“Life doesn’t run away from nobody. Life runs at people.”
- Joe Frazier

Smokin’ Joe Frazier: even if you’re not a boxing fan, chances are you know that name. Known as ‘the people’s champ’, he’s the “average Joe” who became an Olympic and heavyweight boxing champion. So, how will you remember him? The man who knocked Muhammad Ali to the floor? Or the man who was knocked down six times by George Foreman?  

At Frazier’s funeral service in Philadelphia, George Foreman paid tribute by saying, “When the bell rang, he would not back up from King Kong,” and Ali once said of their epic ‘Thrilla in Manila’ bout, “It was the closest thing to dying that I know of.” Clearly, in the boxing ring, Frazier was a physical force his opponents will never forget, but his equally formidable mental toughness, both in and out of the ring, is something we would all do well to remember him by.

Lessons from a Legend

1.   To be a success, you must prepare to be a success.

“…You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you’re down to your reflexes. That’s where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you’re going to get found out now, under the bright lights.”

We all know that practice makes perfect but what Frazier is wisely pointing out is that it takes dedicated practice to reach your full potential in any area of life. Successful people are routinely successful, they practice being the best they can be every day and in every way. Becoming a success means developing successful reflexes!

2.   You have to believe in yourself before others can believe in you.

“…I got a burlap sack, put a brick in the middle, and filled it with rags, corncobs, some Spanish moss, and sand. I hung that sack off the branch of an oak tree. I’d wrap my hands with a necktie of my daddy’s and punch at it. My mom gave me an hour a day. My brothers and sisters said, “Nah.” I said, “You’ll see.” (From an interview published in Esquire magazine, 2004)

Let’s face it, Frazier’s childhood circumstances and his fairly average stature made him an unlikely future heavyweight boxing champion. But, he believed in his abilities and he never stopped believing, even when facing King Kong in the ring! Champions become champions from within; Frazier believed in himself as a champion and he became that champion.

3.   Without failure, there could be no success. 

At Frazier’s funeral, the Rev. Alyn E. Weller said…

“How do you handle it when you get knocked down? One of the things Joe Frazier teaches us is how to live after the struggle. After ‘Down goes Frazier,’ he got back up. Next time that somebody tells you that you are down for the count, just remember, ‘I’m from Philly; that’s where Smokin’ Joe is from,’ we get back up!”

If it was impossible to fail, it would be impossible to succeed. Success is a journey, not a destination, and there are going to be roadblocks and bumps along the way. You don’t need a clear path to reach your true potential, you need a positive mental attitude and a willingness to look for ways over, around, and through the obstacles you meet. Down does not have to mean out!

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Good Vibes Are Good For Business!

Everything that exists in the world is a form of energy. Everything in the universe that you can see, hear, smell, touch or taste is a form of energy and energy, in all its forms, vibrates. This means that everything in the world creates its own unique vibration, not just the things that physically exist but also the things that exist only in your mind.

Your thoughts and your emotions are simply forms of energy so everything you think and everything you feel creates its own vibration. Energy can be positive or negative, you can think positively or negatively, and you can generate ‘good’ or ‘bad’ vibrations so, in terms of your new business, do you have a good or a bad feeling about your potential to succeed?

When you think positively, you generate positive energy and that energy creates a positive environment around you. Everyone who comes into contact with you, whether it’s your business associates, your employees, or your clients, will pick up on the positive vibe surrounding you and they will be positively influenced by it – and that’s got to be good for business, right? When you get a ‘good feeling’ about something or someone, you’re picking up on the positive energy being generated.

The same applies when you get a ‘bad feeling’ about something or someone, you’re picking up on the negative energy being generated. With this in mind, the importance of thinking positively about yourself and your business becomes clear.

The way you think about yourself has the power to influence the way others think of you. You have to think positively about your potential to succeed if you want others to think the same way. When you are able to see yourself in your mind’s-eye as a success and believe in yourself as a success, the clients who walk through your door will also see that success.

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If it’s your ambition to be successful in life, is it possible to be sure that you will achieve that success? Your definition of success is completely unique to you, we all have our own perception of what constitutes success in our own lives, but something we all share is the power to be masters of our own destiny. Each and every one of us already has that power within us and those who believe they will achieve the life they aspire to are those who recognise that power within themselves and believe in themselves.

We are all who we believe ourselves to be, so who do you believe you are? Our  circumstances in life are simply a reflection of who we believe we are, so if you believe you are someone who can achieve whatever you want to achieve in life, you will. Of course, if you believe you are someone who is destined to fail, guess what? To become successful, you must first believe that you have the potential to succeed; you must have self-belief. Without that inner belief, the only thing you can be absolutely sure of in life is that you will not achieve your full potential.

Successful people have successful habits. They routinely think positively and act positively so success for them has become a routine habit. The way you think on a daily basis and the way you do things on a daily basis will ultimately decide your level of success in life. Every thought and every action you take on a daily basis must represent another step towards achieving your ambitions and unless you believe that those ambitions are achievable, success will not be yours.

For this reason, it’s crucial that you are absolutely sure of what it is you want to achieve. To be able to commit your every thought and every action to achieving your ambitions, you must be sure that what you think you want to achieve is really what you want to achieve and that what you’re doing is really what you want to do. The more you really want to do something, the more likely it is that you will.

We all have an inner wisdom, something we might describe as intuition or a ‘gut feeling’ about what we really want to become in life and what we really want to achieve but it’s wisdom that’s often overlooked or pushed aside by the pressures of modern life. The person we want to be and the things we want to do often play second fiddle to striving to become the person that someone else expects you to be or doing the things you feel you have to do or should do. If this sounds like you, consider this; successful people do what they love and love what they do. Do you love what you? When you find your passion, you find your inspiration, and when your thoughts and actions are inspired, you find your success.

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“Success is never permanent and failure is never final”

Mike Ditka American football Player and Coach

Everything in the world as we know it is energy and energy is constantly in motion. When you think positively, you generate positive energy and when you think negatively, you generate negative energy but all energy moves in natural cycles and it’s a Universal Law that everything has a natural rhythm and that there is a time and a season for everything.

Knowing, understanding, and accepting that everything moves in cycles allows you to ‘go with the flow’ in life. It allows you to ride out the bad days, knowing that good days will come around again, and it allows you to remain positive during the negative phase of a cycle, knowing that what goes around, comes around.

When it feels like the world is against you and nothing is going your way, there’s a temptation to wallow in it and resign yourself to the fact that you’re not destined to achieve your dreams. However, thinking negatively generates negative energy and surrounding yourself with negativity can only lead to prolonging the length of your stay at the low end of a natural cycle – you effectively hold yourself back from going with the natural flow that would return you to the high end. Everything is energy and everything moves in natural cycles, including your thoughts and the effect those thoughts have on your circumstances.

The bottom line is that you can’t change what has already happened so when things have not been going your way, focusing on those happenings won’t change anything. But, what you can change is what happens next. Negative thinking can only ever hold you back but by changing your thinking and adopting a positive mental attitude, you can generate enough positive energy to move forwards from where you are and speed up your return to the high end of the cycle. Remember, what you think about, you bring about so the key to achieving your dreams is to focus on exactly that; your focus must be on what can still be achieved, not what has already happened and can’t be changed. Everything has an opposite and everything moves in cycles so where there are lows there will also be highs.

It takes positive energy to generate positive outcomes and accepting that lows can and will return to highs is a powerful way to maintain a positive mental attitude and to continue generating that positive energy. The ups and downs of life are simply part of a continuous natural cycle and just as the tide will continue to turn and the seasons will continue to change, you have the power to change your energy and to change your lot in life. If what goes up must come down, then what goes down must also go up!

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“Things do not change, we change”
- Henry David Thoreau

If you don’t like your lot in life, you have the power to change it. Everything around us in the world as we know it is energy, including our thoughts, and it’s a scientific fact that energy is constantly in motion. This means that everything, thoughts included, is in motion and according to the Universal Law of Energy, all energy in motion will eventually appear in a physical form, or, put another way, what you think about, you bring about.

What this means is that you have the power to change your circumstances by changing the way you think. Look at it this way, if the way you think about things and the way you do things now is not bringing you the results you want in life, continuing to think and do things in the same way will continue to bring you more of the same! If you want a different outcome in life, you have to be prepared to think and do things differently – and that means embracing change.

Let’s face it, more often than not in life we don’t like change! Clearly, change can be a good thing but recognising that you need to make changes in your life doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to actually make those changes: knowing doesn’t instantly lead to doing. Most of us fear change, or at best procrastinate over making changes, because changing how we do things means moving away from everything safe and familiar in life. Where you are now is your comfort zone and stepping out of there means leaving behind a predictable world and stepping out into a world of unknowns. But, here’s the thing, if you don’t like your current, predictable world, why do you fear the unknown one? The answer is that by default, you automatically fear the worst.

Without the ability to embrace change by thinking positively, you automatically think in negative terms of “what if?” Instead of looking ahead at the potential positives of making changes, you think only of potential problems, “What if it all goes wrong; what if I can’t do it?” When you think negatively, you fear taking action so you stay where you are – in your comfort zone. There can be times when your comfort zone is a positive place, a place where you feel you can take time-out to pause and reflect on your  achievements so far before taking the next step but if it becomes a place where you stop or a place where you hide, it’s no longer a positive place.

Changing your circumstances means making changes so begin by changing your focus. Change your negative ‘what ifs?’ into positive ‘what ifs?’ When you change your focus away from what you don’t want in life and begin to think only about what you do want, you change your energy.  When you learn to focus on what making positive changes will bring into your life, there’s no longer an ‘unknown’ to fear. When you know what good things lie ahead, you begin to bring about what you think about.

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“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”
- Andy Warhol

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Here’s a thought for you…

If there was no such thing as failure, could there be such a thing as success?

It’s a Universal Law that everything in life has an opposite and without those opposites, neither one would exist. So this means, for example, that if there was no bad, there could be no good; if there was no rough, there could be no smooth, and if there was no failure, there could be no success. Quite a thought isn’t it? Essentially, if it was impossible to fail, it would be impossible to succeed.

Of course, you don’t have to fail in order to succeed but you do have to accept that the potential to succeed only exists because the potential to fail also exists. Success is only one end of a spectrum with failure at the opposite end and you are responsible for your positioning on that spectrum: you have the power to change that positioning at any time. Wherever you currently see yourself positioned is your current perspective but remember, your perspective is your choice and all it takes to change your positioning on the spectrum is a change of perspective.

Let’s say you’ve had a bad day and you currently believe yourself to be closer to the failure end of the spectrum than the success end. Your perception of failure only exists because of your perception of success – one can’t exist without the other. So, think of it this way; you can only experience a bad day if you have also experienced a good day and if there were no bad days, there would be no good days!

Okay, how about if you’ve just had an average day? You don’t believe yourself to be a failure but you don’t believe yourself to be a particular success either – just average. However, if you have a clear vision of what being less average and being more successful would mean for you in your life; if you know what that success looks like for you, you know that continuing to do things in the same average way will keep you where you are, having another average day. Changing your positioning on the spectrum means making changes but, unfortunately, most of us fear making changes because ultimately, we fear failure. So, with that in mind, here’s another thought for you; if you fear failure you must also fear success!

Your success or your failure is controlled by you

Fear can paralyze you and keep you stuck where you are. Changing your positioning on the spectrum means moving from where you are now to where you want to be. To be able to move means overcoming your fear and this means building your self-confidence and learning to believe in yourself. Your perception of success only exists because of your perception of failure – change that perspective. When you are able to see yourself as the success you want to be, you are able to keep moving, and moving forwards means you are on your way to becoming the success you see.

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You don’t need to be a physicist or a mathematical genius to have heard of the E = mc² equation but what does it mean to you? Let’s be honest, even if you are an academic genius, Einstein’s theories can still be pretty mind-boggling! But, in line with his theory of relativity, it’s a Universal Law that all things are relative. Everything in the world as we know it is relative to something else, so something we see as big is only big in relation to something we see as small or something we consider to be fast is only fast in relation to something we consider to be slow – too mind-boggling? In effect, nothing in life has any meaning other than the meaning we choose to give it and that is all down to our perspective.

Exactly the same principle applies to success and failure. Something or someone can only be seen as a success in comparison to something or someone seen as a failure. Success or failure can only ever be relative to your perspective. Nothing can be big, small, fast or slow until you compare it to something else, therefore you can only consider yourself to be a success or a failure if you compare yourself to others.

In effect, success and failure don’t exist: there really is no such thing as success or failure, only our perceptions of success and failure and our perceptions are all relative to our own beliefs.

For example, let’s say you decide to go on a diet. You set yourself the goal of losing four pounds in four weeks. At the end of the four weeks you find you’ve only lost three pounds so you consider yourself to be a failure. However, your friend who is following the same diet plan and aiming for the same goal has only lost two pounds. From their perspective, they see themselves as the failure and you as the success. You failed to achieve your goal, therefore you’re a failure – or so you believe.

Now consider how the people you meet at your monthly weigh-in class see you if they have failed to lose any weight at all. From their perspective, you are a total success!

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to slip into comparing yourself negatively to others. When you think negatively, you begin to see only what you don’t have or what you can’t do compared to others, and your negative mental attitude generates a negative energy that surrounds every element of your life. Negative energy blocks your potential to progress from where you are and you become stuck. You believe that you’re a failure so you get stuck there, effectively blinkered to any opportunity to succeed.

However, all it takes to move forwards is a change of energy and that change can be made by simply changing your perspective. Failing to reach your goal this month is not outright failure, what about next month, what about the month after that? All you need to do to keep yourself from becoming stuck and to keep on progressing is to maintain a positive mental attitude. Learn to shift your focus away from what you didn’t achieve onto what you did achieve and what you still can achieve. Only you can decide how you view your circumstances. Your perspective is your choice. It’s all relative.

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“I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big”

- Donald Trump

The way you see yourself inwardly affects the way others see you outwardly. It’s a Universal Law that your inner thoughts about your world will have a direct impact on your outer world, your reality, no matter how rational or irrational those thoughts actually are.

Let’s say you’re thinking of applying for a new job but you’re also thinking, “I won’t get it.” Guess what? You probably won’t get it! If you walk into an interview room with negative, defeatist thoughts in your head, you present yourself as that negative, already defeated person, and that’s not an attitude that’s likely to get you hired, is it?

The same principle applies to all areas of life. If you’re thinking of asking someone you’ve just met out on a date but you’re also thinking, “I’m such a loser. They’re not going to want to go out with someone like me.” Guess what? They’re going to look at you and see a loser!

Your outer world, your reality, is a direct reflection of your inner world, your mind. If your mind is full of chaotic, confused thoughts then your reality will be a life full of chaos and confusion. With that being the case, imagine your reality if your mind became a place filled with calm, confident thoughts – food for thought, isn’t it? The bottom line is that if you want to be a calm, confident person, you need to think calm, confident thoughts.

Donald Trump didn’t get to where he is today by thinking small. Bill Gates didn’t found Microsoft on the back of a small vision of its success; his vision was to have a PC in every home around the world. Muhammad Ali didn’t become a heavyweight champion by thinking of himself as an average boxer and Oprah Winfrey didn’t become a globally recognised chat show host by thinking she had nothing of any interest to say – you see where I’m going with this? Everyone’s vision of success is different but if you want to be that success, you have to think of yourself as that success.

Only your thoughts about your potential to succeed can limit your actual potential to succeed. Your thoughts are effectively self-fulfilling prophecies. By creating an environment of success in your inner world, you make it possible to create the same successful environment in your outer world. If you want to change your outer world, change your inner world and begin by changing how you think. Until you’re able to think successfully, it’s impossible to be successful. If you want to be a big success, start by thinking big, successful thoughts!

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“Just do it.” – Nike

Are you great at thinking up plans? Are you brilliant at putting together highly detailed plans of action? If you are, good for you, but think carefully before answering the next question: do you ever take action on any of your brilliant plans?

Plans are good; making plans gives you focus and direction in life but if you’re someone who enjoys planning, there’s a real danger that planning becomes what you do – and all that you do. For example, writing a ‘to do’ list and prioritising the tasks on the list is a well known time management strategy. To be effective, you have to organise your tasks in order of importance at the beginning of each day and then work your way progressively down that list. The idea is that you must complete the first task before allowing yourself to move on to the next, and so on, avoiding the temptation to flit around from task to task and become distracted. However, if you enjoy planning and you love the idea of organising a prioritised ‘to do’ list, chances are you’ll spend all morning planning and prioritising your list – effective time management? I think not!

People who turn dreams into realities are people who take action. But, here’s the key, they take planned action. You have to know where it is you’re going before you can take action to get there. If it’s your dream to become successful, you have to know what that means – what does that place called success look like to you; how will you know when you’ve arrived there?

It’s a Universal Law that when you focus your thoughts on achieving a specific goal in life, you begin the process of making that goal your reality. Positive thoughts lead to positive actions and when you begin to act positively, you begin to achieve positive outcomes. To achieve the results you want in life, you do have to plan a ‘to do’ list. You have to think carefully about what it is you really want to achieve and you have to identify the steps you will need to take to get you from where you are now to where you want to be. But, and it’s a big but, you must then take action and actually do the things on your ‘to do’ list!

We all have the potential to succeed in life but it takes planned action to be able to realise our full potential. So, are you a thinker or a doer? Are you thinking about your success or are you taking action to become that success? The key to realising your full potential in life is to do both. Think big, dream big, and make big plans then take action on those plans and turn your dreams into your realities.

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“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- Howard Thurman

Who or what inspires you? In fact, what does being inspired mean to you? The word ‘inspirational’ is used to describe a great many people and things in life so what is it about them that makes them inspirational?

Here’s a dictionary definition of inspire:

inspire: verb 1 fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something. 2 create (a feeling) in a person.

So, really, an inspirational someone or something can inspire you – or someone one else – to take a particular action or feel a particular emotion. An inspirational sports player, for example, can inspire others to get involved in sport or an inspirational entrepreneur can inspire others to take action on their own business ideas. Creative individuals such as musicians or artists find inspiration for their work in the world around them and what they create then goes on to inspire others by provoking thoughts and emotions – and so the cycle of inspiration continues.

It’s a Universal Law that we are all connected, meaning that we all have the ability to be both inspired and inspirational. Just as you might be inspired by the achievements of someone else, someone else might be inspired by your achievements. Of course, the people that you find most inspiring in your life are most probably the people that have achieved something in their life that you dream of achieving in yours. So what have you achieved in your life that others might dream of achieving?

The people in life that we describe as inspirational, are the people we see as having achieved a dream.

If it’s your dream to escape the rat race and work for yourself, you will be inspired by people who have done just that and set up their own business. If it’s your dream to reduce your carbon footprint and ‘save the planet’, you will be inspired by people who have succeeded in finding a way to live an alternative lifestyle. If it’s your dream to be able to give up your boring job in favour of working and traveling your way around the world, you will be inspired by people who have achieved that dream. Inspirational people are living their dream – your dream!

The things that inspire you in life are the things that you feel passionate about. The people who inspire you are the people who have not only found something they feel passionate about in their lives, they have used the inspirational power of that passion to turn their dreams and ambitions into their realities. So, to answer the question of who or what inspires you, ask yourself; who or what do you feel passionate about? Find your inspiration by taking time-out to reconnect with yourself, with other people, and the world around you. Find what makes you come alive and go after it with all your heart. Be inspired by the inspirational dreams of others but don’t settle for dreams – take action and live an inspired life.

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