Congratulations! You are the president of your own nation, and it is called “Imagination”. This particular nation is the driving force behind your life and is the underlying factor for your future. You need to realize that you have an enormous responsibility as the President of this Nation, because you need to always focus on the future and strive to have the ultimate nation. You need to internalize the power you have as the President of your own nation. Among many things that you have is the power to choose and/or consider. You are the one who holds the votes on who is allowed to live in your nation!

As I have written about in the past, you must create and begin to maximize your mastermind team. This team will empower you to build an unreal imagination and make others wonder why you are achieving such an awesome level of success. As the President, you will inspire others to create other phenomenal imaginations of their own. The world needs many people who are proud of their own “Imagination”.

Each of us has the ability to imagine such powerful dreams for our future, which can change the destiny of millions of people. Let’s think about a few people who had unreal imaginations — Henry Ford imagined an 8-cylinder car and then achieved it. The Wright Brothers imagined men could fly and then discovered a way to make that possible. John F. Kennedy said that we would have a man on the moon and then achieved it. Ask yourself right now, “Where did they all dream of those achievements first?” The answer to that question is…They did their dreaming in their own nation called Imagination!

You need to take some personal time and evaluate how you are handling your nation. Are you proud of what you are imagining you can be or what you can do? If you answer that question truthfully, you will either be enthused or disillusioned. You truly need to re-examine your nation. I suggest that you brainstorm, which means to take some time for yourself and just write down all the dreams that you have but never even wrote down. I also recommend that you write down 100 of them and then put them away for 2 days so that they can sink in a little. When you go back and read them, your inner spirit will direct you to the one that you need to focus on and begin to design with your own “Imagination”. Each of us is empowered to create wealth for ourselves in every aspect of life — spiritually, physically, and financially!

I challenge you right now to utilize your God-given imagination and imagine whatever you want to be then you will empowered to run your nation in the most productive methods possible. This alone will entirely change your life for the better, because now you have a responsibility as a President of a nation – your “Imagination”.

I am often approached by people that just signed into a home-based networking business, which I know is one of the most effective entrepreneurial methods for an average person to achieve true financial success. My entire conversation with these individuals is based on the simple theme of working your plan and committing long-term with no thought of ever quitting until the achievement of your ultimate outcome.

What is the #1 point that you should stress to someone who decides to become your fellow teammate and business partner? I would definitely say that it is “erase the following words from your vocabulary: I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME.” Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day! Over the next 7 days, try keeping a detailed log of where you invest your time. This log will actually show you where you spend your time wisely and where you waste time. Most people actually waste more time than they think they do on frivolous activities.

Time is the universal currency, which God blesses everyone with. However, it is those who choose to invest time wisely that succeed. Every winner in life could have easily said, “Well you know it sounds great, but I do not have the time to do anything.” You need to look deep into your spirit and realize that time is an incredible gift and you need to cherish the gift by investing it very effectively. The overall attitude of most people these days is that everything is so hard for them but easier for everyone else. There is a very thin line between winning and losing, and it all begins with setting your mind to the correct channel – channel W for winning — no matter whatever anyone else says or thinks. I know you can achieve all of your dreams in life if you just erase from your vocabulary, “I do not have the time.”

Take a minute right now and look at where you sow your time. Wherever you sow your time will ultimately determine your future harvest. Invest (sow) it wisely and achieve (reap) your Dreams! Be conscious of saying or hearing -”I do not have the time.”

The only currency that we all have the same amount of is time. Time is the ultimate currency and how you invest your time will determine your success. In order for you to attain your WHY in life, you need to realize that every minute wasted is currency/money you just lost. Every successful person that you see in life is simply someone who understands the power of waiting through the seasons of harvest time.

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

“And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not.”

These two citations express the importance of waiting and being persistent. When you are investing your currency/time correctly, you will reap the rewards.

The following is a very inspirational message that I know you will need on your journey to achieving your WHY in life!

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must — but never quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out;
Stick to your task, though the pace seem slow –
You may succeed with one more blow.
Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt –
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that
YOU MUSN’T QUIT.
– Author Unknown

If you quit today, you’ll never know what lies just around the bend.

Being motivated and having dreams for your future is very exciting! Dreamers are always around other dreamers that are EXCITED! Your dream needs to be fertilized each day by associating with others, who believe in themselves and have a dream. This is often difficult because we live in a predominantly negative, bellyaching society in which there are 95% more “dream stealers” than dreamers! Each step that you take forward in various areas of your life is just another step closer to achieving your ultimate dream!

The # 1 reason for failing in life is not allowing the seed of your dream that is in your heart to develop its roots and eventually sprout into what everyone calls an “Impossible Dream”. To be a dreamer, you must do what failures will not do! Look towards the future, forget about the past, focus on the present as a gift from God and make the best of every minute. Your main focus in turning your dream into reality should be promoting your level of excitement! Are you excited? Your excitement level will create unique responses from what I call “dream stealers”. They will respond with words like – “Who do you think you are?” and “Don’t you know your whole family has been broke, and that’s just the way it is for people like you and I” and “Success and true happiness are for those special people who have all the luck in the world!” Despite all those remarks, you need to make a decision today and know exactly what your “WHY” is and where you wish to be in 5 years.

Visualize right now a local construction site in your neighborhood that out of no where was erected, and you say to yourself “Where did that come from?” Well, that building came from years of planning, engineering and the vision of one person, who said I can see a structure there. You need to realize the most difficult part of that project is not what we all see when we drive by it, but the years of work behind the scenes in order to make someone’s dream a reality. Here are three awesome citations from ancient wisdom in reference to dream building and walking by faith and not by what you see:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – The Manifestation of your Dream and Why!

“Seedtime and Harvest will not cease” – Whatever you plant in your heart will harvest. Are you planting seeds which will build your dream?

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.” – Are you excited all the time to work your plan to achieve your dream?

Stay EXCITED all the time and you will progress daily towards your Ultimate Dream in life!

The definition of the word incentive is something that incites or is likely to incite to determination or action. As you are paying the price to live your dream in life, you need to have something to incite you to take action. Basically, you need to have a strong enough “WHY” in order to make it through all you will experience as you build your dream.

As we know 95% of people die with their music still playing in them, because they never had a dream strong enough or large enough to move them through the hurdles, which were thrown their way by every dream stealer that they met as they were paying the price. As you focus on your incentive, you will forge through all of the dream stealing negativity that you will encounter. I still remember when everyone told me –”John, you are crazy, just get a job” and “who do you think you are thinking you can build the largest motivational business ever”. These are just a few negative remarks that I received as I focused on my incentive. I never gave up! I just remained focus on the ultimate outcome as I forged forward.

You need to internalize your incentive and see it everyday. Close your eyes, see it and say to yourself, “I am a successful entrepreneur, I have no debt, I spend quality time with my family.” See it – feel it – feed your spirit every minute knowing you will and can do it! If you can’t SEE your incentive, which is also your “Why”, then who will? No one! You are the only one that has the ability to make your dreams come true and change your life forever!

Each and every day, we progress on the journey of Life. Every person has the power to direct the flow of his or her success, even without the use of words. Take a moment and think about it. What is the number one characteristic that impacts you the most regarding your interaction with another person? What leaves a lasting impression? Your gateway to success is your SMILE!

There is amazing personal power behind simply smiling. Right now, take a minute and just smile. Feel the energy that overtakes you and radiates from you. Your smile is the gateway to your success, because it is one of the personal keys to unleashing success in your life. I received the following sentiment of a smile from a member of my mastermind team, who just happens to have a fantastic smile of her own.

Smiling is infectious; you catch it like the flu. When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin, when he smiled, I realized I had passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile, and realized its worth. A single smile, just like mine, could travel around the Earth.

So if you feel a smile begin, don’t leave it undetected…Let’s start an epidemic quick and get the world infected!

- Author Unknown

Today, I challenge you to smile and begin to see the positive productive results that you will experience. So give it a try…SMILE and spread the power behind your gateway to success.

We all have the ability to make decisions that will determine the ultimate outcome and the achievement of our WHY in life! There is a very thin line between being a Winner or being a Loser. The Olympic Games are a great example of this statement. You could win a Gold Medal by beating your competitor by the tiniest one thousandth of a second! When you compare life to the Olympics, it is the same. You need to always maintain a “Winner’s Mindset” in order to attain your WHY in Life!

The following is a comparison of a Winner’s Mindset vs. a Loser’s Mindset.

Where are you? Better yet, where are the people who are on your Mastermind Team?

W – The winner is always part of the answer;
I – The loser is always part of the problem;
N – The winner always has a program;
N – The loser always has an excuse;
E – The winner says, “Let me do it for you;”
E – The loser says, “That’s not my job;”
R – The winner sees an answer for every problem;

VS. – The loser sees a problem for every answer;

L – The winner sees a green near every sand trap;
O – The loser sees two or three sand traps near every green;
S – The winner says, “It may be difficult, but it’s possible;
E – The loser says, “It may be possible, but it’s too difficult.”
R – BE A WINNER!!!

Now you truly need to make a conscious decision to be a Winner and always maintain a Winner’s mindset in order to win the Gold Medal in YOUR life! Just like Olympian athletes, you need to train EACH AND EVERY DAY CONSISTENTLY to win your Gold Medal! The #1 training method is to continually feed your mind with top-quality mental and motivational nourishment. As you feed your mind, the winner’s mindset will start to flourish.

Over the last decade of being a professional home-based networker, when someone asks me, “John, what is the #1 reason why people fail in their own network marketing business?” I say with 110% confidence it is because they customize their presentations assuming what each individual prospect will find exciting. This mindset will definitely set you up for failure!

The key to success is the power of duplication — showing the same presentation over and over. You need to be presenting the entire business from A-Z to each and every one of your prospects because you have no idea what is going on inside them as you share the business. You must show your business exactly the same way each time you present your program for two primary reasons:

Reason #1 is you will be 100% full of confidence & conviction knowing what you are going to say because you have presented the entire plan from A-Z numerous times the SAME EXACT WAY. Repetition is the mother of skill. Your nervousness will also decrease, because you will become confident in your presentation.

Reason #2 is because I can almost guarantee you that when you begin to put this into practice you will have your prospects respond to aspects of your business that you would have assumed they would not have been interested in before. You will see your business explode within a short period of time. Just imagine everyone in your network internalizing this mindset and fully understanding the power of an A-Z presentation. The leadership abilities within them will skyrocket, which in turn will create momentum in your business.

Momentum is a force that you will not be able to control; it is also the key to unprecedented growth in your business. Leadership is earned by people who deserve it and you will project leadership when you present with the “Power of A-Z”. Always remember, it is just a matter of time before you hit your target when you keep aiming for it!

We’ve all encountered them. They don’t plan out their days. They don’t take control of their lives. They’ve never set a goal before, and if they did, they gave up on it at the first sign of adversity. Instead, they just sit back and see what happens. That’s their answer for everything is “I’ll just see what happens”. The results in their life are basically dependent on everything and everyone else in the world except for them. That’s no way to live your life!

A great example of this mentality deals with people that read horoscopes. “Well, my horoscope has been telling me for the last six months that I’d be experiencing some challenges and setbacks. John, I just can’t move forward because it says so in the alignment of the planets. There’s nothing I can do!” Excuse my language, but that is such a bunch of crap.

You know what a horoscope is? It’s a horror scope. Yes, a HORROR SCOPE! I have personally coached people that use their horror scopes to explain why they can’t gain active control over their lives. It’s an excuse not a reality! They’re using their horror scope as justification for not living the life they want to live. Being a passive bystander in your own life will never lead to the achievement of your goals and dreams.
You might as well be living someone else’s life. Well, actually, you are, if you’re allowing your life to be completely controlled by outside influences.

You know what’s better than a horror scope? How about developing a vision scope? A vision scope is the best kind of scope out there. When you look through your vision scope, you are able to look forward. You don’t look back at the past. You don’t let your present results dictate where you’re headed. You decide what you want and choose to stay focused on your vision. Doesn’t that make a lot more sense than using a horror scope? It’s your life, why not make the most of it?
Lose the “See What Happens” mentality.

Join the 3% crowd and develop the Stickability attitude. Yes, that’s another “S” word for you. Actually, it’s a word that I completely made up that basically means that you must be persistent in pursuit of your goal and stick to it. Have you ever gotten a piece of gum on something? It’s nearly impossible to remove it. That’s how you have to be with your dream. Stick to it and be resistant to anything or anyone that tries to remove your belief in it. Your vision scope combined with stickability will guarantee your success!

The great Les Brown once said “Whatever is impossible is possible, for the impossible can be achieved.” When I heard that statement, it changed my life. It reconfirmed for me my decision to stick to following my heart’s desires. Everything in this world has a polar opposite. If something is impossible, it must also be possible. It wouldn’t be able to exist otherwise.

I was willing to be stuck….completely glued to my dream of becoming a fluent speaker. My family and friends told me I was losing my mind, because I wasn’t listening to what anybody said. They were right! I was losing the mind of a clinically diagnosed stutterer and gaining the mind of a champion. I refused to listen to the enemy even when they were right in my face. I stayed focused on my vision of being a great communicator and retiring to South Florida by the age of 30. Due to my vision and my stickability, I moved to South Florida at 29 years, 11 months, and 18 days of age as a millionaire speaker!

Your dream has more power hidden inside of it than you could even imagine. Things you could never even comprehend will occur when you remain focused and dedicated to your dream. You must be committed to your journey regardless of what anyone else says. Your dream really is that important. It’s YOUR dream. They can’t see it, but you can! If you can see it, you can achieve it! They can’t achieve it because they don’t see it, at least not yet. But when you achieve that goal, that’s when they’ll believe you. It’s not their fault. They just couldn’t see what you could see. You could explain it to them a million times, and they still probably wouldn’t see it.

I have to admit the title of my section this week is OUTSTANDING! We all know as we are progressing towards our personal goals, dreams and aspirations that we will fail repeatedly, and then all of a sudden we achieve our ultimate outcome and attain our WHY in LIFE! As I state on my story page, “Each failure is a stepping stone to Success, which in turn will become a very long and lovely stone walkway into the castle of your DREAMS!” You must truly internalize the need to fail in life.

Most people fail more between the ages of 16-25 and then they don’t fail ever again in life, which means they never SUCCEED! You see, at the age 25 the majority of people lose their steam and decide to live a life instead of designing a lifestyle for themselves and their families. I am very proud to say that I have failed numerous times in my life. Just ask my parents, they will tell you …”but John you went to college just get a JOB!” As entrepreneurs, we all know that we never have jobs because whatever we do has our life-print on it, which represents our potential. The following is a list of people that we all know who failed before they succeeded. I cannot emphasize enough that you need to continue to try over and over until you succeed and realize that, as I’ve said before, “Each failure is a stepping stone to Success, which in turn will become a very long and lovely stone walkway into the castle of your DREAMS!”

FAILURES…BUT NOT QUITE
–After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, a 1933 memo from the MGM testing director said, “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

–A relatively unsuccessful marketer of restaurant equipment, he didn’t sell his first hamburger until age 52. At a time when many people prepare for retirement, Ray Kroc built McDonald’s from a handful of hamburger stands into the world’s largest food chain.

–When his older brother was killed during WWII, he first withdrew into a shell. Then he began to listen to the radio to ease his pain. Soon he was dreaming about hosting his own radio show. That led Dick Clark to start American Bandstand.

–Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for lacking ideas. He also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

The question that I have for you now is, “Do you realize how you must be proud of your failures because they really are successes?” Many of my workshop attendees have heard me say “…experience is what you receive when you do not achieve what you desire.” I suggest to print this out and put it on your desk where you can read this article every day and remind yourself about Fred Astaire, Ray Kroc, Dick Clark, and Walt Disney and say to yourself, “What is MY story going to be?” You need to fail in order to ultimately succeed in LIFE! After all, in success language, failure means you are almost there!