I love books. There is so much wisdom in each one of them. So much experience, so many lessons to be learned… Books inspire us, and satisfy our hunger for knowledge. They let our imagination loose and answers questions, “what if?” “what is more?” “how come?” They bring us to different worlds. They open our minds, so we can expand our vision.
Recently, I finished e-book The Road to Wealth by Robert G. Allen. He is a best-selling author and real estate guru. Also, he teaches thousands of people real estate tricks and how to start an information empire. He is wealthy in knowledge and very generous with information. This is a second book I read by him and looking forward in reading other books of his, including “Nothing Down.”
Here, I want to share some excerpts and quotes from Robert G. Allen e-book, The Road to Wealth, that will make you think, encourage you, inspire you. It inspired me, for sure. Enjoy these nuggets of wisdom:
“Confidence comes with practice.”
“Don’t look at the immensity of the goal. Don’t look down at the penalty for failure. Just keep your eyes on the next step.”
“You’ll slip and bruise yourself. Maybe even break a leg, figuratively. But you’ll heal, and if you maintain the proper attitude, you’ll emerge a stronger, more courageous and less fearful person.”
“Face your fear. You always find the best fishing holes in the places where the average fisherman is afraid to go.”
“The masses are always afraid. This leaves more for the few who dare. We don’t have shortage of opportunity in America. We have a shortage of courage. The lakes are teeming with fish. But you have to dare to climb the cliffs to get them. Where the risks are great the rewards are greater.
Once you understand this concept, you’ll never lack for anything again. That is, if you’re able to overcome your fear.”
“As in all fairy tales, if you want to marry the princess, you have to slay the dragon. The greatest dragon you’ll ever face is your own fear. ”
“If you can learn to live with the fear, the world is yours.”
“Watch the crowd. Go in the opposite direction. Success does not come by following the crowd. Where there are many fishermen, the lakes get fished out fast. You must not be afraid to go against the grain – to go alone to unclaimed territory.”
“To be successful you must learn to be different. Find true friends who will admire you for your courage. Any friend who encourages you to be less than you can be is not real friend by anyone’s standard. Be different. While the masses seek security, do the contrary. March out into the risk. If the masses huddle in a corner, afraid, stand out from them. Face your fear. Look around you. See the masses standing in lives, waiting for someone to take care of them. Step out of line and form a new line – with you at the head of it.
If fear of failure causes the multitudes to cower, let this be your cue. Like all great people before you, determined to fail way to success if necessary.
If the masses yearn to be loved, strive instead to be respected. It is greater to be respected than to be loved. For respect is the foundation of love. There can be no love without it. When you learn to face your fear, you will come to respect yourself. And you will be irresistible. It takes courage to step out of the line marked “security” into the line marked “risk.”
“You’re already wealthy. You are your wealth. Wealth is not having. It’s being. Nothing you have is as important as what you are.”
“Acceptance is harder to give than advice but infinitely more valuable.”
“From ashes of failure grew my greatest success.”
“If you refuse to accept failure, you cannot fail. You may fall down a cliff or two, but you must learn to get up, dust yourself off and keep climbing. Only those who are willing to fail again and again deserve to make it to the top.”
“The brain is the most powerful computer in the world – your personal Einstein.”
“How do you stretch your brain to accept bigger and bigger ideas? Associate with big thinkers.”
“Often hunches are correct. Try to create an environment in which hunches can be nurtured.
Feed the faith, starve the doubt. Learning how to recognize and follow this still-small voice can lead us to levels of success that we could not attain otherwise.
Thus, by listening to positive thinkers, reading positive books and by learning to follow our hunches, we can actually program ourselves to be more successful.
One of the best brain-stretching activities is some form of regular exercise. Exercise builds self-esteem. And self-esteem is the fuel that keeps us running after other people give up. The better you feel about yourself, the more willing you will be to accept those big ideas from others and those hunches from your own computer.”
“You are obliged to help other people in anyway you can because it’s going to come back to you. Your success is assured if you help enough people get what they want.”
“Whatever you plant in your life, you’re going to get back.”
Tags: being different, books, fear, helping others, How to overcome your fears, inspiration, life, lifestyle, links, nuggets of wisdom, opinion, personal, philosophy, photo inspiration, photos, pictures, post and photos by Ineta McParland, quotes, random thoughts, reflections, relationships, Robert G. Allen, self-confidence, self-esteem, The Road to Wealth, thoughts, wisdom, wonderocity
Posted by ineta on Feb 18, 2011 in
starting over We all have major changes in our lives when we need to start over. It could be losing a job, losing a relationship, moving, or as simple as starting a new year, a week. Each day can be a start over, too, if we choose.
Starting over is not easy for some of us. We do not even know how to do it. We feel lost. We keep falling into traps that keeps us in the known, familiar, comfort (even when we hate it). So, what does it take to get out of these traps? How to go forward and create life we wish?
First, let’s identify the traps. They usually are:
1) Looking back
2) What ifs
3) Victimhood
4) Attachment
5) Fear and resistance to change
These traps are usually intertwined, and it is not easy to get out. One leads to another, and we feel trapped like in a spider web, feeling paralyzed with fear. So, how to untangle ourselves? How to use these traps to our advantage?
First, we often can’t help but look back. Oh, memories… “Those were good old days,” or “He or she is such a jerk.” Positive or negative, our necks probably hurt from keep turning back. This is the past, and we got to make a peace with it. “The Past is Powerless” like Eckhart Tolle said in his book The Power of Now. It does not affect us at this moment. Only we affect ourselves by our own thoughts that we choose to have. Nothing is wrong with remembering. It only becomes hurtful if we choose to “relive” the bad. Why torture ourselves? When memory comes, we just got to let it go and think to ourselves, “This thought does not do any good for me.” We can choose to have any thoughts and memories if we stay in the now. Like in Landmark Education, I learned a phrase, “How can you drive forward, if you are looking back in rear-view mirror at all the times?”
Looking back also entails “what ifs.” What if we should have done that differently? What if I’ll stay single forever? What if I’m too old to date? What if I’m not going to find another job? What ifs never end if we let it. What ifs are only what ifs. It is mumbo jumbo of our over-analyzing mind and most of it is just a waste of time thinking and it is fear-driven. If something is doable, let’s do it. Other than that, let’s concentrate on our Now and future right at this minute.
Once we end a bad relationship or quit a bad job, we can’t help but feel victim. So and so treated us badly, and we keep reliving our past. Once again, we look back with resentment, regrets, anger, sadness, etc. We are responsible for our own thoughts, so why we want to suffer again? Plus, we did not realize back then that we are strong. We felt as a victim instead. That’s why people mistreated us. If we would not allow ourselves to be a victim and be strong, we would not fall in this situation in the first place. We live and learn. So, let’s be strong, stand up for ourselves and never be or feel victim again.
The next trap is attachment. We love familiar. Some of us hate or afraid of change so much, we are willing to stay in any situation, even when it is detrimental to us. That’s why we keep coming back to the same situations over and over again. It is our state of mind that keep us trapped. We cling to familiar and to known. We hate our jobs, but we stay there because of our steady paycheck, benefits, everything is familiar. We stay in bad relationship, hoping things will change for the better, but it never does. It is familiar, and we do not know how to get out. We attach ourselves to jobs, people, familiarity. Change is always good. Let’s re-program our minds and go for what we want. If something is not working , we got to let it go and look for alternative. We are worth all the best. Therefore, we should not settle for anything less. If we overcome fear of change, and challenge ourselves in unfamiliar territories, we will learn so much new. We will get unstuck from our past, and starting over will feel like a new adventure, a new life we are worth living.
Now let’s imagine our new life. We have an empty canvas, or a sheet of paper. What colors we will choose? What words we will write? What pictures we will create? It is all up to us.
Tags: attachment, best seller, changes in life, Eckhart Tolle, entrapment, fear, fear of change, how to start over, inspiration, kittens, Landmark education, life, links, looking back, losing job, losing relationship, love, men, moving, opinion, people, philosophy, photo, picture, reflections, relationships, resistance to change, starting over, starting over traps, The Power of Now, thoughts, victimhood, what ifs, women, wonderocity
Posted by ineta on Aug 29, 2010 in
starting over 
“Hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine. How about you?”
“I’m O.K.”
“Anything new in your life?”
“No. How about you?”
“The same old.”
Sounds familiar? Ooh, we are such a creatures of habit. We love our dull routines. We get so used to them, that even we love to hate them. We LOVE comfort. We love familiar. We love what we know and we do what we can to stay in the comfort zone. What is unfamiliar is scary. What we often do not realize is that in unfamiliarity we can find freedom – freedom from conditioning, freedom from the past. Yes, ankles might shake from the fear of unknown, but in that unknown we’ll find something new to learn, something new and exciting to talk about, something new to experience.
What if we would take a new route home? What if we would visit a new place that we never been before? What if we would meet new people? What if we would stop comparing new people we meet with our exes and the past? How our life would look like if we would look at it from the new perspective? Would we come alive? We certainly would. Now, if we would find time to follow our passions? Schedule them, if we have to. Our lives would be so enriched. We are worth it! We are worth to live lives we desire. Our daily routines are just excuses to be in the comfort – in the known.
There is enriched life that is waiting for us if we are brave enough to cross the line and free ourselves from the comfort trap. The unknown is like a blank piece of paper – we can fill it with any colors we want, we can choose any words or it can become any shape in origami form. It is our source of creativity. What you choose your life to be?
Tags: changing life for better, comfort trap, fear, fear of unknown, friends, inspiration, life, opinion, people, personal, photo, post and photo by Ineta Mcparland, random thoughts, reflections, routines, thoughts, uncertainty, wonderocity
Posted by ineta on Jun 30, 2010 in
being creative,
being powerful,
persistence 
We get a brilliant idea; our faces light up; we think of end result; we get excited; and then we let it go. Or, we start on the idea, and then we never finish. Or, we consult with others, and let others to put us down.
Why is it we let it go so easily? Why we give up? Why we do not go all the way?
There might be five main reasons:
1. We think of others first (responsibilities);
2. We listen to critics, including ourselves;
3. We are afraid of consequences (good or bad);
4. We have too much on our plate;
5. We procrastinate.
Would it be great if we would go for that brilliant idea? Would it be great to finish what we started? Here are solutions:
I know, responsibilities come first when we think of others. Did we ever thought that we are important, too? We are important and worth everything. So, if we wish to work on the idea, we got to learn how to say “no” to people or situations that get in the way.
We share our idea with somebody. That person starts to criticize. Do we listen to them and stop, or we persist on our idea? Also, we can be the worst self-critics. Our minds can kill any idea with “what ifs”: what if it is a bad idea and it would be a waste of time? what if…, etc. In any case, we should ignore critics and fire our self-critic and go for an idea, no matter what.
Third obstacle is fear. We might be afraid of consequences. It also comes with “what ifs”. Think about this… Would we rather make an idea work, or would rather let it be in our mind and do nothing about it? I would say, better to try it, then later regret the chances we did not take. Then we see that somebody came up with the same idea, and we beat ourselves down why we did not do anything about it. The fear also might be of success. It’s unfamiliar territory. We are afraid of what we do not know. We are worth of every success. We got to think of the end result, how much we can contribute not only to ourselves, but to others. That will keep us going.
Next, we might have too much on a plate. We multi-task, but do not achieve anything. We think of all these things to do; we get overwhelmed and end up not finishing anything. At these situations, we got to look at one project at the time, one step at the time. Do most important things or even the hardest things first. Look at most difficult jobs as challenges and go for them.
The last is procrastination. We think we’ll do it tomorrow, but when tomorrow rolls in, we focus on different things and we entirely forget our project. We got to focus on our target NOW and back it with ACTIONS. Do it right now – no ifs about it.
Tags: art, consequences, critics, drawing by Ineta, fear, friends, how to finish what we started, inspiration, life, multitasking, opinion, people, personal, post and photo by Ineta Mcparland, procrastination, ramblings, random thoughts, reflections, relationships, responsibilities, self-critic, thinking of others, thoughts, wonderocity, working on idea
Posted by ineta on Apr 30, 2010 in
being brave,
self-confidence 
We probably all dealt with bullies in our lives: in kindergarten, schools, at work, in relationships. The bully could be a co-worker, a boss, a partner, even an organization, etc., etc.
How do we handle the bully? Do we let them treat us like crap and be a victim, or do we do something about it? Let’s define “bully.” According to Merriam – Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus: bully is “a person habitually cruel to others who are weaker.” If we give in to bully, does that mean we are weak? We certainly do not want to choose being that.
Now, let’s look into bully’s mind. There are underlying reasons why bullies are the way they are.
1) They want to bully others around them, so they would not portray themselves as weak.
2) They need to control their surroundings, so they would not feel helpless.
3) They feel good when they hurt others because they do not want to be hurt themselves.
There might be a situation at some place at some time, where and when they have felt as weak, helpless and hurt. Therefore, in circumstances where they can feel power, they will do everything to be in control.
So the big question is how to dis-empower the bullies? How to outsmart them? How to protect yourself?
We need to diminish the circumstances where the bully feels powerful. How? We put them in surroundings, where they feel weak, helpless and hurt.
1) For your protection, never ever show fear and weakness. Bullies feed on that.
2) If possible, completely ignore them, like they would not exist.
3) Never make them mad. Do not want to infuriate the bull.
If that does not work,
4) Find their weak spot, their weakness, their insecurities and turn that against them. Let their own ego self-destruct them. They will not know what hit them.
5) Put them in surroundings where they feel helpless. For example, among stronger than him people or among people who make him feel helpless and insecure.
6) Sometimes you can kill bullying with kindness. Play on their weak spot. (Just never ever become a doormat. Always stand up for yourself.) You never know, bully might just need a friend, and he may be shocked because nobody was nice to him before.
Of course, different circumstances require different measures. Got to play accordingly. Just got to use your brain to outsmart the bully.
As businesses or organizations go, you can always change them. Nothing is worst for business than a bad word of mouth. If boss or co-worker bully you, – report them or change locations or jobs. Stand up for yourself to be respected. Being bullying is not in job’s description. If partners bully you – either stand up for yourself or leave them. Life is too short to be unhappy. You can always choose to be strong.
Tags: at work, bad word of mouth, being strong, boss, bullies, bully, bullying, business, children, circumstances, co-worker, cruel, dis-empower, education, ego, family, fear, friend, friends, happy, helpless, hurt, insecurities, inspiration, kids, kindergarten, kindness, life, mad, opinion, organizations, outsmart, outsmarting the bullies, peole, personal, philosophy, photos, pictures, power, protection, reflections, relationships, schools, self-confidence, self-esteem, standing up for yourself, strong, surroundings, thoughts, victim, weak, weak spot, wonderocity
Most of my life I was shy with little streaks of bravery. Now I find myself mostly brave with little streaks of shyness. So before, talking in public – forget about it – I was terrified. I even skipped a Speech class in college. To go in front of class was a nightmare. My voice was shaking, my knees were shaking; I felt I’m going to pass out in front of everybody. Then, I realized shyness is only state of mind based on fears:
1) fear of not being good enough,
2) fear of being misunderstood (especially when you have an accent)
3) fear of forgetting speech altogether
4) fear of making fool of myself
5) fear of (fill in the blank)
I realized that all the fears only reside in my mind. Of course, if we think we will screw it up, we will. If we think we can not make a speech or speak in public, we can’t. What we think of that will become. Just know this, all those fears are self-made and only is messing up with your mind, and it is not what you think it is. I took Landmark education courses (that I highly recommend to anyone). By the end, I was volunteering to go in front of the class. I made myself do it, no matter how uncomfortable I felt. Of course, a few times, my knees were still shaking, but I felt more confident because I thought what I want to share was of big importance to others. When you forget about yourself and you think of others, it becomes really easy. All those fears are bull crap, anyway.
1) You are good enough.
2) People will understand you (If some of them will not, they can ask questions later if they are not too shy). 
3) You will involve people and perhaps will make a difference in their lives.
4) If you’ll make a fool of yourself, so what – at least you and audience will have a good laugh.
5) (Fill in the blank opposite of your fear)
When I talked, people actually listened. They laughed. And some of them told me that I’m inspiration. So, don’t listen what your fears tell you. Stand up confidently because you have something important to say.
Tips for great public-speaking, I learned:
1) Talk from the heart. Hand-written or printed speech that is read in audience does not sound as effective, as you speak it (no matter if you wrote the speech, or not). Example – Tiger Woods read public apology did not sound that sincere.
2) If you forget what you wanted to say – make up as you go.
3) Involve audience – ask audience questions and listen for the answers.
4) Make audience laugh – don’t be so serious.
5) Leave audience with something to think about.
Most importantly, practice makes a big difference. Do it not once, but keep doing it. The fear will go away and you’ll be confident as never before. You are too important to be silent.
Tags: acing speech with bravery, being brave, business, fear, fear of public speaking, how to be brave in public speaking, inspiration, leadership, life, lifestyle, overcoming fear of public speaking, overcoming shyness in public speaking, people, personal, philosophy, photo, post and photos by Ineta McParland, public speaking, public speaking issues, reflections, self-confidence, self-esteem, speech, speech class, thoughts, tips for public speaking, training, wonderocity
