40
Who has had the most positive influence on your life? What advice did they give you?
THERE have been many people who have influenced me in a positive way, but someone who has had a profound impact on my life is personal development speaker and my original mentor, Jim Rohn, who gave me the best piece of advice that I’ve ever been given. He told me that in order to truly be successful in life you have to stop focusing on what you get and start focussing on what you can give. What makes us happy is not what we get, but rather, what will make us very happy, or very sad, is who we become as people. His focus was on how to add value and that was my true nature, anyway. The combination of his coaching and my inherent values and drives, gave me the formula that has been the key to my success over all these years: Do more for others than anyone else could possibly imagine, in your relationshps, in your office, in your sector, industry, county, country, or the world.
with Jim Rohan
Which positive person from history would you like to meet....
VICTOR Frankl. He was the Austrian doctor who incredibly survived the unimaginable in Nazi prison camps during the Holocaust while his family, his wife and his parents were murdered there. He wrote one of my all-time favorite books, Man’s Search for Meaning, which I’ve read probably a dozen times throughout my life. Even when confronted with the most hopeless and horrific situations, he was able to find higher empowering meanings in the midst of that insanely brutal, painful experience. His treatments and writings focus on being able to find an empowering meaning in times of extreme stress, injustice and pain. It’s all about the meanings we make up. That’s the whole game. Because meanings create your emotions and your emotions create the quality of your life. If you have a billion dollars and every day you live in frustration, anger or worry, then the quality of your life has nothing to do with the amount of money you have. If you have perfect family, beautiful wife or husband who you love dearly, and amazing kids but live in worry, that’s the quality of your life. This is why one of the most important skills in life that anyone can develop is the power of WHY, even when you don’t know HOW. That’s what an empowering meaning will give you - because your motives matter. If Dr. Frankl was able to do it amidst that unconscionable experience, so can you and I when the daily pebbles of life occur; no matter how difficult they may seem.
Victor Frankl