Motivation

Andrew Carnegie, entrepreneur, business man and charity donor sparks this post with a quote on motivation.

Born in Scotland in 1835 Carnegie was raised by working-class parents in a small cottage with one main room. The Carnegie family soon left Scotland and emigrated to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

Andrew landed his first job at 13 as a bobbin boy changing spools of thread in a cotton mill. He worked over 70 hours a week, making it his mission to remember details and faces of some of the town’s most prominent business men.

Through hard work and time spent educating himself intellectually and culturally, Carnegie climbed the rungs of various corporate ladders. He eventually formed his own steel company and secured numerous other investments.

Later, in his sixties, the profit from the sale of his steel company in 1901 left him with close to 230 million in gold bond notes. The notes were housed in a vault at the Hudson Trust Company in Hoboken, New Jersey for safekeeping. It was reported that Carnegie did not want to visit the vault, which was the accumulation of his life’s work in the steel industry.

He believed that the first third of one’s life should be dedicated to education, the second third to acquiring wealth and the last third to dispersing that wealth to benevolent causes. Carnegie believed that the pursuit of wealth was the cause of illness in the mind, unless the reason behind amassing a fortune was to be used toward the betterment of society.

He died in August of 1919 at the age of 83. Carnegie is one of the top ten wealthiest individuals in history. With his money and time he began numerous foundations, schools, libraries and more.

Andrew Carnegie left us with the following quote:

“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

Telling the Universe What We Want

Telling the universe what we want is essential for manifesting goals. Yet as much as we say we aspire to something, some of us are guilty of sending the Universe mixed signals. I’m thinking of myself as I read this. Like an ex-lover who calls us to reunite only to disappear a few weeks later, we fluctuate between putting our effort into a project and then retracting.

Affirmations are a great way to solidify baby steps toward our goals. Posting signs around the house or repeating an inner mantra starts the process moving forward.

One of the most notable writers on affirming and manifesting goals is Louise Hay.

Louise Hay was born in 1926. In her early years she endured sexual and physical abuse as well as a life of poverty. She dropped out of high school and gave up a child for adoption around the time she was 15.

Determined to live a better life, Louise left home at a young age.

Things fared better for Louise some years after. She held a career as a fashion model and married a prominent businessman. This seemingly better life took her into a new class and interesting set of experiences.

Louise’s life took many more twists and turns. She would later divorce, become a minister in a church dedicated to the New Thought Movement, and come down with cervical cancer. Louise felt that her cervical cancer was caused by resentment toward her prior abuse. Determined to cure her self of the cancer through non-traditional methods, Louise changed her diet, practiced reflexology and stopped her negative thinking. Within 6 months, Hay claims her cancer was gone.

Even before her Cancer, Louise had written a pamphlet about healing one’s body and the mental connection to health troubles. She believed all ailments were caused by specific thoughts.

In the 1980’s Louise began support groups for people suffering from HIV and AIDS. Her work with and acceptance of AIDS patients when most of the medical community was baffled by the disease led her to television and speaking engagements, including Oprah and Phil Donohue.

The little pamphlet on healing the body eventually became a book in 1984 entitled You Can Heal Your Life. You Can Heal Your Life remained on the New York Times best seller list for 13 consecutive weeks. She later began Hay House Publishing, continued to write numerous books, and developed You Can Heal Your Life into a film.

Paraphrasing Louise’s reminder that affirmations in whatever form do work, she says:

“Most people do affirmations for a few days and then stop, claiming that they don’t work. When the first little shoot comes up that closely resembles what we want, we stomp on it because it isn’t a million dollars. We have to give things a chance to grow.”

Self-Sabotage

Do you choose to sabotage yourself?

Most of us can see self-sabotage in others, but can rarely recognize it in ourselves. When it comes to managing our career or art, sometimes sabotage manifests itself as procrastination. Psychologists agree that procrastination is a common form of negating one’s self.

There are many reasons we choose to sabotage our efforts. Possibly we don’t feel worthy of success, we feel like an impostor, or even that we are a people-pleaser and think that if we win, someone else has to loose.

We say we want to achieve but when we get close to our goal we may feel guilty. We might even purposefully mess things by forgetting to set our alarm and end up late to an appointment.

How can we stop self-sabotage? It starts by getting outside of our heads, getting active, focusing on what we want until it's complete and stopping criticism of ourselves and others. If you commit to write seven pages of a script in one afternoon, the plan to empower yourself would entail that you follow through with that promise, instead of writing three pages and berating your work.

Have you ever looked at a successful person and thought, I can do better than that?

It’s interesting how people with less credentials, less talent, or superficial things like average looks and little money, plow through and achieve because they aren’t caught up in over thinking things or the dreaded “analysis paralysis.”

We close WITH our quote of the week from French romantic painter Eugene Delacroix who reminds us that:

“The Artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.”

Fighting for Your Limitations

Fighting for one’s limitations is a pessimist's game.

Hopefully, this quote can remind us all to question ourselves when putting a ceiling on success.

Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White leaves some food for thought.

Dana White was born in 1969 in Manchester, Connecticut. He attended two years or so of college before dropping out. Dana held jobs as a bellman, aerobic boxing instructor and a fighter himself.

By 1995, Dana White had three boxing facilities in Las Vegas called The Gym.

Over a decade ago, Senator John McCain pushed to outlaw the sport of Ultimate Fighting calling it human cockfighting. In 2001, White learned that the near bankrupt UFC was looking for a buyer. He contacted a childhood friend and the friend’s brother. Those men were the famous Fertitta brothers, Las Vegas casino owners, who also happened to make the Forbes’ Magazine 400 richest Americans’ list. Within a short time the Fertitta brothers bought UFC, making Dana White president and 10% owner of the newly acquired UFC’s parent company.

Dana has mentioned that part of what has fueled his success is the desire to be happy with what he does for work. He believes 90% of Americans go to a job hating what they do everyday and White did not want be part of that statistic. Dana has admitted he’s not the smartest guy one could ever meet, but he knows about fighting. Dana is quiet about his net worth, which is not public, but is most likely something to be very proud of.

20 years after his graduation, Dana was asked back to his high school to give a commencement speech.

Dana says:

“It was pretty cool. If you would have asked me ten years ago if this is where I would have been in ten years, I would have laughed in your face.”

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe left the world many gifts before her death. One of those gifts was her truthful take on life, captured in various statements she made to the press.

Born Norma Jean Mortensen to an unsteady home life, the would-be-star lived some of her youth in orphanages until marrying at age 16 to escape foster care.

Young Norma Jean was discovered by a photographer while working in an airplane parts factory. On recommendation that Norma Jean pursue modeling further, she followed suit, her pictures received much attention and her career commenced as the great Marilyn Monroe.

Despite Marilyn’s status as one the sexiest women alive, adorned by millions, and the recipient of attention from several powerful men, Marilyn struggled with herself and life. Her bouts with self-doubt, addiction, depression and insomnia became ever-increasing despite her success.

Monroe died at age 36, a probable suicide by barbiturates. No evidence of homicide has been documented. Many question the details surrounding her death. Her popularity still lives on in movies, books, songs, fan sites, and in the public’s mind as a wounded beauty taken from us too soon.

From the scores of genius quotes Marilyn has left the world she summed up hard work with this:

“A career is born in public- talent is born in privacy.”

The Power of Thoughts

We've all heard how powerful thoughts can be in shaping our success. Discussions on thoughts come from Artist, Writer and Metaphyschics teacher Florence Scovel Shinn.

Shinn became an expert on the power of thoughts and the energy which flows from them into our lives. Born in New Jersey in 1871, Shinn became a spiritual writer during her middle age. Florence was part of what was what was termed at the time “The New Thought Movement,” a spiritual group which developed in the late 19th century of philosophers, writers and such who believed that thoughts either created or stopped one’s sickness through the law of attraction.

Ms. Shinn left several books including The Game of Life and How to Play It.

Florence Shinn believed that our positive thoughts (which were another form of energy) and affirmations made one a success. Her books gave countless examples of individuals taking control of their destiny through the power of their minds.

Quoting Florence Shinn:

"Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and, often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement."

Something to keep in mind should you feel like quitting or are exhausted.

Competition

Depending on your personal view, competition can provide fuel to become more or destructively consume one into comparison. As a filmmaker, you may be embroiled in competition, whether entering film festivals, vying for the highest box office numbers, or simply challenging yourself to actually complete that script and not let it collect dust in some drawer.

This quote comes from American businessman and politician Dwight Whitney Morrow.

Born in 1873, Morrow graduated from Amherst and later law school at Columbia. He made partner in 1913 at JP Morgan and Company. Morrow later died in 1931 as one of the richest men in New Jersey with an estate worth millions, despite the ‘29 stock crash just a few years prior.

Morrow says:

"The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition."