I forgive you. ;-)

But please, do examine this diagram carefully. It is, I think, one of my major insights as a success intellectual. I think you will benefit greatly from it.

It will take me about 30 postings to explain it, but basically, the insight is that success comes from adaptive execution to proven principles (or four-dimensional execution).

The best way to think of 4D execution is to think of a tennis champion like Andre Agassi or, more recently, Roger Federer.

But let's backtrack and start from the beginning.

1D

One-dimensional information comes from books, magazines, etc. Prose, indeed, is like an arrow pointing in only one direction. Hence, one dimension.

2D

A mind map or a flowchart is better, since it has TWO dimensions. Unlike prose, you can "read" a mind map or flowchart in many different directions.

3D

A procedure is even better, since you've basically considered all your options and have now committed to a specific procedure or methodology or "recipe" or modus operandum. This is where you practice a certain method until you master it perfectly. A martial artist, for instance, would master certain forms and keep practicing those forms.

4D

The real action and the real fun, however, happens at this stage, where you execute a certain procedure, but in a real-life situation (which obviously puts pressure on you). This is the moment of truth. This is where you make it or you break it. And sometimes, no matter how hard you've trained, you can be so nervous that you fail.

As you've probably guessed by now, most people fail in life or in their career or in business, because they are stuck at the one-dimensional stage. They may get an education, read books, go to seminars, etc. but what they are getting is just prose or one-dimensional information.

Nobody "prescribes" any particular action plan for them, so they do not act. They don't even have a map so they can see the various opportunities for action. For instance, pick up any management or business book at the local bookstore, and you will realize right away that those books are descriptive, NOT prescriptive. In other words, they don't tell you what to do to solve your problem.

Yet most people DO have a major problem in life (usually, it's how to make more money!).

Here's an easy way to remember the four phases:

• 1D -- someone gives you a textbook on medicine. It contains fascinating information, but you still have no clue what to do once you put down the book. Even a great book like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (by Stephen Covey) is just descriptive. It is just too hard to apply it.
  
• 2D -- a doctor examines you and prescribes a particular medication. In a business context, the "doctor" would be a consultant hired by a CEO or a high-level executive who wants to solve a major organizational problem.
  
• 3D -- a pharmacist gives you the prescribed medication, AND instructs you on how and when and how often to take the pills.
• 4D -- you actually swallow the pills at the right time, in the right frequency.

It's important to realize that although we go to see doctors and specialists for all kinds of problems (dentists, lawyers, doctors, gynecologists, etc.), we never go to see a doctor about our failure to achieve success in life.

However, this is beginning to change. In the last 10 years, there have been more than 10,000 new success/career coaches.

A sincere effort is a prayer answered in advance

5:00

A young woman I have been coaching, has recently received the great news that an organization will train her and support her financially as she launches her dream business.

I'm very impressed by her performance. As a business coach, I can only provide knowledge and strategic intellectual support. The decision to go for one's dream (in this short, unique life on Earth) belongs to every person.

In other words, I tell all my clients: I may have the knowledge, but YOU have the power.

The power to decide.

Most people don't decide, and hence, they do not suspect the awesome power they have.

I remember my days before June 2000, when I quit corporate Canada for good. The only significant decision I made every day, was which tie to wear! No wonder I felt I didn't have control over my life! No wonder I felt powerless as an employee.

(This being said, I did generate $100,000+ in revenues for the company within a few months, and was approached by my boss' boss for a higher position in account management).

But to get back to the young woman I was helping, I would say that her impressive result is only an illustration of a principle that cannot fail: no sincere effort goes unrewarded.

In other words, a sincere and consistent effort is a prayer answered in advance.

Success is simple

13:00

"Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing."

- Oscar Wilde

I would say the same about success. Perhaps most people don't achieve success because they haven't defined it precisely for themselves.

I like the following definition of success by Sally Hogshead, author of Radical Careering: Success is the ongoing process of becoming your best self.

The fact that so many people in suits (and I was one of them prior to June 2000) compete in the corporate rat race, proves that we have never defined success in our own terms. We tend to pursue success the way a corporate employer would define it: status, salary, the corner office, etc.

Another definition of success that I like, comes from John Ruskin: "When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."

This masterpiece can be your life, your career, your business, or your family, etc. It can even be a son or daughter that you lovingly educate, coach, guide, etc. so he/she will blossom into a wonderful, confident, responsible, compassionate and talented person.

To come back to the above quote, I would rewrite it this way:

Success is not complex. We are complex. Success is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

In my Ideal Career workshops, I encourage (exhort!) participants to clearly visualize their ideal career. That is, I push them to clearly define what they mean by a "successful career."

An ideal career has 4 key components: passion, talent, serving the world's need, and sense of purpose or importance.

The reason why so many baby boomers feel empty, even after what seems like a "successful" career, is that society has conditioned them to want and desire status, income, power, etc. as the unique measure of career success.

Most job ads, for instance, don't mention anything about talent (or the opportunity to develop one's talent), or passion, or how important the job really is.

Fortunately, we don't have to deal with "corporate employers." We only have to deal with our immediate supervisor, or boss.

If we are clear about what success means to us, and we honestly share our definition of success with our boss, there's a high likelihood that he/she will help us in achieving success in our career.

On the other hand, if we don't take the time to clearly define what "success" means to us, then nobody can help us. Not even God.

Work from the future, not toward the future

3:00

Can I invite you to read about my company's future, 20 years from now: exciting future.

Talentelle was created this year, yet my sister Zoonie (founder and VP Sales) and myself (CEO) have a clear vision of where we want the company to be and do.

We are two little people who, nevertheless, have Googlish ambitions. We want to serve 3 billion women, and also serve the girls/women who are not yet born.

Whereas Google helps people find information, we want to help women find their dream career and pursue it with courage, dedication and passion.

The existence of Pink Magazine (click HERE) only proves that this market is about to explode.

The success secret (and trust me, I've fully tested this secret in my own life) is to THINK BIG.

There's even an excellent book on thinking big: The Magic of Thinking Big. It was written over 40 years ago, yet it is as relevant as ever!

In future posts, I will include a few excerpts from that book.

Words are tools, thoughts are weapons

5:00

Words are tools to forge special weapons, and those special weapons are thoughts.

If you are skilled enough with words, you can skillfully shape your thoughts, and use those thought-weapons against fears or doubts that may arise in you, either spontaneously or under the influence of someone who wishes to create those fears in you.

A great book to read about mastering your mental powers, is James Allen's As a Man Thinketh. Written over 100 years ago, it is still as relevant, fresh and inspiring as ever. It is also incredibly short! It is definitely one of those books I keep reading over and over again (no, not because I'm a slow learner! It's just that if you read between the lines, you discover secrets about the awesome mental power we all have, but unfortunately rarely use.

If you had only two months to live...

14:00

How do you know if you are living the ideal, perfect life?

One way to know is that if your doctor told you that you had only two more months to live, and you decide to keep on living EXACTLY the way you are living now, then you are indeed living the ultimate life!

I don't know if that trick will work for everyone, but it does work often for me. When I look at my life from the point of view of my deathbed, things seems to become MUCH clearer. Priorities naturally emerge, and meaningless details naturally fade away.

Like TV news, for instance. Isn't it funny that they keep sending pictures of soldiers and casualties and wars happening in faraway countries that most people can't even pinpoint on a map?

I suddenly remember a quote I read years ago: "Our grand duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

The success secret here is to realize that the failure secret of millions of people is to grossly underestimate the power of television. Many things, especially if you are addicted to them, can shorten one's life: cigarette, overeating, etc. However, you can never tell EXACTLY how much life (in months, years) these addictions will take away from you.

In the case of television, however, you know PRECISELY how shorter your life will be, as a result of giving up your daily willpower to the mediocre, tasteless, artless and often offending programs that run on TV (except public television, of course).

I give career management workshops, and I often tell people: You have the choice every day. Either you choose to focus on your talent and develop it, so your life gets richer (and you earn more money too), or you choose to focus on television, in which case the lives of EVERYBODY behind the TV screen (writer, director, producer, etc.) get better while yours stagnates and goes nowhere.

Tom Peters actually wrote a very little colorful book titled "Talent." (Which comes from his mega-book Re-Imagine). I highly recommend it for junior as well as seasoned professionals and managers.

Peters' advice serves to remind people that our lives are short, and we live only once. Why not live a truly WOW life? By following his advice, a person not only ensures her professional success, but she also most likely wouldn't change a thing even if her doctor told her she had only a few months to live.

How to get the maximum from books

Steve Pavlina's recommended books appear below (www.stevepavlina.com). The first list contains books that I also recommend. The second list has books that I haven't yet read.

One success secret I use is that I try to "operationalize permanently" the principles of a book. For instance, I would create a special object that would remind me of an important principle read in a book, then place that object on my desk so I am reminded of it every single day.

I believe successful people are not people who have read a lot, but people who remember a lot and apply a lot from the few excellent books they've read.

• As You Think aka As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (power of thought)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (personal effectiveness)
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (slaughtering your enemy efficiently)
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (ensuring your enemy doesn’t slaughter you first)
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki (wealth advice with fake stories)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (social skills)
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (wealth)
• Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins (achievement and NLP)
• Maximum Achievement and Time Power by Brian Tracy (time management)
  
  
  
• Power vs. Force by David Hawkins (levels of consciousness)
• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (wisdom)
• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (manifesting intentions)
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (wisdom)
• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu (wisdom)
• Ask and It Is Given by Esther Hicks (manifesting intentions)
• Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman (inner peace, no slaughtering)
• Chaos and Genius by James Gleick (chaos science and fractals; Richard Feynman bio)
• The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion by Pete Egoscue (pain-free structural alignment)
• Using Your Brain for a Change by Richard Bandler (NLP)
• Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (optimism, duh)
• The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (consciousness and awareness)
• Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution by John Robbins (health and ethical food choices)
• Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (why a cattle rancher won’t eat meat)
• Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum (awesome book on diagnosing relationship issues)
• Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (philosophy in 1000 pages)
• The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley (victory)
• Lucid Dreaming and Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge (lucid dreaming)
• Far Journeys by Robert Monroe (astral projection)
• Cosmic Trigger Vol I, Vol II, and Vol III by Robert Anton Wilson (”weird” doesn’t begin to describe it)
• Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins (laughter as medicine)
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (finding meaning in the Holocaust)
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Holocaust story)
• Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks by Marilyn vos Savant (becoming a smarty pants)
• Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins (business)
• Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony (awesome fiction series):
  • On a Pale Horse (Death)
  • Bearing an Hourglass (Time)
  • With a Tangled Skein (Fate)
  • Wielding a Red Sword (War)
  • Being a Green Mother (Nature)
  • For Love of Evil (Satan)
  • And Eternity (God)
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (personal effectiveness)
• The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard (awareness and forgiveness)
• A Course in Miracles by the Foundation for Inner Peace (what the Bible meant to say)
• Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak (channeled teachings of the Pleiadians)
• Inspiration by Wayne Dyer (finding your purpose)
• Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain (visualization)
• The Millionaire Course by Marc Allen (wealth, read my interview with Marc Allen)
• Getting Things Done by David Allen (workflow and productivity)
• A Child Called It, The Lost Boy, and A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer (abuse and recovery)
• Organizing From the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern (getting organized)
• The China Study by T. Colin Campbell (health, read my book review)
• Code Complete and Rapid Development by Steve McConnell (software development)
• The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter (self-publishing)

How to sharpen your consciousness

11:00

Carlos Castanedas often wrote about the need to abandon one's personal history. I wondered why until one day, I realized something: physically, we may live in the present, but psychologically, all of us are basically living in the past.

("We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.")

Indeed, most of us only see things in life that our past has PROGRAMMED us to see. In fact, we don't perceive anything new, really. We only "recognize" things and events and people, based on the memory we have of them.

Therefore, there seems to be a struggle between PERCEPTION and MEMORY.

Artists -- real artists -- seem to have developed "strategic amnesia": they look at life with fresh eyes all the time.

Children also look at life with fresh eyes, although in their case, it's probably because they don't have many memories.

So what is the trick for most of us? How can we escape the tyranny of memory? How can we develop a way to look at the world with fresh eyes?

A trick I use is to stop before I do something, then say to myself: "Normally, I would do it this way, but today, I will try a different approach..." Then I try to do it differently.

Another trick is that I imagine myself playing a character in a movie. This drives me to do unpredictable things in order to be interesting to the audience. After all, when you watch a movie and the hero's actions are predictable, isn't it kind of boring?

The main benefit of trying to do things differently is that it awakens your consciousness and allows you to experience a richer life. It also sharpens your sensorial acuity and makes you a better thinker and strategist, since you grow keenly aware that the way you've been doing things is just ONE way and might not be the best way.

Free your mind, then free your money

Your human capital (the package of skills, experience, judgment, education, energy, motivation, etc.) that you sell to your employer, is not that different from your financial capital (the money you give to a bank in exchange for a fixed interest rate).

In both cases, you lose. You lose as an employee because your salary is fixed, and you lose as savings bank account holder because the interest rate is fixed.

So who wins? The employer and the bank.

The employer exploits your human capital to the max, in order to create more value or distribute that value to more customers. The bank exploits your savings to the max by giving loans to businesses or individuals at a higher rate than the interest rate they give you.

The elite's success secret is the common person's failure secret: in other words, most people fail in life because they keep doing something that guarantees their failure, yet they don't know it! (Hence, it's a failure secret).

The elite wins in life, because they keep doing something that makes them win, and they don't share that something with other people (hence, they have and practice success secrets).

The success secret here is that you have to free your mind, before you can free your money. If you don't free your money (that is, if you keep it locked up in a bank), you will never become rich. (Or you might, when you're 65 and you can't enjoy your money anymore!).

Freeing one's mind is the single greatest challenge of any human being who grew up in society and has been conditioned by powerful mass institutions to become a docile, obedient and intellectually powerless individual who will obey commands by employers, advertisers, governments or any other authorities set up by the elite.

Why people don't take blogging seriously

10:00

Although many people make thousands of dollars by simply maintaining a blog, the overwhelming majority of people still don't take blogs seriously.

Maybe it's because "blog" is such a ... geek-sounding word!

To me, B.L.O.G. stands for Brain Liquidation Optimized Globally.

It means a blog is where you display your brain's contents and offer it for a fee (i.e. liquidation, as with garage sales). "Optimized globally" simply means it's available to anyone in the world.

Unfortunately, most bloggers don't display their brain's content. They only display their lack of knowledge about basic grammar!

Even people who can write well (and they are getting rarer with every passing day), don't have much to share. They might have a solid career and a good paycheck, but it doesn't change the fact that they don't know much. And they don't learn anything new every day. They only read fiction.

So their knowledge base is about the same as it was years ago. They stopped growing as human beings. Sure, they work hard, and their bank account might be growing, but as human beings, they stopped growing.

So they don't have much to share with other people. Hence, there is no need to create a blog, because they would only come face to face with the harsh reality that they don't have much knowledge to share.

Instead of admitting frankly that they don't have much knowledge to share, most people would rather engage in self-denial and offer the excuse that they don't like writing, or that they don't have good writing skills.

A friend of mine recently learned a great deal about Web marketing and expressed the desire to teach it to other people. I thought it was a wonderful idea.

Why don't people act more like her? Isn't it more fun when you meet people and they're always sharing with you stuff they recently learned, instead of repeating the same old opinions they've been carrying around for years about politics, TV programs, movies, etc.?

In the end, perhaps the greatest contribution of the blogging phenomenon is to bring people face to face with an incredibly important question: What do you know exactly that is useful enough to share with other people?

Honestly answering that question will help a person prepare himself or herself for competing effectively in the knowledge-based economy of today.

Excellent advice on earning passive income

Excellent article by a guy who earns quasi-passive income of $9,000 per month: click HERE.

Success is logic, not magic

Success is neither luck nor magic. It's simply logic ruthlessly enforced.

The above is a simple diagram I use to diagnose what's going on in a company. It's a CEO-level diagram, so formal knowledge of business management is required.

However, the main point is that you can actually identify the critical factors of success (or performance indicators) in any company (or career, for that matter) and start to analyze, systematically, the causes and effects.

This daily evaluation of your performance, allows you to improve all the time.

Unfortunately, in a corporate setting, employees don't improve much, since there is often only ONE performance review -- every year!

To a certain extent, this is understandable. I mean, you wouldn't want your boss to come see you at your cubicle at the end of every day and go: "Okay, Peter, let's see how you performed today. Show me your numbers."

In such a situation, I would feel quite nervous, wondering whether my boss would use my numbers to decide whether I should come back or not, next Monday morning!

So daily evaluation is too intense, whereas yearly evaluation is too "laid back."

It is up to every employee to decide how and when he/she should evaluate himself/herself.

Without ruthless, clear-headed and objective self-evaluation, there can be no improvement. And given today's global competition, without improvement, there can be no future -- either for the individual or for the company.

A logical diagram, such as the one above, helps to focus on the right performance indicators and issues.

The price is write!

If you ask any person on Earth how he learned to speak, he would probably say: "Well, first, I was just babbling. Then, I babbled some more. And then, more babbling until I finally got ONE sentence right!"

It's the same with writing.

People who insist on not being able to write properly, and say: "Oh, I was not born to be a writer", are severely limiting their economic potential.

It's like a baby who refuses to babble and learn to speak, and who says: "Oh, I was not born to be a speaker."

Yet, in many ways, writing is infinitely more valuable, as a skill, than speaking.

When you speak, you can make mistakes. The other person would immediately say: "I'm sorry, I didn't get it, what do you mean exactly by that?"

When you write, you can't make a mistake. If a reader misunderstands you, you'll have to live with the consequences.

So writing definitely is more demanding intellectually than merely speaking. If speaking were so hard, most teenage girls wouldn't spend so much time talking on the phone! :-)

But there's more.

Writing is also economically more valuable than speaking. When you speak, you usually speak to one, two or three people. They have to be close to you physically and temporally.

With writing, it's totally different. You can write for thousands of people. For instance, I'm Feature Editor of a community newspaper, and every month, at least 10,000 people read my feature story on a beautiful, talented Asian woman.

But was I born a natural writer? Of course not. I had to "babble" for a long time with pen and paper. In fact, when I go over stuff I wrote 15 years ago, my first reaction is to reach for some matches so I can burn the piece of paper and get rid of the "evidence"! (Evidence of literary mediocrity).

But what has all this got to do with YOU? What is the success secret?

The SS is basically that by learning how to write properly, you can dramatically multiply your income.

Wealth has a price, and the price is write!

If the Internet, and in particular blogging software, were not invented, it would not be worth it for you to learn how to write. Even if you were a good writer, you would face challenges in finding a publisher, in marketing your book, etc.

But now, it takes only five minutes to set up a blog at Blogger.com. It takes about half an hour to set up a Subscribe button (like the one on this blog). And after that, you are more or less permanently connected to your readers. Because you KNOW that readers rely on you, this will motivate you every single day (in the same way that I am super motivated every day, because I see that more and more people are subscribing to this blogzine!).

"But what would I write about?" you might ask.

Write about what you know well, or what you like passionately.

After you begin writing, your consciousness will begin to transform itself. You will see things that you didn't see before.

This is why I like this quote, read years ago: "Good stories only happen to people who know how to tell good stories."

Same thing with Leonardo Da Vinci: by learning how to draw, he was able to pay more attention to everything he was seeing every day. That sharpened visual acuity, in turn, improve his drawing skills, and so on and so forth until he became a master illustrator.

How they paralyze your willpower

6:00

Every single person in society has such an amazing willpower, that the only way the elite and governments can control that willpower is to gently, covertly influence it to work against itself.

If you look at the people you know in your life, it will become obvious to you who is using his/her mind against his own interests, and who is not.

This is why all successful people believe that "the only thing that can stop me is me."

The chief instrument used by the elite and governments against people, is fear. Fear is the mind killer, and it prevents every one of us to exercise effective willpower.

Yet, F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real.

My trick is that every time I sense that I fear something, I just shut down my mind and do it! It works every time.

When you do something, you cannot fail: either you succeed in getting what you want, or you learn a valuable lesson in life.

Failures are just rehearsals for success. People who expect to succeed the first time, are like actors who expect to deliver a stellar performance at the very first rehearsal. Impossible.

This is why the following quote, which I memorized years ago, is so true: "Show me a guy who's afraid to fail, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time."

Create value & create desire

Peter Drucker wrote that business is only about innovation and marketing.

INNOVATION means creating new or better value.

MARKETING means creating a customer.

In short, to become wealthy -- and business is probably the best and most predictable instrument for achieving one's financial independence -- you have to create two things:

• Value outside
• Desire inside

Value is anything that a specific type of person wants, and is willing to pay for.

Desire is, well, the desperate urge to get and have and use that thing or value.

If you can create value but not desire, that's not good.
If you can create desire but not value, that's also not good.

To succeed in business requires mastery of the value creation process, as well as the desire creation process.

Samurai vs Shogun

12:00

A good friend of mine, a third-degree black belt Kendo martial artist, often encouraged me to take up Kendo lessons.

I always appreciated the incredible insights he gave me regarding the mysteries of Japanese swordsmanship. After all, the samurai way of life ruled Japan for 800 years. It was a warrior's code of honour, and like all codes of honour, it contains secrets that unleashes power of such precision and lethality that the ordinary man cannot even imagine it.

As swordmaker Hattori Hanzo, a mysterious character in the movie Kill Bill, said:

For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior's only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.

My secret was to realize, one day, that I was born to be a shogun (military commander), not a samurai.

Should a samurai succeed in meeting me face to face, with his right hand tightly clutching the handle of his sword and with his heart resolved to cut me, that would be the height of his career.

However, for the shogun facing such a samurai, it would be the lowest point of his career.

Indeed, the shogun, being a strategist, should have predicted this situation and should have done everything necessary to avoid such an embarrassing confrontation with an inferior warrior.

Even if the shogun were superior in swordsmanship to the samurai, it is a complete waste of his time to fight with his sword. Rather, he should fight with his word, by issuing commands to his lieutenants and troops.

The success secret is to realize that there are many black belts, but very few black minds.

A shogun with a black mind is someone whose mind is absolutely unscrutable. You can simply not predict what he or she is going to do.

An idealist without illusions

People often said, in the past, that I was an idealist. Often, it was not meant to be a compliment!

Only now do I realize that it's fairly easy to be an idealist. Any teenage girl can dream of a better world, and can even describe it in starkly visual terms. That's what being an idealist means.

It's only after I read JFK's biography that I understood something important. It is said that he was known to be "an idealist without illusions."

"Without illusions" is the part I was missing in my life, for so long. Was I afraid of the truth? Was I afraid of coming face to face with reality, and being unable to deal with it?

I think that most people, like me, are afraid of facing the truth. We would much rather cling on to our illusions, especially about ourselves. (Isn't it funny that we seem to see things (weaknesses, shortcomings, etc.) much clearer when it comes to relatives or the in-laws?)

The expresssion "an idealist without illusions" made me finally understand something I've read so many times before, but never truly understood:

"The truth shall set you free."

Magic is hidden logic

"Magic is hidden logic, and logic is discovered magic."

In June 1987, at the Excellence Ceremony of Jeanne-Mance high school, I went up on stage in front of thousands of students, and was recognized as the Valedictorian of my graduating class.

Afterwards, many parents came to congratulate me. I could see in their eyes that they had deep respect for what I had achieved. They thought that being a Valedictorian -- the student with the highest GPA of the school -- was an extraordinary feat.

But I have to confess that I didn't do most of the work. It was magic that achieved that feat.

All I did was follow the rules of magic, and then they gave me a gold medal that was 3 inches wide.

By "magic," I mean "hidden logic." My success secret (or hidden logic) was to study every day, for five years.

My way of thinking was, "I'm a student at this high school, so my MAIN job is to study."

I didn't pay much attention to girls. In fact, I had no clue about how to date a girl. Toward the end of my high school years, I asked a good friend of mine (a real party animal who was somehow very popular with the girls) about his "best practices" for dating.

He must have thought I had just descended from the moon, nevertheless he took my question serious and wrote one whole page on the Do's and Don'ts of dating!

"You gotta talk to her, ask her a lot of questions. Girls love to talk. And if you feel that they're slowing down, then throw in another question and that will get them started again."

Brilliant advice, it works!

But back to magic.

You can achieve what others consider to be magical, IF you ruthlessly follow cosmic laws. These are the laws of the universe, and no man or woman can break these laws. If you try, these laws will break you.

Think of martial arts masters. First, they learn the principles. Next, they practice again and again and again. Thousands of times.

Then one day, they appear on TV and do what seems like magic. Think of Bruce Lee or Jet Li.

No matter what field you work in, the success secret is to try hard to discover the hidden logic (or the secret principles). Once you discover them, forget everything else and spend as much time as possible practicing the application of those principles.