Puts your Guns on the Table

I'm often shocked when I hear that a student was caught with a gun at school; Or that a student was arrested for bringing a gun to school. I'm shocked because when I grew up in the 80's, alot of kids brought guns to school. It was normal. I remember being in JHS, and watching a kid pull a gun out in the cafeteria. Then another kid said "thats a puny gun", and pulled out a 9mm glock. Everyone oohed and aahhed. It was just show and tell.
In high school, and keep in mind I went to the elite Brooklyn Tech, there were plenty of guns. There were at least a dozen gangs, and hundreds of gangmembers. Quite a few of these guys brought guns to school regularly. I often felt that I needed a gun on the subway. Once, on the senior ski trip, my roommate brought a 44 caliber hand gun. It was cool.
No one ever actually used the gun. Sometimes, they didn't have bullets. But knowing that there was a likelihood that the other person had a gun made you less likely to pull yours out.
These days, it seems that only the mentally ill have guns at school. No one normal brings a gun to school anymore. And now, schools have security and metal detectors. Twenty years ago you just walked in to school, knives, guns, brass knuckles, etc. Kids used to fight other kids. These days, they are shooting at the system, which includes kids they do not know, teachers, professors, etc. Twenty years ago, kids got into real fights, against other kids that they knew personally, and had arguments over girls, boys, name calling, etc. These fights were 30 seconds, someone pulled out a gun, everyone ran.
I look at Virginia Tech, SJU, Columbine, and see kids fighting the system. Its so different. Its overall safer now, but more crazy. I never worried about a lone gunman randomly shooting me or my classmates. I was concerned that I might accidentally step on someone's sneakers on a crowded subway, and that might lead to trouble.
Its just very different today. I really don't follow the news anymore. Its often crass, depressing, and draining. The media plays on fear and sells advertising based on fear content. I worked for an NBC news affiliate and spent 4 years writing in high school and college newspapers, and now I avoid the news. The news is that the more things change, the crazier things get.

IF WE ARE RELATED....WE SHALL MEET

My favorite book is "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. I consider this a must read. Napoleon Hill ends the book by saying that if we are related (in thought, destiny, desire, etc.) we shall meet in this life, on this earth. How true. People are like magnetic fragments floating down a stream. Sooner or later, the like pieces find each other and cling to each other. You end up having clusters of magnets, some that attract each other, some that repel each other. Which brings me to my point....
Why do I keep bumping into some people time and time and time again? There are people from high school that have I have bumped into accidentally throughout the past 20 years. There is no one from college that I have accidentally bumped into, although much more people from SUNY Albany live in the New York metro area. I often try to discover what we have in common, why the magnetic pull of gravity has us heading on a collision course. Sometimes its easy to figure out.....I start thinking about someone from my past, and out of the blue I'm having coffee or drinks with that person. Sometimes its not so easy......I kept bumping into a high school classmate several times after high school, until it lead to a get together that gave me the idea to start my Men's skincare business.
Then there is the opposite...why can't I get rid of some people? Its because there is still something pulling us together....some common desire or thought or unresolved issue. Perhaps I keep bumping into this person because I do not know the answer yet, and when I do, I won't have to keep hearing from this person.
Complex yet true. So why not bump into the people you want to? Why not think about the person or people that you would like to actually meet. I started thinking about Bill and Hillary Clinton, and 4 months later met them. I watch 30 Rock and NBC, started thinking how funny Tina Fey is and how I would like to meet her....and voila! My son gets a call to be an extra on 30 Rock and I'm with him staring at Tina Fey (who is actually very serious.) My wife watches friends every night, she is still obsessed with the Ross and Rachel relationship, and voila....today she is with my son meeting David Schwimmer (he's doing a scene with him.) This continues to happen. I sit and think about meeting people that can help and guide me to the next step .....and it always happens.......I find myself having lunch with the CEO of a large cosmetics company. Did I have to travel far? We met by an introduction from my landlord (at the office) who knew him from golf......and we meet across the street from my office.
Perhaps we can't rid ourselves of the people in our lives because all we do is think about them, whether negative or positive. We can't mentally let go of them, so they can't physically leave. Like ghosts......like memories.
I also noticed today that people that keep birds as pets in a cage....rarely leave their house.

Whats on your mind?

Have you ever stopped to keep track of what you spend your day thinking about? The mind works in a mysterious way. Whatever you think about when you are not thinking about anything, is usually what you have the most of in your life. Example - let say you spend your entire day thinking about your career or work....chances are work is the most important thing in your life. What if you spend your entire day thinking about your partner or children? Then this is probably the biggest part of your life. What if you spend most of the day thinking about your debts, failures, or things not going your way? Aside from making yourself miserable, your likely to just bury yourself more in debt or failures.
I started to do the reverse, I started to daydream about a better life. I started to picture myself in a yellow lamborghini, I started to picture myself in a beautiful house, I started to dream about a bank account with millions of dollars in it. Every time my emotions changed to negative or neutral, I made a shift. I immediately started to think about a more prosperous life. Somedays it was easy to do this, some days it was really hard. Sometimes loud music helped, sometimes jogging outdoors helped. But slowly, over a period of several months, I'm able to spend most of my days daydreaming about a fantasy life.
The ramifications are mind boggling....I started to see more lamborghinis (some yellow.) I went my whole life without seeing one, and now I see one a week. Then I started seeing opportunities that I never saw before, leading to making hundreds of thousands within several months. And it gets easier and easier every week. The more I daydream, the more I live my daydreams. It happens to everyone. And its not magic. Its logic. Change the way you think to change the direction of your life. If you don't believe me, try this ........ Spend 1 hour a day daydreaming about being thin. Without a doubt, you will start to make healthy eating choices and you may even start excercising. Same thing about money, love, sex, etc. You are always in control of seeing that which has always been right in front of you.

Can you change a bad decision made 20 years ago?

We all make bad decisions. I use to spend a lot of time thinking and wishing that I hadn't made some of the decisions that I made. Maybe you understand exactly what I mean. I wasn't full of regret, I just really wished that I could go back and reverse some decisions or actions. And yet, I was finally able to do it after figuring out how to do it.
We can't really go back in time. But we can effect the emotional outcome of a bad decision. A few years ago, I started thinking about a friend of mine in junior high school and high school. We were close friends, but we got involved with different groups of friends, and wound up treating each other like strangers. Whats more remarkable is that while we were close friends, things were going very well for me. After we were no longer friends, it created a lot of awkward accidental encounters. After 18 years, I tracked my friend down, and over lunch, I apologized for the way things were. I expressed how I felt, and how I regretted that we weren't friends. He said he felt the same way. I immediately felt relieved, and felt free of that bad decision.
Here's another example: I always regretted some of the decisions I made in high school about organizations I did not join, colleges I did not apply to, etc. I recently actually gave advice to some high school students (from my high school) to help them avoid the pitfalls of my own student career. It did wonders for me. The next day I woke up feeling that I actually never made those decisions. It felt great. By helping others, I helped myself.
The other way to do this, is to give yourself some slack. Accept that you're human, and don't be hard on yourself. The rest of the world is already hard on us, why ad to your own burdens. Sometimes you have to forgive yourself, and find a positive in the bad decision. There's always one.
The key is to find people that helped you along the way, that provided something positive, or that you were close to during the good times of your life. That's what you need more of. You don't really need to find anyone that was negative or was around you when things were not going well. I can't put my finger on it, but its a combination of the right people that we need to surround ourselves with in order for things to change and go in the right direction. Some people can just add to your good fortune, while others will subtract. We often don't know who's who.

1%

I wake up every day believing that today I will do one thing to move closer to my goals. Just one thing. I will add 1% effort toward moving closer to my goals. A friend of mine has seen me struggle and face near bankruptcy and complete failure in the past years. The entire time, this friend kept suggesting that I close up and quit. He suggested that I should cut my losses and go find a job. That's not who I am as a person. If were to have quit and go get a job, I would not only admit that I couldn't make it business, but I would move in the direction of more unhappiness. Its a double whammy.
Who are you as a person? What lengths would you go to in order to succeed or to get to your goals? What do you believe is your destiny? Are you doing everything you can to get to your destiny? Most people I know start, and then get discouraged. Life can be discouraging. If you stop and thought about all the situations that did not go your way, you would get pretty depressed. I'm not allowed to do that. I don't allow myself to focus on my failures or my rejections. I make an effort to reminisce about the times I have succeed, or the times that I overcame insurmountable odds.
We have the power to wallow in the mire of self-doubt. We also have the power to dream about a being wealthy, happy, and secure. Its a choice. And it takes effort. A person can easily slip into confusion or depression by thinking about their shortcomings. We all have shortcomings, whats the point in reminding ourselves about this?
In 2004, I had the hardest year of my life financially. I went 8 months without any income, having just started my real estate office. At the end of year, I was prepared to evaluate and close up if I felt in my heart that I couldn't make it work. Instead, I asked my self, what do I need in order to make this work? I then went out and hired more agents, and re-tooled my strategy. The following year, I made more money that I ever made my entire life. And the year after that was even better. Thank goodness I gave it more time. It worked out. I had to do some tweaking, but it worked out great.
What kind of a person are you? Have you ever been tested? Have you ever looked in the mirror and forgotten who you are and where you've come from? Do you spend 30 minutes a day thinking about all the good things in your life, and how close you are to where you want to be? Sometimes, with a minor adjustment in your strategy or thought process, you can get to your destination, just a little closer to you destination. I think about throwing a pebble in the Hudson River. What if I threw a pebble in the same location every day? Sooner or later I would start to change the course of the river. 1% every day is my pebble.

Passion

• Its hard to get great results doing something that you are not passionate about. Sometimes we want top results but we don't give 110% effort or enthusiasm. How can we expect a better result, pay, bonus, review, or a better relationship, better friendship, better anything....if we don't put in 110%? A friend of mine went on several job interviews for jobs that he didn't want. He wanted the money, not the job. He was not passionate about his career, he was passionate about getting more money so that he can pay more bills. Needless to say he didn't get any of the jobs.
• Its hard to fake being passionate about your work, or your relationships. Why not just find something you are really passionate about, and find a way to make money doing what you love?
• Example- I was always fascinated with real estate. I remember being 12 years old, looking through the real estate classifieds, and learning to calculate profit and loss on multifamily dwelling rental properties. I did this from when I was 12 until I was 30. I spent my Sunday mornings searching for properties in the Daily News, even though I was 12. I guess I was fascinated with my parent's landlord - a Greek immigrant that owned several apartment buildings in Astoria, Queens. I also loved going to collect rent with my uncle and grandparents who owned buildings in Brooklyn. Imagine me,12 years old, and collecting rent. What a rush!
• When I was 26 I bought a 6-family building in Brooklyn and sold it for a huge profit 2 years later. But instead of re-investing the money in my passion for real estate, I sank it and lost it in the stock market - which I was never passionate about. I listened to others advise me about money, when I should have followed my heart.
• Several years go by, and I open my real estate office, re-discovering the boyhood passion I had lost. Now, I'm in the midst of a few real estate short sales, flips, and I am looking to buy a shopping plaza. I'm also selling my house for more than twice what I paid for it, and buying a new house in long island for 35% below market value. The boy in me is alive and kicking, and its an incredible feeling to wake up looking forward to going to work and finding new ways to make money. I'm looking forward to collecting rent again.
• Some of us don't know what we're passionate about. I'm passionate about making money from real estate. But I spent years at jobs in apparel, retail, and planning. Why did I deny myself my passion? Its makes no sense to me at all. The same friend I mentioned is passionate about physical fitness, martial arts, helping young people, and entertainment. But instead, he's looking for a job in the exciting world of purchasing. After he finds a job in this field, he's going to start losing interest in about 4 months, and start giving less and less of an effort. Then he's going to look for another job, probably in the equally exciting world of accounting. My suggestion? This fellow needs to do what he loves on the weekends or nights, until he can find a way to make money at it. If he's passionate about martial arts, then he's going to be great at it, and people will automatically start asking for private lessons or for him to open a school. It will work out, it always does because one's level of passion determines one's level of commitment and enthusiasm. He's also passionate about entertainment, but he does nothing to submerse himself in that field in order to learn the entertainment business. His excuse is the same as everyone else's - I don't have the time, I don't have the money, my spouse is holding me back, etc. The only thing stopping him is fear. Fear of change, Fear of success.
• Its always hard to stop a Corvette going 90 miles an hour. Its always easy to stop a beat up Chevy going 20 miles an hour. When you're passionate about something, you're like a fast sports car. Besides, who wants to be a beat up Chevy their whole life?

Don't Live a Mediocre Life

• At some point in our life we become accustomed to mediocrity. A mediocre cup of coffee. A mediocre raise. A mediocre performance at work. A mediocre relationship. We know that we are capable of putting out excellence, but why bother? We know we can do so much more with our lives...but for what result? I know someone that is fed up with living in mediocrity, but is scared to do something about it. Change is hard, especially, when you are the one that needs to be changed. Life can get away from you if you don't steer in the direction that you want to go.
• Ever drive your car without holding the steering wheel? In a matter of seconds you're headed in a direction that you did not choose. Same with life. Going through life without making a decision is the same thing. If you didn't decide to be unhappy, or poor, or unsuccessful, or where you are today, then you got here because you simpy didn't make a decision (didn't hold the steering wheel.) Some of my friends are Ivy Leaguers, or have masters degrees, or have lots of money, but can't steer in the direction of their desire.
• Make a decision. Decide to be happy. Decide to be a success. Decide to be rich. Decide to help people that need your help. Decide to move every day at least one step in the direction that you WANT to move in. Take control of your destiny. Take control of your steering wheel. Decide where to go, and do one thing every day to move in that direction. If you can't do anything, start by visualizing your happiness for half an hour daily. Thats a pretty powerful start. Keep a journal to keep track of your movement in the direction of your choosing. Hands on the steering wheel starting today. This is how I started. This is how I got here. It works.