 
Real Life

Advantage:

It's About Gaining a Better Perspective

Kevin T. Strong
Copyright © 2017 Kevin T. Strong

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1978132093

ISBN-13: 978-1978132092
CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Chapter 2: A Twist of Events

Chapter 3: Not Out of the Woods

Chapter 4: The Six Advantages and Implications

Chapter 5: Where Shall I Rest My Head

Afterward: Is It Happily Ever After?

Closing Comments: My Hope Going Forward

Quick Reference Card
Introduction

Life has a funny way of teaching you lessons if you are aware of what is going on around you. Sometimes those lessons come from subtle places, places that don't necessarily scream for attention. Sometimes they come easily, but they rarely come without you actively looking. For the last several years, I have had the privilege and responsibility of having many eyes turned to me as I have worked with individuals and companies all over North America, people who are looking for ways to improve, ways to get an edge in a competitive and rapidly-changing market, ways to improve their relationships and their personal lives. It is an honor to have that kind of trust from my audiences, and I see it as a great responsibility. The purpose of this book project really came out of the desire to reach my audiences more effectively and to have an avenue to dive into some of the most important strategies I share with my audiences, but in even more depth. In this book I give in a good read, entertaining in a fun type of way, everything of value I can to benefit others that I could contain to the written word. I've broken it down simply to the following three important areas:

1. Our greatest factor for success is gaining a better perspective (that is a big statement and I will do my best to explain herein)

2. There are Six Advantages that successful people of any background or nationality tend to exhibit which help them maintain a better perspective, and it is imperative we learn what these Six Advantages are, even though most of us are probably applying some of these on a daily basis (on the other side, some of us are not applying any of them).

3. What the three most common blocks are that prevent people from gaining a better perspective.

This information I have to offer may not have a company of smart marketers, incentives to distributors, or full-time employees selling the benefits and payment plans to make it be the next Tony Robbins or Dale Carnegie Training Seminar, but time will show how powerful this message is and how much value will be realized because of it, just like history is starting to realize the story of Nikola Tesla. Do you know the story of Nikola Tesla?

Nikola Tesla devised the AC (alternating current) system that we use in our homes today. AC offered great advantages over the rival DC (direct current) system that Thomas Edison came up with. By using Tesla's transformers, AC voltages could be stepped up (or down) and transmitted over long distances through thin wires. DC could not, since it required a large power plant every square mile and had to be transmitted through very thick cables. Tesla also invented electric motors that today are used in every appliance in your house. He invented fluorescent bulbs and neon signs. He designed the world's first hydroelectric plant, in Niagara Falls and patented the first speedometer for cars.

Thomas Edison, whose money was invested in DC power systems, did his best to discredit Tesla. Edison even went so far as to claim that AC electricity was far more dangerous than his DC power.

You should know that this was not the first feud between these two inventors. When Nikola Tesla worked for Thomas Edison he was offered $50,000 to improve some of Edison's ideas, but when he delivered, Edison claimed that he had only been "joking," and refused to pay him. Edison instead offered a weekly pay raise of $10 (on top of his existing wage of $18 per week). Disgusted, Tesla resigned on the spot, thus beginning the lifelong feud between the two inventors.

As alternating current started to take off and Tesla finally received some of the recognition he deserved, Edison began to feel the threat to his direct current technology. He and his major investor, J.P. Morgan, began a campaign of slanderous propaganda against Tesla and his technology. Tesla knew what he had would benefit people more than what Edison and his technology could benefit humanity so in order to keep electricity inexpensive to the public, Nikola Tesla sold George Westinghouse his own royalties, which were worth $12 million, for just $216,000.

Eventually, on January 7, 1943, Tesla died penniless and alone in Room #3327 of the Hotel New Yorker. Soon after his death, the United States government (with the help of the FBI) seized all of his research materials and writings, most of which never again reappeared.

I see it as my responsibility to give what I have, just like Nikola Tesla did when Thomas Edison's direct current electricity had its limitations. Nikola Tesla knew he had a gift, a thing he could provide to help and benefit people and he wanted them to have it even if that meant making poor business deals so more people could benefit from what he had. I hope you will enjoy what I will share with you in this book and may it bless your life and the lives that you come in contact with.
Chapter 1: The Beginning

My name is Kevin Strong and I live in Centerville, Utah, a great city about 15 minutes north of our state capitol, Salt Lake City. It is a nice place that experiences all four seasons and has a family-centered community. In Centerville you will often hear of the gratitude of parents that say it takes a village to raise a son or daughter to be a respectable adult. I agree with that statement.

Family is important to a majority of us across the nation, and much of our focus is our children. I have a son and two daughters, and they are growing up so quickly. Growing up quickly may be an understatement. My son at the age of 13 grew to my height of six feet. We shared the same shoe size for a month and now that he's a little older he wears a size 14! We've had this little competition in our household since our kids were little of who's the tallest with pencil marks on the wall ever since they were little. So recently I told my son that I was still growing too and he said, "Yeah, Dad, like this," as he stretched his arms wide to indicate that my growth in recent years had become more horizontal than vertical.

My children are growing up so quickly and as they grow, their dreams for their own futures are starting to take shape. They want to be pro athletes, doctors and the incredible hulk. In my line of work speaking and training for organizations I make the similarity that like children, we have goals, dreams and desires. We want to run a marathon, we want to reach the organization's goals, earn our first million and spend our first million! We have things we want to experience: smelling, tasting, taking that vacation or being around our loved ones on their special day. We also want to overcome, overcome things that everybody may know about us such as a physical blemish we were born with, an illness, an unfortunate turn of events, a car accident or... things only we know about... or a few close friends know about.

Imagine what life would be like if you could take what you know now and use that to your advantage 10 years ago, 20 years ago or at the start of our earliest years in life. This would certainly give us a competitive advantage in our work, life and relationships. This would certainly help us in reaching our goals, dreams and desires. This is because of our perspective. We have a better perspective now than we did 10 and 20 years ago. A better perspective impacts us financially, it affects our health, our relationships and where we might be at this same time next year. Being wise takes gaining a better perspective and the quicker we gain a better perspective the quicker it can help us and benefit us. I believe this is why Anne Frank said, "Everyone has inside of them a piece of good news. The good news... is that you don't know how great you can be!" And the often quoted but very applicable Thomas Edison said, "If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves."

Too many times I see people asking how can they get that job, they want to improve their relationships, they're reading another self-help book... How many times have we seen someone that goes to the doctor and they are constantly looking for a magic pill or a quick fix and they cure the condition but not the problem? They put a bandaid on it. We need to get to the root of the problem, the foundation, the reality of it all, then we can build our expertise on it. The root of it all is our perspective.

If you haven't experienced numerous amounts of great speakers and training programs there are in this world or read their books, then I will let you know they talk about their great stories. And they are excellent stories. I love it! Those are my peers, and they have great content, right? The content is made to shift your perspective to a better perspective. Either that perspective is to get you to never give up or to think bigger or to think outside the box, but all of it is to shift our perspective to see what we weren't seeing before, and I think that is amazing.

To illustrate this point and to give an example of someone who was in need of a shift in their perspective, you can look no further than to see Kermit the Frog. A famous hand puppet goes into the doctor's office where the doctor is holding a picture of his x-ray of a hand inside the puppet's body, and then the doctor turns to Kermit to tell him, "What I am about to tell you is going to change your life forever. Are you really sure you want to know it?"... This is a little light humor but how do we get here? How do we gain a better perspective? I'll tell you part of my journey.
Chapter 2: A Twist of Events

For the purpose of this book, my story starts when I was a freshman. At 15 years old, my family had just barely moved from Bountiful, Utah to Centerville, a whole six minutes away. I am the 8th of 10 children. I have three older brothers and six sisters. My seven older siblings attended the local public high school, Bountiful High. With the move I was going to go to Viewmont, the school rival. A little bit of a shift in where I thought I was going to go for the past 15 years of my childhood, but being 15 years old things were going to be different. I was really good at my athletics. We had just barely won our little league football championship and the team we actually beat in the championship was the team I was now going to be playing for (Viewmont). They were kind of excited to have me but disappointed that we beat them, but regardless, things were going well for me in the athletic arena. Studies were going pretty well too. My GPA at the time was a 3.5. I'm telling you all this because it was at the beginning of our high school year that I learned news that would change my life drastically in an instant, news that would change my life forever. Around the same time I was running awesome 94-yard touchdown runs as a sophomore for my new high school football team and getting used to high school life, I found out the girl I had been dating then was five-months pregnant with our baby.

I didn't know what to do... Do I have a future? I mean I have three full years of high school left. What about her? Are we going to finish our schooling? What about the baby? Who will care for it? Is it a boy or a girl? Are we going to place it for adoption or get married? If we get married how would I provide? How much does baby product cost? Where will we live? How do I tell my parents?

If you had found yourself in this situation what would you have done?... We had a tough decision to make. We knew what we felt like doing. We felt like running and hiding! We didn't want to be there anymore, but eventually we had to face this. And out of a lot of consideration and thinking we eventually decided what was best for us in our own particular situation was to get married. We thought we knew what love was and we thought we would give it a shot. We knew it was going to be difficult, we just didn't know how difficult. Imagine how it must have felt to get a job at minimum wage flippin' burgers at a fast food place, and imagine seeing your peers or schoolmates driving through the drive-thru and ordering while you're back there trying to make a living for a young family. Or how after you complete your homework you are staying up late to feed a child and change its diaper. It stunk. The whole situation stunk.

By the end of our sophomore year I had gotten three different jobs from improving them and was given the opportunity in my third job to actually work an average of 15 hour days. This was a great help despite the long hours, because I needed the income. I was working at a moving company and each day we would get to the office, get our assignments and then load up into moving trucks to drive to our destinations. We would drive on average an hour in the morning until we got to a business or a home where we were to move them all day lifting and loading box after box, heavy object after heavy object, and then we would on average have another hour drive back to the office in the evening. Those 15-hour days were of course during the summer when I had to make every extra ounce I could in order to afford to cut my workload back to a normal amount during the school year so I could keep attending school and progressing toward graduation. The longest day I remember having was 18 hours where I went a full day moving a company, getting back, and then I was informed that we were going to get to seal the concrete of their new warehouse into the early hours of the morning to give me 18 hours in one day!

Those were hard days. When you lift heavy objects like that every day, for that many hours, your body, your joints, and your muscles really never have time to recover and feel great. You go to bed late at night, and you wake up in the morning stiff and sore. A warm shower helps bring life back to a point, but there is always this underlying strain. Taking Sundays off of physical labor made Sundays a cherished day. But even Monday morning I could still feel the previous week's labor still in my bones. And that was on top of trying to keep it all together at home giving the little bits of attention that I could to my young wife and our baby. I was exhausted and I was beat.

On top of different jobs, we had also moved three times. We lived at my parents' house, then we went to her parents' house, then we went out on our own by getting our own apartment there on Center Street in Bountiful in an apartment complex. We had moved three times by the end of our sophomore year. We were still going to school. It was difficult, I was struggling. I needed something to change. I realized that if I was going to change, if I was going to be able to provide for us and make anything of my future, I needed some more knowledge. I needed to finish high school, I needed to go to college. I needed to learn.

So what did I do? I learned every day. Since I wasn't the driver for the moving company I worked for--I was barely old enough to have a driver's license!--since I was just a grunt worker who was hired to move all the furniture and boxes, I had two hours every day during those drives to learn. I took those two hours every day and read in the morning, and I read on the way back in the evenings and I immersed myself in gaining information. I believe we were and still are inundated with information, with tons of information. I wanted to get the stuff that wasn't the rah-rah motivation. I wanted the stuff that worked, the time-tested, best classics. So with a lack of knowledge I sought out the best books, books you have heard about or have even read yourselves, books like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People... The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (to whom I later found out that I am related as he is my Mom's cousin). I read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Do you know who Viktor Frankl was? He was a psychiatrist before World War II who survived three years in concentration camps and later wrote down what he observed from his experiences about man, his ability to survive and to find purpose and meaning in his existence. It has been a bestseller and is truly one of the greatest books. If you haven't read it, do. John Gray's book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker. If you have studied leadership or read a leadership book then you have heard about Peter Drucker or from people that learned from Peter Drucker. He is a master in the skill of leadership. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Coleman, Good to Great by Jim Collins, The Holy Bible, The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley, The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clayson, Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins, Who Moved my Cheese by Spencer Johnson, The One-Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard. Books that have stood the test of time is what I was looking for, information that would give me the ability to change for the long term. The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

I read many great books that you may have read yourself and have loved and enjoyed, and I took some of the great information and started applying it into my life. I learned from everything that was a bestseller, something that was going to do me some good. I didn't need some quick fix, I needed something that was going to work and give me some knowledge. Not only did I get knowledge from authors but also from speakers of great content, great leaders and thinkers, people like Beethoven, Thomas Edison, Michael Jordan, Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates, Muhammad Ali, Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Luther King Jr., Mozart, Albert Einstein, George Washington, Princess Diana. All of these people I tried to learn about what made them successful. What did they do? What are their daily habits? What was their thought process? What about J K Rowling the author of the Harry Potter books? Did you know she was homeless before she made it big with the Harry Potter series? Huge inspiration. She had a vision. No matter what happened in her life she continued to press on. Walt Disney. Who doesn't like Disneyland? Abraham Lincoln was one of the greats I studied and many more, over 170 of the best sources of information that I could find, I consumed, read and soaked in the knowledge. I needed that knowledge.

Reading these books while crammed into my seat of the company's moving truck two hours a day was an experience I look back on with a certain degree of reverence. Those were hard times being a teenage dad, and student, and husband, and provider. Those were long days. But somehow, in the seat of that truck, fatigued and sore, as I read those books and those wise words by all those writers, little by little it felt like glimpses of sunlight got through into my teenage brain, and little by little they revealed new ideas, new ways to look at life, new ways to be successful. Little by little they gave me perspective.

It is a good idea to consider how we are currently approaching gaining knowledge in our own life, in our own field. How much desire does someone have to learn? How badly do they want improvement? How much knowledge do they have in a certain area? Do you have an expertise to the degree that people consider you an "expert" in your field?" Of course each one of us knows more than we did a year ago or even a day ago, but the knowledge you have acquired, have you seen that knowledge help you to get a job you couldn't get before or has it made an impact on how you communicate with others in ways you hadn't been able to before?

The knowledge people learn are sometimes called street smarts from life experiences or books smarts with a college education, and it varies on subjects and topics but in every case the knowledge they have learned has helped them to grow and is typically the reason of success in whatever their goals, dreams and desires were. Being wise takes gaining a better perspective. So are we experts? If you were a sales representative your expertise is sales. But what is your expertise inside the sales field? Is it car sales, is it in negotiations, is it in building rapport? Whatever line of expertise we are in, we should ask ourselves, "Can we be more of an expert in another area of our expertise?"

Gaining perspective in life, as I have said before, can give us such a great advantage, but unfortunately perspective doesn't just come automatically. It takes removing barriers, or what I like to call "Blocks and Limitations". There are three main Blocks or Limitations that keep us from gaining perspective and experience, and I would like to introduce you to the first.

Block #1: Lack of Knowledge

One of the top three reasons we see some people not having a better perspective is because they are not aware. "Sometimes we just don't know enough." Sometimes we don't know what we don't know. They just don't know it is different because of a lack of knowledge. A toddler doesn't realize a stove is hot until they touch it. A teenager doesn't know what an adult knows. A person who hasn't ever seen an automobile doesn't know how to fix an automobile. This lack of knowledge is blocking them from seeing what we can all see, but they don't see it. It is blocking them from the potential that they have in them.

I found the following statistic to be really interesting: According to the National Opinion Research Center (the N.O.R.C. at the University of Chicago) you can get a doctorate degree in 283 different fields of study. 283 different fields of study, that's a lot of degrees! In reality compared to the knowledge of microscopic particles, the world, our solar system, or universe, we individually are toddlers stumbling around learning to walk. If you're five or 95, keep learning and if we're smart we'll be right beside you. We can't expect someone that is 10 to know what a 20 year-old knows, or a 20 year-old to know what a 50 year-old knows.

*****

Those great books gave me perspective I hadn't had before. I had learned about thinking abundantly, never giving up, setting goals, thinking outside the box, soft skills and leadership skills. Well, I used that knowledge that I had just learned to think bigger.

To think bigger, I thought of building a salt delivery business filling up water softeners. I was going to do a regular delivery service and go to my customers on a regular schedule, so either the first Monday of every month or second Wednesday every month. This made it convenient and was great for the customer because they wouldn't need to call and they wouldn't have time to run out even if they missed a month or two. For those who may not be familiar with what a water softener is, a water softener is a machine about the size of a 50 gallon water drum that is empty so it can hold rock salt, actually rock salt that came in 50 lb bags. The machine then runs and mixes the house's hard water through it and into the house's plumbing and makes your soap lather up, dishes get cleaner and cleans out your home water system. It works really nice in Utah as there is a lot of hard water, so lots of households have water softeners. The thing is, with a water softener you have to fill it up with 50 lb bags of salt every month or every few months. You have to go down to the grocery store, load the 50 lb bags of salt on to your cart, wheel it down the aisles without hitting anyone's ankles, making the turns to the checkout stand, pay for it, bring it to the parking lot, load it into your trunk, take it to your house, out of the trunk, go up the stairs, down the stairs and load it into the water softener.

So I had the genius of an idea: "What if I were to get this in bulk, you know cut out the middleman and go get the salt directly?" So I drove 30 minutes away from my home to get off 12th Street in Ogden, Utah all the way out to the IMC Salt Mine and asked for one ton of salt. One ton of salt in my ton pickup truck, well, my grandpa's ton pickup truck. Boy was he going to be surprised! I got up to this salt mine in his ton pickup truck and I wheeled up to this refinery looking facility and they had those 80-foot silos that have all the salt in them and chutes they drop from the bottom of these silos into these semi-truck 18 wheelers. 18-wheeler truckers were all around this whole refinery manufacturing place. I am sure they were looking at me like, "What the heck does this kid think he's doing?" When it was my turn as I was in line, I pulled up in my ton pickup truck, got underneath this 80 foot silo, positioned my truck under the chute and I was just hoping that it wouldn't completely crush the truck bed and blow the tires off the truck. Positioned in place, the salt suddenly came careening down the shoot. SHHH, BOOM!!! To my surprise everything was still intact. The wheels were almost touching the frame, but the truck was intact.

I drove that full load back to my home and I shoveled it filling up 5-gallon buckets and I carried those as a salt delivery service every month to customers. Those 5-gallon buckets which held the same as 50 lb bags of salt cost me $0.80 instead of $3.00 a bag. Then I would do my deliveries the first Monday of every month or the first Wednesday of every month on a regular route and I filled up my customer's water softeners. I got that because of the knowledge I had gained to think bigger, outside of the box, to provide for my family, not to prove that knowledge could be crossed off my to-do list but that to increase our knowledge is a continuous improvement we should pursue.

So now I had a business and it was paying me a lot better than flipping burgers or moving or the other jobs that I had held previously. I used that to start providing for my family. I graduated high school, finally, and chose a college to attend, Weber State University. Up to this point we had lived in seven different places in three years through a combination of being poor and wanting a better place without bugs. One of our shortest moves lasted only a month because the home owner sold his house right when we moved in. The bright side of that move was most of our stuff was still in boxes.

I continued to grow my salt delivery business and through the process of owning it for five years I grew the salt business and I sold it using a business broker there in Ogden, Utah, and used the proceeds to finish out college and get a job with a Fortune 500 company. I graduated in December and started with the Fortune 500 company which moved me out to Dalton, Georgia for four months of paid training. The company was in the construction industry specifically in carpet manufacturing. Dalton, Georgia is the carpet manufacturing capital of the world and is near the border of Tennessee and Georgia. I was there for four months through training and after that was relocated back to Utah as a sales representative working with architects, designers and owners of large buildings to use our company's carpet within the construction industry. After a lot of work, a lot of gaining knowledge, we started to get a taste for success and feel like we were finally getting out of the woods.

Then came 2008. Just as I felt I was finally getting somewhere, the Great Recession hit and I was laid off.
Chapter 3: Not Out of the Woods

"I can't win, I feel like a failure."

I felt like for the last eight years I'd been struggling, trying to get back to normalcy, you know, to drive a car that doesn't break down every month and that I don't have to put coolant in every two days, or oil. I had felt like we were starting to get somewhere and now I was unemployed.

I remembered the mantra of never giving up, never giving up, so I called up my competitor. He immediately gave me a job as another sales representative in the construction industry, with a good pay increase too. I was earlier working for Shaw Industries. They're a carpet manufacturer based in Dalton, GA. Their competitor who I was now working for was Bentley Prince Street. They actually do all the carpet in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints temples, among many other buildings like law firms. Very nice and elegant carpet. So I work for them and the economy didn't get much better, in fact property values lost half their value, no one was remodeling, and all of the regional managers in the company took territories where they lived. My regional manager happened to live where I lived, so I was laid off again five months later...

That hurt!...At least this time I got laid off before I had gone through all the effort to build something substantial and having to watch it be taken away from me. But nonetheless, I was still laid off again. I quickly started to put the effort into applying for jobs with other competitors, but still in the construction industry. I got hired again for the third time. I was working for this company five months later and the economy wasn't doing any better. I wasn't learning my lesson here. I was still in the construction industry and I got let go for the third time in two years!

I believe there are things we keep to ourselves or to a few close friends in which we could use a better perspective. In this case I needed to shift my perspective. I kept thinking, "We work hard and we NEVER give up." I was thinking in absolutes. See when I was thinking in absolutes, when I was just thinking, "Never give up, never give up, never give up," I loved it, because it's inspirational, motivational, etc. until... I learned the definition of insane: to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

I don't listen to the "never give up" mindset anymore. Instead I keep moving forward. By keeping moving forward it carries the same message to try, try, try again but by keeping moving forward we adjust and adapt to what's actually working to get you to the goal of where you want to go. I was hitting my head against a wall in terms of thinking in absolutes. I was thinking it had to be a certain way as I learned about never giving up, but I had a huge roadblock in thinking it had to always be that way. I started to see the conflicting advice. I started to see that some stuff was situational and that one solution doesn't fit all.

Block #2: Absolutes and Extremes

One of the top three reasons we see some people not having a better perspective is because they think there are only two options and it must be one or the other. "Sometimes people think they already know the answer." They may think that there is only one way to do something: their way. They just don't want to be open to any other possibilities because they think in absolutes or extremes. Thinking there is only one way can be dangerous and limiting. With this limitation it's always or never, everything or nothing.

Who has heard of someone that says, "It has to be this way or else I am wrong, and I am not wrong!"? Who knows someone like this? (When I ask this question to an audience several people hold up their hand.) I then ask a follow up question, "Who's sitting next to one right now?" And some of the same people raise their hands, but several other people start holding up their hands next to their neighbors. We get a good laugh out of this as most of us are guilty of this at some point in our lives. A person of religious faith says their church is all true so all others are false. When in reality it's not one is good and the other is bad but one may be more true and the other less, but both are good in varying degrees. A political party is always right so the other political party is always wrong. In reality it's not that one is right and the other is wrong but one may have a better approach to an issue given the situation than the other, but both will have success at varying degrees. This thinking in absolutes or extremes is blocking them from seeing what we can all see, but they don't see it. It is blocking them from the potential that they have in them.

Consider the following mental exercise as an example of how we are conditioned to think in absolutes:

Imagine I am standing in front of you and I have three objects on a platter as I face you: a cup, a spoon, and a pitcher of water. I take the pitcher of water and I pour it into the cup so the cup is half full. I then take the spoon and stir the water in the cup to show you that the liquid is indeed in the cup and you can see it swirling around in the cup. I put the spoon aside and lift the cup now over your head. Are you getting a little nervous? Now I tell you that I am going to turn this cup upside over the top of your head. When I do so, what is going to happen? By now if I were with you in person, no doubt you would be wondering if I really was cruel enough to just dump a cup of water on your head, just like that. Just as soon as that thought enters your brain, I turn the cup upside down!

What do you expect to happen when a cup of water gets turned upside down? Well, the water ALWAYS pours out, of course, right? Well, not this time! As I turn the cup over, to your amazement you stay completely dry, and the water defies gravity and remains in the cup!

Alright, a good magician never reveals his trick, but I will let you in on the secret. (you're just going to Google it anyways. LOL) When I do this little trick with my audiences, what they (and you) didn't know is that before anyone ever saw the three objects on the platter I had put a fine powder in the cup that, when combined with water, turns into a clear gel, so when the cup turns over, the gel stays in the cup! I like to use this simple "magic" trick in my presentations because a big reason magic is so entertaining is because it messes with our minds that are so used to thinking things have to be a certain way. Magic plays on our mind's tendency to think in absolutes.

We need to be careful to not think in absolutes. We can't think in terms of only our expertise working. We can't assume our expertise is a fix-all or a one-solution for all of the problems organizations face. We need teamwork, we need balance, we need synergy. If we think in absolutes, a company that manufactures more product than it can sell, or it sells more product than the company has the capacity to produce, it causes a problem, and profit declines, or worse. There are great principles and great ideas that will work the majority of the time, but in some circumstances or situations it won't apply, and we can't fall into that trap. We need to look with a balanced approach where our expertise can work with another person's expertise. If we look through only the lens of our expertise, then we miss out on a greater perspective that others may see that we can't.

Consider the following differences between "knowledge" and "wisdom":

Knowledge is really about facts and ideas that we acquire through study, research, investigation, observation, or experience.

Wisdom is the ability to apply that knowledge to the greater scheme of life.

Or in other words:

Being smart is knowing your wife's hair style isn't as good as her last one.

Being wise is knowing enough to keep your mouth shut.

We may get to the point where people come to us because of our expertise, because we are known for something, as an expert in our field. Being an expert is all well and good, but we limit our potential and our organization's potential if we fail to work with other experts. This goes for two experts in the same field as well. We could have two experts in Human Resources and one could have expertise in Diversity and the other have a speciality in Employee Compensation and they can better help each other and the organization if they collaborate with each other and utilize their expertise than working by themselves thinking they are always right.

*****

I had read many books and I had gathered great information from time-tested sources and successful people in all types of areas, so I had more knowledge but I needed to know how that knowledge all worked together. This lead me to the idea of taking all that great information that I've learned and put it into a book, a single source of time-tested knowledge.

What I am about to reveal to you by putting the knowledge from those great books together you may already know or may have noticed for yourself, especially if you have read a few of the books I have already mentioned or any other self-help books. The fact is that they repeat the same topics over and over again, they talk about the same things over and over and over. In fact there are 38 different topics. 38. Selfishly, for my own sake I put them into a book so I could have a single book with all 38 topics in it. The book is called Being Wise by Kevin Strong and it's what I authored and published and put together back in March of 2012. It gives a baseline of wisdom and truth that history shows is important to successful people regardless of their background. It is universally applicable to anyone in any country or background, and from this baseline people can build on it to make this generation the best generation so far! It's a collection of the best information and how all that information works together.

The book Being Wise is the research. Five years of research went into this book and we found through the five years of research of putting together all that information, those universal truths of the best authors and leaders of all time, we found two major sides of the research, two major findings (we now call these two findings The Real Life Advantage). One side is that gaining a better perspective is our greatest factor for success. And I don't care if it's at home with our kids, at work with our peers, as a business owner, or a volunteer in the community. The biggest impact on our life is a better perspective, any amount. Let's get real, authentic, genuine.

The second side of the research showed that everything that deals with gaining a better perspective is from our ability to shift our perspective away from six detriments and towards six advantages. Everything that ties to our attitude and effort are these Six Advantages that comprises what the greatest individuals and organizations of all time possessed and continue to possess. What actually builds a better perspective? Is it what people think or is it in fact more than that? Maybe some of these Six Advantages will surprise you, maybe some of them won't, but the truth is, very few people knew there were only six and are doing all six together.

If you think a better perspective isn't related to our attitude and effort or that it's not our greatest factor for success, think about this, think of your role models, heroes, industry leaders. Do you see commonalities between them?... Virtues? Positive attitudes, how they carry themselves, are they optimistic? Are they influential? Because they have a better perspective, they were able to eliminate blocks and limitations that so many others continue to carry around. Industry leaders Amazon and Google projected to earn billions over the next decade because of a better perspective. A service-based company's success is highly due to their decent thinking of how their customers feel when they do business with them.

We're good decision makers when we know where we're at and where we're going, isn't that true? When we're stuck between a rock and a hard place and we think of that third option that was right in front of us this whole time, that is when we have a better perspective. We're more likely to hire or be hired at an interview if we have a positive attitude isn't that right? Our attitude is what attracts our spouse to us as we grow old together, not because we buy them gifts and look good (not that it wouldn't help).

I laugh and cringe at my family that I grew up in because sometimes we go to the restaurant and we want everything to be "fair". We go to a restaurant and split the bill evenly counting down to the very last pennies so it's fair. Or sometimes we don't give to others in our family because we are worried about what we will get out of it. The sooner my family realized this (not that it still doesn't happen, but it does happen less) we stopped worrying about things that didn't have as much significance and because of this we enjoy trips and boats and friends because we started to "get it". We "get it" because we care about people, so at times we give more than what we think is fair but in the end we end up getting back way more than we ever gave. More importantly, we've gained good friends on whom we don't keep tabs, or keep score of who gave what. It's a mutual love for each other. It's something I've recently learned and I could've been doing this years ago.

Way back as a little kid in grade school, if I would have applied what I now know I would've had more friends than just my three best friends that were with me all the time. I could have been doing this the whole time. What has it cost me to not have a perspective of caring about people? What has it cost me in relationships? What has it cost me at work or at home? What am I missing as a result of lacking perspective? Do you think it has affected my health or is there a financial cost? I just realized I could have been enjoying this benefit my whole life. It's been available to me this whole time. It's my potential and it's always been available until I learned I had it in me. This shift in our perspective opens up more of our potential and unlocks the potential that is inherently inside of all of us that we can apply today rather than years later wishing we had applied them.

This does not mean we think everything is always sunshine and rainbows. It's not a mantra of turning lemons into lemonade, it's not a hyped up, feel good, get all excited adrenaline pumping wave our hands in the air each and every day, or an effort to encourage those sinking helplessly into quicksand to imagine instead they are relaxing on a beautiful beach. These are real concerns, real life, real situations. It simply shows when you have a better perspective, you have the highest efficiency, the most productivity, the most creativity, and the biggest impact. Where you have perspective, you have the best stuff. The research shows that where we find someone with a better perspective we find purpose, happiness, weight loss, and confidence all increase, whereas divorce, depression, laziness all go down every single time. Every time, every time! The highest efficiency, the most productivity, the most creativity, and the biggest impact happens when gaining a better perspective went up.

So I train corporations and teams and departments and individuals on how to gain a better perspective and apply these Six Advantages so they can be more effective. On a macro level when this happens, we cultivate or maintain the current culture and the employees are better engaged, productivity increases, revenue increases and quality of life increases. That's what I do full time. Normally that's what I do over one or two days, or depending on the corporation it has been broken up over a whole week depending on scheduling and how many people are attending. That's what I do, that's my expertise, to dive deeper into the implications and effects of this wonderful information. Obviously this book can't cover all of this, but I do want to convey as much as I can within the space of the written word. In this attempt we will go over what all Six Advantages are so you will have the knowledge of what they are and so you can internalize them and implement them for yourself right now.
Chapter 4: The Six Advantages and Implications

For those that gain a better perspective, they know there is an abundance, they are decent, they are flexible to things outside of their control, they are grateful for what they have including people, they value quality, and they are secure with who they are. We will resume to my journey after this, but for this chapter here are some analogies, stories and exercises that will help to illustrate and suggest how we can use these Six Advantages!

THERE IS MUCH ABUNDANCE.

Analogy:

Imagine we know of these two people named Alex and Ben who really enjoy going fishing. One day they set up camp on the bank of a lake without much of provisions as they planned to eat what they catch for dinner that day. So they proceed to float out onto the lake with worms as their bait to catch fish. For hours, they fish with no success. They grow hungry and wish to catch a fish. They finally do and to their disappointment, it is a small fish that would only feed one of them. Ben views life as things in scarcity. With resources or, in this case, food being scarce, he sees Alex as a rival. He starts to fear it may not be his so he reacts to what is before him and hides the fish from Alex. Ben is playing not to lose. Alex sees things differently.

Alex views life as things in abundance. With resources, or in this case having nothing before they caught a small fish, things are looking up. He views Ben as a friend that between them, two brains are better than one. He starts to hope and proactively uses this small fish before him to catch a much larger fish that the worms weren't able to attract. Alex is playing to win.

There are many examples of gaining a better perspective. The abundance is all around us, from technology to those that came across a desert in Nevada to create the city we call Las Vegas or the city of Dubai that has by far the tallest building on the planet. That abundance wasn't seen by people like Ben, it was seen by people like Alex. Life is very abundant.

Disneyland is a great example of abundance. When you get to Disneyland everyone calls it the happiest place on earth. And it is! I talk to my brothers and sisters about Disneyland and riding on the rides back when we were younger, seeing Mickey and his friends, and enjoying the delicious snacks around the park. My parents created really great memories and as I have gotten older I too wanted my wife who had never been and our kids to experience the park and have the wonderful memories I enjoyed as a child. Several years ago I took them.

We went to Disneyland, entered into California Adventure and into a section of the park called "A Bug's Land" where we found typically small plants such as four leaf clovers were now the size of trees, the lampposts were enlarged pencils. By walking through all these large everyday objects you get a true sense that you have shrunk to the size of a small bug.

My youngest daughter with her innocent little fingers pulled on my pant leg and in her sweetest little voice said, "Dad, we're all so small" (melting my heart). I knew at that moment I was creating memories like my parents did for me all those years ago.

Continuing into this part of the park is an attraction called "It's Tough to be a Bug". At this attraction you start down a path, the walls slowly start to enclose around you as if you're entering an ant hill. The details aren't just face value; each crevice and cranny is filled with explicit detail! You hear noises of bugs buzzing around you, and the curved railing feels like a tree root as you hold onto it's texture giving you the impression that you really are ants entering into this ant hill. This brings you into this carved-out area with animal engravings, fun facts, and jokes on the walls and noises of bugs crawling overhead. You then enter into the show and sit down on the wooden benches.

You have the 3D glasses on and Flick greets you as honorary bugs. As he is proceeding to tell you that he will be introducing you to a few of the bugs in the animal kingdom, you see a big fuzzy orange and white-striped spider jump at Flick from behind him scaring him half to death. Grabbing his heart and regaining his composure Flick introduces you to "Chile" the Chilean tarantula. One of the great facts about Chilean tarantulas is that they launch venomous quills with deadly accuracy at their targets. He demonstrates this by hitting one of the first acorns and it shatters all over the screen with the 3D effects you see it right in front of you. But then flies pick up the acorn targets and begin flying around with them, so Chile the chilean tarantula shoots his venomous quills out but misses the targets as they go out into the audience! You're dodging them left and right shifting one way and ducking, then blasts of air are hitting your face... This is more than just a 3D film, it's interactive. You're feeling what is actually going on in the film!

As Chile finishes up you get introduced to your next bug, the soldier termite. The soldier termite mistakenly takes you the audience for intruders and squirts its acid out onto the crowd, and then again from the benches in front of you water squirts out hitting your face! Who then appears to meet you is the silent but deadly attacker, the stink bug, who is very cleverly named I might add as... "Claire de Room". Claire lets out a little stink, and with additional puffs of air the smell of rotten pistachios and eggs reeks into the room. You look over to your family member sitting next to you to capture their priceless face with a crinkled up nose and gasping for clean air. After this you get attacked by a huge fly swatter as it appears to come out of the screen, you're overcome with a big fog of bug spray that billows from all sides and underneath you. Then black widow spiders crawl out of the ceiling with their long shiny black legs as they creep down closer to your head. As they get closer and closer this sends shivers down your neck! Hornets buzz around and you "get stung" right in the back from what feels like the bench you are sitting on! It all feels so real and it is all around you! Just as you think you can't take it anymore, the lights come back on.

The show finishes up, the announcer comes over the microphone to announce, "Please remain seated so the beetles, maggots and cockroaches can leave safely." Just then from underneath your bench that you have been sitting on this whole time you feel them leaving from underneath your legs, across your cheeks and you look around, noticing all of the parents are grinning from ear to ear, children are laughing, and they are wide-eyed beaming with amazement!

"It's Tough to be a Bug" is one ride out of the 100+ excellent attractions offered in that park. What would happen if they took out the speakers, the extra decorations or building materials? What if we stood in line on a cement slab and held a metal railing? The reality of abundance is all around us. Not scarcity. There is plenty to go around and new ideas are happening all the time. The first advantage is abundance.

They who recognize abundance recognize the plentiful options, opportunities and strengths around them.

Walt Disney said, "We keep moving forward opening new doors, and doing new things." This is why we are where we are today, the stylish clothes that we thought up, measured, cut, merchandised and organized with the right accessories and colors. We see women that are full of abundant thinking, they look amazing as they have added colors and jewelry and all manner of organization to create their style. When there's endless possibilities your mind is enlightened. This is why skyscrapers climb to heights of clouds, why innovation and new technology abound. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower, building, structure in the world located in Dubai that I mentioned earlier stands at an amazing 2,722 feet, almost two times that of the Empire State Building in New York which actually held that same record for being the tallest building in the world for roughly 40 years.

How about the compacted computer technology with all of the intricate pieces in the smartphone in our hands. The abundance is all around us. My wife told me we need to get a new couch. A new couch? I don't want a new couch, this one's fine... it does okay. So a week later... an hour later we have a new couch (and it is very comfortable). My spouse does this all the time, I look over our budget and think we are steady, I like where we're at, nothing needs to change. My wife on the other hand thinks how about a vacation, a new car, how about some decorations to spruce up this room! Anyone else have one like that?... I know if I was by myself I would be way back in a cave somewhere with all the other neanderthals drawing pictographs on the cave walls.

They who recognize the abundance have their minds working. They not only look for new ways of doing things and think of big ideas, they are constantly with people sharing ideas and hoping for things to come.

When people use abundance at work it is in thinking of ideas and sharing them which is why networking works so well in business. When we network others know what we want, they can help us get there. The thing is though that in order to network and grow abundance we need to know what we want.

Knowing what we want are ideas in and of themselves, so think of ideas, small ideas, big ideas, any idea. Ideas turn into habits, or at work they become best practices. Best practices when done consistently day after day after day, slowly but surely generate the benefits we get to enjoy. The little things we do consistently is where we get the big results. Now the most brilliant ideas as we all know don't happen from some speaker from the stage, they happen when we get together for coffee or lunch and we sit next to each other and say, "Oh this is what we do at ____, oh this is what we do at ____, oh this is what we do up at ____. Oh that's a good idea, maybe I'll do that down here or over there or up here at ____." And we tell each other. The best ideas most often happen in collaboration.

Recognizing the reality that abundance is all around us is powerful. It's the first step to habits, growth, and sustainable success. It's the difference in being stuck and having options. It gives us what we can use and hope for. Can you feel the excitement, the creative innovative energy right now? Abundance!

We will now transition into another advantage and I think it is the most powerful of them all as we will see why as we read through it.

THERE ARE MANY WHO ARE DECENT.

Analogy:

Let me introduce you to Alvin and Brent who are both very wealthy individuals. They fly on their private jets, meet with important people and are at the top of their game. A new contract is coming up that will be worth a lot to themselves and to the companies they work for. When they get home they will need to eat and prepare to meet with a team of professionals this evening to land the contract the next morning. Brent views life as being indecent. With the prospect of a new contract, he can step on, get ahead of and feel more superior to others when he lands the big contract in the morning. He first arrives home and to his dissatisfaction sees his neighbor's dog has taken the liberty to use his lawn as its personal restroom. Knowing it won't take much time he goes through the extra effort to throw the dog waste in their yard strategically where he hopes they won't ever find it and it will continue to smell up the dog's owner's own yard. He proceeds to walk through his front door where his chef meets him with a delicious dinner. Brent simply takes the food as he has done a number of times before and rushes to meet with his team that together they may finalize the plan to win the contract. He and his team perform excellently and they land the contract. Brent takes all the credit and his team that helped secure the contract is dismissed. He gets his feeling of importance by hurting others or by helping himself and a few others while additionally others suffer in the process. The more he can get ahead of, step on or feel more superior to others is what he is looking for. He is interested in himself and will take whatever he can. Alvin sees things differently.

Alvin views life as being decent. With the prospect of a new contract he can help more people, himself, his company and that of the customer when he lands the big contract in the morning. He first arrives home and to his dissatisfaction sees that his neighbor's dog has taken the liberty to use his lawn as its personal restroom. Knowing it would be the same effort to throw the dog waste back, he simply discards it in a waste bin. He proceeds to walk through his front door where his chef meets him with a delicious dinner. Alvin thanks his chef then goes to meet with his team that together they may finalize the plan to win the contract. He and his team perform excellently and they land the contract. Alvin is pleased with what he did and he also gives credit to the team that together they were able to do it. He gets his feeling of importance by helping himself and others without hurting others additionally. The more people he can help is what he is looking for. He is interested in others, wants to add value, serve, is sharing and gives. He remembers something Dale Carnegie had once written:

I shall pass this way but once, any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being let me do it now, let me not defer nor neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.

There are many examples of gaining a better perspective. Decent people are all around us, from the workers that add value to their customers, to the learning of new skills, to the leaders who although in a high position of power are loved and respected by everyone. "Why?" you may ask. Because they did not rule over others, but rather they served their people, their country, their family, their spouse. Great corporations are built upon providing better products, better services, and better experiences to help others. Good causes and charitable organizations strive to make this a better place by helping others such as the United Way, The Salvation Army, Libraries and real donations that help people up rather than as a hand out. You see the greatest goal a person can aspire to "is to love". Love is an action word. Additionally, you don't give love because one deserves it; you give love because you want to.

Viktor Frankl was a great example of love and decency. He was an MD, PhD, and holocaust survivor who later went on to write the highly acclaimed book Man's Search for Meaning. We learn that while he was in the Nazi concentration camp he dealt frequently with the guards and other prisoners there. Some of the prisoners were called "kapos". Kapos were prisoners like Victor and the others, but these prisoners received extra perks for carrying out punishments on their fellow prisoners for, say, some extra cigarettes or food. Additionally between this and another time when Frankl tells of a time when a foreman, a guard holding him and his fellow prisoners, secretly gave Frankl a piece of bread from his own ration, "It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human 'something' which this man also gave to me-the word and the look which accompanied the gift" (Frankl). He realized that all guards could not be considered evil and all prisoners like himself considered good. There he discovered there really are only two kinds of people, decent and indecent. For the most part we are good people, kind-hearted, caring individuals and throughout the day we do things that are decent, giving, sharing, serving and so on and so forth. And at other times although we're not proud of it we take, we step on others to get ahead of them at their expense and selfishly think of ourselves.

At some point in the future near or far, we all pass on from among the living. Do you know what others will remember about us? --How we made them feel. Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." It's true, the greatest memories we have is when we had strong feelings of emotion towards someone, positive or negative, we remember those people. If it's a positive emotion we want to be around them, they're magnetic. Who knows someone that when they enter the room the room gets brighter? Who knows someone that when they leave the room the room gets, brighter? They are people that we want to be around and are usually our best friends.

As I thought of how people make us feel, it reminds me of when I was a young boy and my family vacationed to the California coastline. I rushed out of the car to the beautiful sandy beaches, ran across the warm soft sand, threw the frisbee around and built the tallest sandcastle before the waves crashed in.

Being 7 years old and having three older brothers, you want to hang with them, you want to be as strong as they are, courageous as they are and as fearless as they are. So when my brothers said they were going into the ocean, do you think I stayed on the beach? OHHHH NO!!! I pulled up my swim trunks, strutted my stuff, leaped into the water with both feet and began hopping over waves that were twice as tall as me.

I pushed and kicked over the first few waves, and as I saw the bigger ones, I simply dove under and popped up on the other side. I swam further out pushing and kicking, pushing and kicking, further out from the shore, pushing and kicking. The sun was beaming, the water feeling so refreshing. We were soon several yards out, enjoying the ocean, pushing and kicking, pushing and kicking and then.... Everything becomes calm, but quickly to our panic we realized we were getting sucked out to sea!

We were past the wave area, so we turned right around and started swimming as hard as we could, as fast as we could. Terrified, we pushed and kicked, pushed and kicked. I had thoughts that we may drown, but another thought terrified me even more of what could be lurking beneath us. See, they don't care much for the wave area but out here we're in the deep, deep ocean, and in deep, deep trouble!

With much vigor we continued to push and kick (getting tired now) pushing and kicking, pushing and kicking (gasping), trying to get back to the shore. But suddenly by what could be a good chance or the grace of God we somehow catch the furthest wave out we'd seen all day, and it sends us tumbling back into the waves. The waves though continue to come, one after another, 20' wave after 20' wave. They continued to pound us (my body overturning). Try as I might to continue swimming pushing and kicking, pushing and kicking (gasping for air), exhausted, tired and overcoming my pride I screamed, "Heeeelp!!! Heeelp!" Fighting for my life, I pushed and kicked, pushed and kicked. Another 20' wave after 20' wave plummets me deep into the water. Searching for breath my head rose for just a short time. "Heeelp! Heeelp!" I screamed again, gasping. The waves briefly broke and my brother having a hard time himself somehow got close to me, gave me his concerned look, handed me his small swimmer board and instructed me get back to shore. I felt of his deep concern for me... and in what seemed like forever with waves continuing to crash, pushing and kicking, staying afloat while pushing and kicking, I came up to the shoreline. I made it back... and then my three brothers made it back, we all made it back... It was only a few minutes of my life, but you remember how people make you feel more than what they say or do. How my brother made me feel, what he gave me impacted my life so much I remember it so distinctly today. I will always love my brother for that.

The people who think beyond themselves, these people that are decent give better customer service, they sell more, much more! They have long-term customers, they embrace the team culture and are our best friends. Decent people are magnetic, people want to be around them. Why are they magnetic? What do they do? They simply love others, they make others feel the way they should... To feel important! Ever heard of Gary Chapman's book The Five Love Languages? He shares how people share and receive love by gift giving, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical touch and I feel this also is what decent people do.

Let me transition to a broader sense of why people are decent because this goes beyond how we make make others feel. It is why they are decent. It is the motivation behind a decent person.

Vision, Purpose, and Mission Statement

People who practice decency in their life regularly are motivated by something deep inside of them. It isn't something they just turn on or off. They are driven by the principle of decency and treating others well because it is something they believe in. It is part of who they are. Because of this, even when under stress or in difficult circumstances, through thick and thin, we can almost always count on these people to come through and treat others with decency. It is a part of their vision.

Our vision. I talk of how the Six Advantages are our greatest factor for success, however, this vision under decency is the motivation behind all of it. Some call it "purpose" or "a direction in life". In business it's a mission statement.

A mission statement can be a few words, a saying, a phrase, a scripture passage... it's something so strong that everything can be taken away from us but it continues to motivate us. JK Rowling had it before she made it big with the Harry Potter series while she was homeless. Did you know she was homeless? Michael Jordan had a vision, Henry Ford had it, Muhammad Ali and many others have a vision of why they're a decent person. It is the reason why we do what you do, why we continue to be a decent person.

If we were to think of the mission statements of the biggest corporations or organizations, what do their mission statements say? Better yet what's America's vision when it was founded (and hopefully still today)? Or what are some of the words we would use to describe America's vision? Some of the responses could they include: The land of opportunity? Freedom? Isn't that why our predecessors made the Constitution, is that not why we respect our soldiers who serve to keep us free? Freedom could be what makes America decent. It is even more than this though, every time we hear the Star Spangled Banner it unifies us and it motivates us and the people around us to be proud. The feeling that accompanies that, that is our vision. It isn't the words, they help, but it's that feeling, the feeling that accompanies it. That emotional why is our vision.

What is our personal vision? Do we have one?... What is our company's mission statement? Do we have one?... What do we believe in?... What are we good at that we can help others with? This can be a set of words: honest, confident, assertive, or it can be a saying such as the golden rule (To do unto others as you would like done unto you). If I were a baseball player I could write, "I bring smiles to those who see me hit home runs." Of course this is specific to each individual or group, but when you know what that ONE thing is, it makes a world of a difference! We develop these and improve them and revise them for years until it's just solid, until it's your solid foundation. It's powerful! Give an individual a vision, a team a vision and wonderful things happen. If we were consulting your group of five individuals or hundreds in your group, this is one of the many things we would help you develop and solidify.

Decency was number two of the Six Advantages. Hopefully you can see how this principle can have great implications in our relationships at work or in our personal life. Consider the power that can come into our life if we simply practiced decency AND what we've already discussed about abundance. People who practice these two Advantages in tandem implement assertive behavior whereby they balance aggressive actions to get what they want and submissive behavior to the feelings of others so they keep relationships. Assertive behavior is a win-win scenario to get us what we want and keep relationships in the process. We can quickly see there is so much more we could dive into but let's transition into the next advantage.

THERE IS MUCH IN THE WAY OF BEING FLEXIBLE.

Analogy:

While my wife and I were living in a basement apartment with two children, life was very difficult. I had created a business filling up water softeners with water softener salt. It was a very labor intensive job, but I was able to provide for my young family through high school and college. I was juggling around the college homework I had received for the day, running a full-time business, cleaning up messes from a baby and toddler, changing diapers, and so on and so forth. Many of us have been through rough times and to those who haven't, here is a heads up! After a long day of testing, working, checking off errands and settling bank accounts I expected a meal for me to eat. Why not? I usually have a meal, it is hot or reheatable and I expect to be done for the day. On this day after working and taking care of responsibilities there was no meal, there was in fact no food to eat in any of our cupboards. I expected something and it wasn't there... You know how meteorologists predict the weather? Do you know why it is a prediction? Because they can't control it! The sooner you realize that you can't control another person or things like promotions, or people liking you or that you will grow to be 7 feet tall so you may compete as a professional athlete, the better off you will be. Predicting what I can't control was much better off for my view on life, it made all the difference. I now strive to make very educated predictions. I am the best meteorologist in my own mind, but even after I predict sunny weather and it snows, I am fascinated and will use that to make even better predictions in the future. Predicting, not expecting keeps you flexible in life's demands.

There are many examples of gaining a better perspective. The need to be flexible is all around us, from someone you know suddenly dying, to the weather changing, to people making different choices. Even to the extent that the automatic doors in front of a shopping center fail to open. Life requires flexibility.

Consider some more examples of things we can't control, things we can't do anything about: the weather, people crashing into our car, or bizarre things. People fascinate me when they randomly start dancing, go off ridiculous jumps on their bikes or they eat burgers the size of Texas.

I'd like us to think of someone that we just can't wait to see what they are going to do next? Do you have that person in mind? You're on the edge of your seat, you don't want to miss it! They're going to do something amazing! They're fascinating huh? My youngest daughter Macey does this, she keeps us on our toes. She was in the backyard, and our house at the time had a basement with stairs that led down to the back door. Riding her bicycle around, she rode her bike down those cement stairs breaking the bridge of her nose; she put honey in the microwave, boiled it up, pulled it out and spilled it down her arm; she broke her arm playing on the monkey bars; and she fell into a fire pit burning her face and her hands! (She is okay by the way.) She'll be the one that jumps out of the shower butt naked and runs down the hallway just to get a reaction out of her mom and me. What is going on in this little girl's head!... Oh, and she ran through a tree. Yeah, on a beautiful fall day I was coaching a youth football team, the leaves were changing colors, a cool breeze was in the air and in the middle of this practice Macey comes running up to me and the whole left side of her face is scratched up like road rash. A little terrified I asked "What happened?" With a sad face, sniffling, she said, "I ran through a tree."

"You mean... you mean you ran into a tree," I corrected her.

Sniffling, shaking her head and letting out a few tears she said, "No, I ran through a tree."

Come to discover, she in fact did just that! She lead me over to where she went "through" both trunks of a split-trunk tree that resembled a toy slingshot without a handle.

People are fascinating. I've also seen a happy, go-lucky couple skip hand in hand right into an automatic door (smashed face) that failed to open! Re-picturing that one always makes me laugh.

Things unexpectedly happen. Scary?... It can be. People are sometimes hard to predict. Though if we think of our favorite movies of suspense, romance, comedies, and tv shows, they're the ones that give us a twist other than what we were expecting. They fascinate the mind, tickle the senses and spark our curiosity. When was the last time you saw America's Funniest Videos? How about a good YouTube video? Some good ones coming to mind? Or how about watching the news lately? wah wah Debbie downer. Not all unexpected things that happen are comical or what we hope for. There are things that suddenly and unexpectedly happen. Let's look at a few brief examples.

As I brought up before in 2008 and 2009 we all went through some tough times in the Great Recession, and I was no different as I was laid off from three companies over those two years. I was not expecting that... The first time I spoke in front of an audience I got heckled, laughed at, and was given speaking tips and that was just from my twelve-year-old. If that doesn't squash your ego I don't know what will. That was very unexpected... And finally my mentor invited me to join him at the gym at a conference and I forgot gym clothes. That to me... was unexpected. After my 3 lay-offs I got hired, was ranked first in my group, got promoted and I'm grateful to speak more clearly today. The time when I forgot my gym clothes, I found a co-worker on my way back from my room and I went up with him eight stories to his room, down one of the longest hallways of any hotel I've ever been in. He gave me some clothes, a shirt, some shorts, and I would've gotten shoes but he didn't plan ahead to pack my shoe size! I went back down the hallway, down the elevator, across the atrium, into the gym and was enlightened for over an hour with my mentor. To this day my mentor David Horsager who speaks on trust has no idea what I went through to get a set of gym clothes.

But you don't want to hear about what happened to me, you want to know about you and how when things unexpectedly happen to you, how you deal with them. So let's get to that in this following example. If I dropped a full cup of water on you and you are wet is there anything you can do that would make you not wet? Sure dry off, change clothes, react and get angry, etc. but those are all actions towards the fact that you are wet. Nothing changes the fact that I dropped water on you. What was done was done.

We know there are things we can't control. We all have things that unexpectedly happen to us even if other people saw it coming. Things surprise us! If we would just let it go! We could take the advice of a certain character in a certain Disney movie and just "Let it go!" If we would just let go of things we can't control we would be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are, but many people don't do it. I am sorry you're wet. Let it go! You're wet. Nothing's going to change that, so proceed forward and go dry yourself off.

If all we get from this Advantage is to understand there are things we have no control over and to let it go, we're doing good, but for the few that have already made this leap (and it is a BIG leap!), there's more. When we experience things outside of our control enough times we can learn to plan ahead and make a prediction of what will happen so we can make adjustments now to be better prepared for them. For example because I have gotten caught in the rain while traveling in my car I made an adjustment to keep an umbrella in my car. I am predicting that the weather outside of my control will rain and I don't want to get wet. Now the umbrella doesn't guarantee I won't get wet but doesn't it increase my odds? Experience has also shown me if I don't want to have an angry and wet person in my crowd I need to stop dropping full cups of water on people.

We find 42% is the total percentage of college graduates that will never read another book after they graduate. 42% of college graduates won't read another book! What can we predict for those who do read books? Or even those who don't go to college? Can't we also predict other things?... If we know of someone that watches TV every day can we predict where they'll be in three months? When I was laid off from work, if I would have watched TV every day, can you predict where I would be? Now not watching TV doesn't guarantee I would get a job, but doesn't it increase my odds? This is why people take vitamins, why they get cancer screenings, this is why they see the dentist for teeth cleanings. Those that take flexibility to the higher level to predicting will inevitably increase their odds of controlling things outside of their control. Eliminate NO, but it increases their odds.

As a best practice my office at the end of each and every day creates a priority to-do list for what they predict their schedule will be tomorrow. This predicting exercise increases our odds for a better day tomorrow before all the craziness begins and before we have fires to put out. It also gives us a mental break from our achievements and what we dealt with throughout today. This exercise ensures that our highest priorities are done each day through a system that uses a combination of a calendar and our system of a priority to-do-list.

When we make predictions for tomorrow we know some things even important things won't get done and that's okay. We are okay with that because our highest priorities will have gotten done. I want to note here that people have different priorities. In most cases it is neither better or worse, we just have different likes or dislikes and preferences. Then as we experience these preferences, life teaches us that some priorities we thought were priorities really were and others not so much. That's called "life experience", but I'll give you a hint, a hint about what a high priority might be throughout your day... to be present with the people you are around, people can tell if you're there. Take that preference above other preferences and see if it works for you in your favor to have it as a high priority.

Now I too get distracted and flexibility is hard for me. See I get distracted easily, I see a TV show and I zone out, I am completely fixated and focused until my wife gets my attention by saying my name, then screaming my name and eventually pushing me to get my attention... It gets difficult especially for leaders and planners to not get caught up in the future. Some of us are wondering what's for the next meal or the fun plans we have set up for this weekend with our friends. And all of the people around us can tell. We can tell if you're not present.

Life continues to expect things from us. We don't know what life has in store for us, but we can make predictions, and the better and better predictions we make, the better and more able we are to adjust our sails to change. Predicting, not expecting, keeps us flexible in life's demands.

THERE IS MUCH TO BE GRATEFUL FOR.

Analogy:

Let me introduce you to Albert and Bill who are two homeless men. They are very hungry and if they could each have one apple they would be okay for another day. A gentleman walks by carrying ten apples and a slice of cake. He generously gives away to a different homeless man six of the apples and the slice of cake. He then proceeds to give Albert and Bill not one, but two apples each! Bill feels entitled, why shouldn't he get some cake? Why can't they have the same amount of apples? Bill becomes bitter that another has more; he hates the unfairness of the man who gave them away. He may even go to the extreme and throw his apples at him or try to steal the other man's food. The state of mind Bill is in is agony. He feels all alone and is resentful. Albert views things differently.

Albert appreciates the man's generosity and feels loved.

There are many examples of gaining a better perspective as there is much to be grateful for. As you count the good things that have been given to you, you appreciate your job, your skills, your friends, your country, your family, even down to the society and what your parents and their parents did to give you what you have in this wonderful day and age. You didn't learn the physics, do the math, create the art, inspire a country or all the companies and their products that you enjoy today. You didn't create the first combustible engine, you didn't grow the food that soldiers ate while fighting past wars. When we realize we had nothing, we weren't even born yet, we become more aware of the nothing we truly had and we find life is not fair because fair is having nothing, so be grateful it isn't! Life has much to be grateful for.

A common thing kids like to say (we adults sometimes say it too) is "Life's not fair!" Life is not fair! and I am grateful it isn't... What do I mean by that?... The story of the homeless people I just shared happened when I worked a job in Hawaii. Why Hawaii? Because someone had to put up with and endure all those sunny days and smell that awful tropical air, so I volunteered...

Hawaii has along with its beautiful culture and incredible weather some of the most amazing restaurants, fresh fish, steak, and sushi. Well, after eating at one of those fine restaurants I had some incredible food and snacks that I had ordered, but hadn't eaten. Now maybe it was because I lived in Portland, Oregon next to the environmentalists of the world to not let anything go to waste or that I grew up finishing everything on my dinner plate, but I had this extra food and I didn't want it to go to waste.

If you've ever visited Hawaii, it's paradise, 80 degree weather year round, beaches, and sea turtles. This makes it also very attractive for the homeless. As tourists we may not have seen them because tourism would tank if they were allowed on most beaches or near the hotels we all stay at, but at the public parks and beaches is where we would find the multitudes of homeless people, and that is where I took these delightful leftovers. Now, with a little more detail but with keeping the food simple my restaurant leftovers consisted of one delicious moist chocolatey slice of delectable cake and 10 crisp apples. Now if a homeless person receives just one apple they would be good for another day. Having 10 apples, I could help 10 people. As I arrived at Ala Moana Beach Park I saw only three homeless people. To the first homeless person I gave the delicious moist chocolate slice of cake and six of the apples. Proceeding to the 2nd and 3rd homeless people I gave not one, but two apples each! Just then from the second homeless person I heard (with the most wicked scowl on his face screaming out), "Why didn't I get any cake?!"

I was bewildered and shocked. Perhaps I heard him wrong...

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked.

"Why didn't I get any cake? He got cake and more apples!" he said. He's flung his arms and clinched the apples as if to throw them, and he then got in my face. "We should have the same amount of apples!"

Being confronted and his disrespect all up in my face got me riled up that I wanted to wind up and lay him right out on his sorry butt. No... instead I calmed him down enough, no reason to get into a fight with some homeless guy who may or may not be coherent, and I left. For all I know after I left he probably ransacked the guy that had the extra apples and cake.

The point is each of these three homeless people responded to the generosity given in two ways. Either mentally they were in agony... they felt alone... they felt resentment for the unfairness as if they are entitled or... they felt appreciation and felt loved by others for the decency that was just given to them.

Gratitude, in the United States we celebrate a holiday specifically around this word. We call it "Thanksgiving". How many celebrate Thanksgiving? It's a delightful holiday with family, friends, turkey dinner, and games. Around this time it's customary that people will recall many things they are thankful for. It's a wonderful experience. If you have not done it, I suggest you do it. As you do this the list grows and other areas of your life will seem to be more easily aligned.

Marcus Cicero said, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues, but the parent of all others." As I wrote out my list I realized I have a lot to be grateful for. Sure I have given, I have achieved and no matter how many great things I do, I am grateful because I realized I started with nothing. Life has much to be grateful for.

Those whom we find to be grateful, we want to be around. We're drawn to them and if we can get an employee or a teenager to be grateful, most of the bad things go away. Some people view gratitude as a weakness. Like, "Oh, he's okay with the little amount we give him, so we don't have to give him more." Or, "She's a pushover." It doesn't mean that! It means we're just grateful for what we have.

If we were to think of the first Advantage of abundance thinking of all the great things we can go and dream up to go after, we find a balance between abundance and gratitude and that brings us to our next advantage: Quality. Quality brings us that balance we need between these Six Advantages, not more, not less, just the right balance between the six.

THERE IS MUCH QUALITY.

Analogy:

Imagine we know of two house painters by trade who are named Alisha and Brittany. They both paint houses for a living and have competed for a number of jobs. Brittany views life in quantity. If there is something out there she wants it, she wants everything. The latest gadget, a new car, more houses to paint, more money. As a result, when she purchases paint she looks at how much paint she can get for her money. When she gets a car it is top notch. The advertising she sends out is to tens of thousands of households. The result is that she finds the money she saved by buying discounted paint causes her equipment to perform horribly. Her sprayer gets stuck frequently, she loses time and the quality of her work suffers. She has an expensive car payment and her advertising to tens of thousands of households only results in 10% positive return on her investment. She has a lot of quantity and always wants more. Alisha sees things differently.

Alisha views life in quality. She understands what she needs and gets only what is needed. As a result, when she purchases paint she asks for the least expensive paint that will get what she wants to be done. When the salesperson points to the discounted paint that is old and may clog up her paint gun or leave streaks of paint on her customer's house the quality is not good enough. So then the salesperson points to the top notch paint and she kindly declines as she only needs paint to last 10 years, not 20. So she gets paint that lasts 10 years which prices out more than the discounted paint, but less than the top notch 20-year paint. When she gets a car she also gets a top notch car, but it is because her clientele respects and does business only with a professional, so her image requires it. Her advertising is sent to only a few hundred households because they are the houses that use paint and are those that are older than 7 years old. This results in 50% positive return on investment. She has needs filled, her own and the needs of others through quality.

There are many examples of gaining a better perspective. Quality is all around us, from the packaging of products shipped to our home effectively so they don't break, to using plastic parts where steel isn't necessary. Can we imagine if they made cars or shoes out of the materials they used back in the day? It would most likely cost twice as much and it wouldn't fit our needs. Life is full of quality.

When I talk about this I usually bring up the example of having felt buyer's remorse. Did we get an inferior product or a supreme gadget that does way more than what we needed it to do? What was it? I once bought a jar of mayonnaise at Costco, way more than I could ever use. I ended up throwing the majority of it away. When I was younger, much younger in grade school and after watching the latest commercials and advertisements I told my dad I wanted what I just saw on tv and my dad would ask me the following question regularly: "Do you know the difference between a need and a want?" Did you ever get asked that? Do you know the difference between a need and a want? I would respond to my dad in a very pleading way, "Well sure, Dad, everything I want I need!" My dad would reply while lowering and shaking his head, "No..."

What my dad was getting at is that the difference between a need and a want is in how much do I need or how little do I need. Quality is in finding what will bridge that gap.

We see quality when we market to people that can use our products or service. We see quality when we buy a plastic part that we only need to last a few months and a metal one when it needs to last a lifetime. Tires for our cars are black and round but depending on where we will drive we may want traction for snow, we might want a quiet and comfortable ride, or a long mileage warranty will determine what tire we should purchase. When a company fills a need we have with their product or service then we purchase and use their product or service. If it fits the need for what we're needing, we have quality. We look for needs to be filled so it's not all about price. Aldo Gucci said that "The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory."

When I was a young father, my job of flipping burgers and dipping fries in the fryer I realized I had a need, I had to provide, I had to increase my pay. And that is when I used Quality to fill my needs by starting the service of filling up customers' water softeners. In order to fill that need, I filled the needs of my customers to have a hassle-free service without them needing to call me; I came on a regular basis and I filled the need of saving them time and money as well. Needs were met and we had quality. It was profitable. I started getting one ton of salt every week, week after week, 2,000 pounds of salt. I continued to use just my truck and over five years my business grew. It got us through college, it was profitable, it was better than flipping burgers. I found a need and I filled it.

Quality is about finding needs and getting them filled. What are our needs? Based on our research, how do we go about filling those needs is found in two ways::

  1. In our ability to make decisions

  2. In doing something in four general areas every day (we will go over a few examples in each of the four areas).

Making decisions can be simple to complex, from choosing between two options or analyzing tons of data through a computer system and figuring out the best choices. There is a simple five-step process on how every decision is made and it works on emails, phone calls, text messaging, emergencies, the sales process, the buying process, goals, to-do list. It works on everything, and I will list what those five steps are so you have it. Today you'll learn the secret to decision-making:

We find the need by making decisions.

1. Finding the Need by Making Decisions

Is it any wonder why we want time management, assistants and multitasking? It is because we have ideas that flood our minds on a daily basis, let alone how much is available to us at our fingertips. Just to give you an idea of how much is available to us compared to years past, the Encyclopedia Britannica which was advertised on the TV in the 90's had 32 volumes or 44 million words. At the end of our research which I am sure has increased from that even at the time of this book's publishing, Wikipedia had an equivalent 1991.5 volumes! That is 62 times the amount of information! Do you think it would be good to know how we make decisions given that we have so much information to decide on? We are constantly thrown ideas and we can learn to deal with them much more effectively through these five steps. The, five steps to every decision, let's break it down:

1. What's the difference? What is the difference in where "we are" and what we want from this idea?

2. What makes me want to do this? What makes me want to do this? not just why?

3. Should I delete, file, act or flag it? What option

does it makes sense to do? DFAF: Delete it, file it, act on it, or flag it for later?

4. How am I specifically going to do it? How are we going to get there specifically today or tomorrow?

5. Would I want someone else to do this? What do I predict would be the outcome if someone else did the idea I'm considering? Would I want my competition to do this?

This could take a lot of time and we could run many scenarios, and when I've worked with clients doing our employee development training course we get more specific to the decisions they make at work and in life, but let's just go through just a few examples here. We will do an email, sales (as in the sales process), and we'll also do an emergency. This is going to go quick so stay up. We just want to go over the general idea, we are not getting too specific. Here we go. ---

Email Scenario: Imagine you are presented with the following email: "Dear (your name), you are selected to receive millions of cash but you first must send money or personal information to me to receive it..." Going through the five steps, obviously when we reach Step 3 "deleting it" would be the answer.

Sales Process Scenario: When we sell to others or are the purchaser it may go something like this: I have a product about which someone needs to make a decision, let's say "tires". Going through the five steps we start with step 1, where the difference is a new tire having improved traction and it won't go flat on me whereas the tires I currently have are used and balding.

This takes us to step 2, now that I know the difference and I have considered I want this idea or at least I want to know more about this idea of new tires it comes down to what makes me want to do this or not to do it. Things we may consider by ourselves or by the use of a salesman is to think of these things: "Where do you drive? Do you go through mud or snow and is safety important?" "If you show up to your work, how does the tires on your car represent you? Do you think that would be a factor in promotions or relationships?" I hope you can see that through answering these questions and more questions like these; they answer the question of what makes me want to do this because it is much more important than "why." If we ask why, it's because I need a tire, but what makes me want to do it is the value, the benefits or credibility; it really does what we are talking about.

"Oh and did I mention this is a consumer best-buy, an award winner?" This makes me want to buy as it fills needs I didn't realize I had until I was asked these questions and the implementations or implications if I buy or don't buy this product.

This takes us to step 3, which is to either buy or not buy and we will decide what our best timeline is for buying or not buying by either deleting it (saying no), filing it (I don't want to do anything today but it was good to know), acting on it (buy it now) or flagging it for later (come back when you have enough money, or you want to put "research tires" on your to-do list). So sales people may see this step as objections but they aren't objections, they are logistics and paperwork, the customer has already decided to buy in step 2! Note: As you can see in the sales process Step 2 of differentiating your product from the competition and implementation and impact of why they want your product is the most important part of the decision process.

This then takes us to step 4. Now that we have decided what action we are going to take (delete it, file it, act on it, flag it for later) we take the step-by-step process of HOW to act on our decision. This could entail numerous answers from getting cash to pay for them or buying them in a week after pay day, or simply saying "No" and not purchasing. This step is taking the actions on what you decided in step 3 but specifically.

Finally we'll look at step 5 which is your safety net to making good decisions or stopping yourself from making a bad decision. We can ask ourselves, "Is this really a decision I want a friend to do or would I be upset if my competition did this?" Based on how you answer this question will give you the confidence to make better and better decisions.

Emergency Scenario: We see a burning fire in a home and our family is in it! We quickly know Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3: Act on it. This also goes for making a decision before it ever comes up. Before I was presented with an idea to smoke cigarettes I had already answered Step 1 and Step 2, then Step 3 to "delete it" or "just say no" was an easier response when someone asked me to smoke. This process to make decisions in five steps is something we're already doing and our magnificent brain answers all these messages it receives constantly. There are numerous ideas out there, but simply they in a broad sense go through these five steps. Now you can be a better decision maker!

Any idea that comes across our path we go through this process thoughtfully and meticulously, or super quick and unconsciously. When we get advanced we can then be more tactful like instead of deleting it by saying "No I can't meet for lunch" - one may learn to say "I wish I could meet for lunch, but I have another obligation to someone at that same time. How about another day?" That's an advanced application of this outline and expertise would take a lifetime on getting through the nitty gritty of each scenario of sales experts, planning experts, dating experts etc. We get the foundation though, right? We get the concept? One thing to have quality is finding the need which is done by making decisions.

2. Four Daily Needs to Have a Quality Life: TTBF

The last thing about quality I mentioned is there are four needs that we need to do every day to have a quality life or a quality business. The four needs are to strengthen our thoughts, talents, body and friends, TTBF. 1,2,3,4. Everything that is vital to us fits into one of these four categories and they are very broad categories. For example: strengthening our "Thoughts" (the first "T" in TTBF) could be listening to uplifting music, reading from a book, saying a prayer, reading scriptures. The category of "Friends" could be time with our spouse, a relative, lunch with a coworker. In some way we strengthen our TTBF, Thoughts, Talents, Body and Friends. When we do something in each of these four categories a day we gain balance, we have our needs met. It's not perfect but needs are met. Can you picture someone that neglects daily strengthening their thoughts, or strengthening their body?

This translates into business as well. In business it is TTBF

T-thoughts on our market and mission, this could be reading industry magazines or market research.

T-talents of a company are its products and services, improving them.

B-business sustainability, making sales, paying our bills or lowering costs.

F-friends of the company are customers, employees, vendors, partners, everyone that we need and rely on to run smoothly and we want those relationships strong so they go from win-lose to win-win collaborative relationships looking out for each other.

In these four areas we can gain the balance we need and not worry about if something is going to fall apart without us knowing. Think of it as a check balance sheet. If it's done we're okay and when we excel at it we excel, but at the very least it won't ever be overlooked ever again.

Books will continue to come out on the latest habits of the rich or daily habits that will make you skinny and healthy. They may be good and innovative or they may be a fad or hype with no merit to it, so confidently keep up with good habits and ideas about good habits but make sure it fits into the four areas of your life to keep you balanced in all four areas or it isn't worth doing. Those four areas again are to strengthen our thoughts, our talents, our body and our friends, in some way even if it's in a small way every day. I also want to mention they can be different things every day or the same things every day. Here are a few more examples on all four:

  1. Strengthen thoughts: Listen to uplifting music or read for five minutes.

  2. Strengthen talents: Go to a full day of work or a full day of school or practice a musical instrument for 10 minutes.

  3. Strengthen Body: Drink only water today or go for a 20 minute walk.

  4. Strengthen Friends: Take spouse to dinner or call someone on the phone.

This is pure gold as we know it is only four things, not one or multiples, it is only four things and the research proves it is not some person's idea of what you should make habits of or how many habits in each category you should make. It is only four. We know, each person is an individual, so strengthening a talent could be eight hours for a basketball star practicing, or for a college student 15 minutes building model airplanes could be their talent. The four categories applies to each person and it is up to each person to decide how much time they need in those four areas on a daily basis.

Quality is the Fifth of the Six Advantages in having a better perspective. We've talked about the four daily needs and the importance of Quality in this section, but the final viewpoint, the Sixth Advantage that the most successful individuals and organizations of all time possess and continue to possess is...Self-Assurance.

THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE SECURE WITH WHO THEY ARE.

Analogy:

You may have met Arthur and Brandon around town before or in this case in traffic. As they sit in their cars in the heavy traffic they see other people that have really nice cars... we are talking Ferraris, Rolls Royce, Porsches. They also see clunkers... clunkers that would make rusty cars in the junkyard look nice, in fact, you may be helping them on the side of the road here in a minute. The cars Arthur and Brandon drive are okay, a Ford or a Honda, but they have a streak of paint missing from a shopping cart incident a few weeks back in a parking lot and a bumper that has a dent in it about the size of a softball from when a friend of theirs backed it into a pole. Quickly taken by surprise, they see a driver pulls out in front of them then the driver bolts over to the emergency lane clearly not interested in staying in the lanes of traffic any longer. Brandon is not secure with himself so when he sees the really nice cars he compares himself to others by thinking that he is not as good as them, he may say "I wish that was me," and when he sees the clunkers he is thinking that he must be better than them; he says to himself "glad that isn't me." In essence, he is either prideful or jealous. When looking at himself he is scared of what others think of him. He says to himself, "They know I drive a car with scratched paint and a dented bumper, and I wonder who they think I am?" He gets suspicious that others are out to get him. He thinks the world is against him. "I want to know what others think of me, Dang It!" When the quick car pulls out in front of him and bolts off to the emergency lane to get out of traffic he judges that the driver of that car must think he owns the world and is a jerk! He then thinks of his dented bumper on the car and holds grudges that his friend would be so careless. He thinks to himself that his friend probably meant to do it. He judges who he is by comparing himself to others or things. Arthur sees things differently.

Arthur is secure with himself, so when he sees the really nice cars he thinks they are really nice. When he sees the clunkers he thinks they are clunkers. No comparing is done to other people. He compares who he is to himself. He lives with the motto that you Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. So when the quick car pulls out in front of him and bolts off to the emergency lane he thinks, "That guy is in a hurry." He doesn't judge him to be rude, all he knows is that he is in a hurry to be somewhere. Now we could speculate that he just wants to be out of traffic, or maybe he is on his way to the hospital; we have no idea. We have no idea what their journey is all about. As far as the car he drives with scratched paint and dented bumper he knows that Where he is today is the result of the effort and thoughts he has been putting into it for the past three months. If others judge him, that is their doing, not his, for he focuses on being the best with what money, wisdom, time, energy, talents and resources he has at this time of his life. He understands this principle and so he is forgiving and trusting to himself and others he is in contact with.

We're typically not drawn to people that blame others for how things turn out. We most likely know someone that blames circumstances or others for everything. Something doesn't go their way, or they make a mistake, but it's never their fault because there is always other circumstances that makes it not their fault. You may hear them say "If I would have had better tools..." or "If I had better information given to me..." or "The parents or leaders, if they would have only done what I told them I needed help with, then things would have turned out better." Know anyone like that? They wish they had a different circumstance or they wish they were like this person or they're glad they're not like that person.

There was a young boy at the age of six years old. He walked four miles to get to school and for the most part he was self-educated. He was told that he wasn't smart, he failed at many things, he failed while he was yet young and he also failed many times as an adult. He knew though, he was smart. He believed he was smart and he knew what he could do, not what others told him he could or couldn't do. He believed in himself. He is our 16th president of the United States, a person who believed in himself... Mr. Abraham Lincoln.

I think Abraham Lincoln stated it best, "I do the best I can, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing it till the end." This story could have been several people, but too many times people believe what others tell them, they compare who they are to others and live far below their capacity.

Each one of us is of worth. We are incredible people. I believe we are inherently good people, with skills, abilities, character and the freedom to make our own choices. We are people that have some amazing stories of achievement, others who have untold adventures and even others that have or who are presently overcoming great odds to be where they are today. I have met many people that have realized this in themselves and they do amazing things by knowing deep down they and everyone around them is a confident, able and important person. They know we are important and deep down if we need to search deep enough we know it too. I know you know it. I see it in people. I see it in you! You have great intentions, you have talents and abilities. I can't wait to see what bursts forth from you as you embrace your strengths, your skills and all the magnificence you have...

The founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken was 65 years old when he started the highly successful food chain of KFC. Bobby Fischer won the US Chess championship at the age of 14. It shows that no matter our age or where we think our life is currently, this story of who we are is still coming out of us or waiting to come out of us! They come out of us because we believe in ourselves. We are people with big, giant, enormous potential! It bears repeating what Anne Frank said. "Everyone has inside of them a piece of good news. The good news, is that you don't know how great you can be!" And remember Thomas Edison said, "If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves."

As one believes in themselves and slowly applies their confidence on a regular basis eventually they don't care what other people think because they believe in who they are and their abilities. Each and every day they choose to believe in the truth of who they are as a person, what skills they have or the skills they will learn.

There is something really great about being where we are right now. You see where each of us are today is the result of the effort and thoughts we have been putting into it for the past three months. If we have put in more smiles, more work, more friendly greetings, we're reaping those results today. If we have been putting in negativity for whatever reason, we're reaping those results as well. "Crap! That means it's my fault.... I did that, I said that, I watched that. When I look back on what I've been thinking about and doing for the past three months it's no surprise... at least after I think about it, it makes sense." Now some will tell us the idea that to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday is good, and that is a good idea until we're in an accident at the hospital out of commission for a week; that short timeframe starts to get dismal when we're looking at one day. It's too short of a time frame, and life is too flexible to base it off of one day. Other people will give us the idea that you're the results of habits and mistakes over years and years, and maybe that's true, but when we think about all of the wonderful habits or mistakes, that can get very overwhelming. AND on a side note, we have gotten really good and really creative of explaining why for years it's been this way, and we're so creative with great excuses of why we aren't going to change. But when you look back for three months, it's manageable. We know where we were, what we've been doing day in and day out, through the ups and downs and can see over those three months where we started and why we are where we are today. Three months, because it is long enough to make a difference and short enough to manage in this hectic and busy life we live in. If I am over weight it is because of the choices I made over the last few months, not the big meal I had the other night. When we plant the seed, we harvest the food. We start a fire, we receive it's heat. It's true in physics, chemistry, agriculture, and so on. When we do the things necessary to receive the benefit, we then receive it. We reap what we sow. The good news is though, what we are doing today is what results we will gain and how we will be feeling in three months.

I want to illustrate and to demonstrate this advantage grabbing and stacking some chairs. These chairs are representing when we do things with self-assurance. I know and believe in myself in where I am today (stack chair). When I know my physical stature I know there is no way I am going to run the Kentucky derby with a horse, because I am way too big and heavy; I know my limitations, (stack chair). I also know no one's recruiting me as a 7'10 NBA star either (grab next chair). I know I can speak the English language (stack chair). I know what my talents are. I am good at sports, (stack chair). If musically talented, I'd stack one for that too. I'm not musically talented, so this one is for crossing five things off my to-do list, (stack chair). I went for a run and ate a healthy snack (stack chair). When I see others successful or hurting I don't judge them for I don't know what their journey is all about (stack chair). The more I know my strengths and my limitations (stack chair). When I make a small commitment to myself and I keep it (stack chair). Now look what I've done as I climb upon these chairs...

When we continue to meet more people, make connections with friends and with strangers (start climbing chairs). When we will set new goals, new dreams and when new challenges present themselves (continue climbing). Up here, going up on top of these chairs I have risen up to this height because I improved upon myself from where I was back there (pointing to the bottom). I build upon myself doing the best I can with whatever time, talents, money, wisdom that's been given to me at that time. It's a great feeling being your best. I'm now better able to see. I'm put in a position to see further to help more people than if I didn't do what I could at that point of time (pointing to the bottom chair) in my life. Down there, it's hard to get going, it's hard to get out of our comfort zone, and what makes this even harder is what happens next which is all too common... other people are building their stacks of chairs working on themselves and we see others below and they want to tear us down so we are not up here. Have you ever felt like others want you at their level? If we can withstand that (because WE WON'T LET THEM!) the next common problem could potentially be our own because we believed so much in ourself we think we are taller and better than others and that is another way we can fall. When we take our focus off from being our best self, to comparing to others we then are either jealous that others are up higher, or we're prideful because others are down lower. This may be why so many struggle with self-assurance or confidence because so many of us look to others as a baseline for ourselves.

If you focus on being your best, if you believe in yourself, if you have the motivation inside of you that you are of great worth no matter how many chairs are stacked up, you're going to do good, you're going to do amazing, wonderful things! Build upon yourself, believe in who you are. You are of great worth! Others may hate, others may love, but you can be confident in yourself regardless of what others think. You have worth, you have strengths, you have the power to choose and that's a great thing!

You may have heard that attitude and effort are everything and when you gain a better perspective you have attitude and effort. I promise you as you look through the eyes of world-class Olympians, through the rich, through the poor and through the eyes of disabled bodies some of each of these have gained a better perspective. Their lives are happier, they attract positive people, they're more likely to be hired at an interview, they're more likely to find a spouse to marry, more likely to lose weight, more likely to succeed, more likely to get what others are competing for, more likely to influence others, etc. When you gain a better perspective you can make better choices of how you use life's opportunity!

These are the Six Advantages. We created a mnemonic as a way to remember these Six Advantages. It's a phrase and it goes like this: Another Day Fred Gave Quality Service. ADFGQS: Abundance, Decency, Flexibility, Gratitude, Quality, Self-Assurance. Another Day Fred Gave Quality Service.

Others have used other words for F like Father. Another Day Father Gave Quality Service, and others what they think their competition is saying Another Day that... Freak Gave Quality Service. I don't use that one but it seems to help a few to remember.

Now imagine, you don't have to actually do this, but imagine. Imagine you were teaching someone these six words by placing your hands on your head, you're telling them to feel their hair or where it used to be, how it feels the million threads, the brain power emanating through their skull. This can be abundance. You instruct them to touch their mouth for the decency which proceeds forth from it, decency. From there your arms, how dangly and mobile is flexibility. Next down is the stomach and surrounding area for gratitude, gratitude for all that is given to you. Your legs, quality to take you where you need to go and finally your feet, your precious feet of self-assurance standing on your feet proud and strong with confidence billowing up through your whole body. Touch each area: Abundance, Decency, Flexibility, Gratitude, Quality, Self-Assurance.

We have given some examples of each of the advantages and I wanted to share just one more example to bring it a little closer to real world application:

We have a family that owns only one hammer and a parent is working in the garage using it and their daughter needs it to hang up pictures so she asks if she can use it. A person thinking in scarcity says, "No." This response really doesn't help by saying No. Instead a person thinking in abundance knows they can say, "Yes, as soon as I am done using it here in five minutes," or, "Yes, but I need it right back in five minutes," or, "Yes, I can use a different tool to accomplish what I am doing," or another option. At work we could see the benefits of this more abundant thinking when one department works with another or a leader is leading his team and so on and so forth. Could we see it used in relationships, and when used do you feel we would enjoy more? Get more? How would work, life or relationships change if those around you thought this way? How would it change if you thought this way? Ultimately those individuals who we know would benefit by thinking this way get to choose how they think, but they won't be any better unless they are at least made aware that there is a different way to see things in a better perspective.

To come back to my journey looking for work after being laid off for the third time in two years, I started to use these new insights to make wiser decisions. I became wiser in my approach to leave the construction industry and I applied my resume to more companies. It wasn't long until I was hired on by another fortune 500 company, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Definitely not in the construction industry and one that would suit me well with the power and lure of rubber hitting the pavement. By taking this position it required us to move, but we were up for the excitement and adventure an out of state move can offer. I think it's a great idea for people to live a year or more out of the state they grew up in as it opens you up to more experiences and people. We moved our family from Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon.

In my new position for Goodyear I was a business consultant for the Goodyear franchisees and other small business owners to grow their overall business on regular visits while also as a training professional for the salespeople behind the counter so they could take better care of customers when they were needing tires (and suggest Goodyear Brand). Three years later I was going to be promoted but when I moved from Salt Lake City to Portland I covered five states: Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Idaho and Hawaii (because someone had to endure the tropical weather!). At the end of three years in that position I had become first of 62 of my peers and I was promoted up into a management position which relocated my family down to Las Vegas, Nevada and I would cover the southwest region for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

To have success after so many years and be recognized for it was very different from what the previous 14 years had been for me. Every quarter since I had taken over the management position in Nevada I successfully had around 124% growth quarter after quarter, and I realized I could be here the rest of my life. The person I actually replaced for this management position had retired and I was able to just stay there and make a career out of managing the area and the several employees under my direction. I was comfortable. I was comfortable and it was kinda nice! For one of the first times in my life I'd gotten to a place where not only was I succeeding financially and professionally, but you know back to where after all the trials I have been through, I felt comfortable.

I was enjoying what I had done and where I now was, but I knew I had been given a gift. I'd been given a gift that I needed to be responsible for. I needed to leave my comfort zone and face fears. I needed to be responsible in sharing the value of my research in that gaining a better perspective is our greatest factor for success and the Six Advantages in helping us to gain that better perspective. So I took on that responsibility because I was becoming more aware that it was blocking my potential if I wasn't going to share the value I had been given.
Chapter 5: Where Shall I Rest My Head

I started through the course of letting people know about my journey, what mistakes I had made and things I felt vulnerable telling people about whom I didn't know all that well or even at all. I told them through conversation what I have gone through and what I had learned along the way.

I like to use the metaphor of when we take on responsibility or step out of our comfort zone it is like going to the gym or starting a workout routine. It is not easy and results don't happen instantly but when we take responsibility of caring for our bodies it is worth it. So at this point this struggle is more of a controlled struggle kinda like when we go to the gym we don't really want to go there but when you're actually going it's going to be hard and it's going to be tough but you know that you are pushing to get better, and it will be good for you. These are instances we push onto ourselves rather than unexpected events that force us to get better, and you know it's coming, right? It wasn't like when I was getting laid off I had no idea this was going to happen or the surprise of "guess what she's pregnant", you know? Those happen, life happens, but this was a struggle I was putting myself into.

After some time passed I put our house in Las Vegas on the market in January and we were going to move back closer to our roots and family in Utah so I could do this full time. The ball got moving real quick as we sold our house the same month and had secured our home in Utah in February the very next month. Trying to keep my commitments and steady income from my six years working, three years in Oregon and three years in Nevada, I stayed in Nevada until May traveling back and forth on weekends and staying in an office space a friend provided me so I could keep costs down during those several weeks. So while we bought a house in February (a beautiful two-story, three-car garage home, fully fenced-in yard that fit our shed, trampoline and full patio) I was staying at my friend's empty carpeted office space on a two inch fold-out cushion and traveling back on weekends until I finished out in May. It did get better though. With a little humor, the office furniture came in while I was sleeping at the office space and there was a conference table in the office now.

Eventually in May I made it back to where we are right now in Centerville, Utah. We're closer to family and I travel a lot for work. It's beneficial to have family support. As a professional speaker and corporate trainer, I travel 70% of the time a year so it's nicer to be closer to family.

When we break out of our comfort zone we grow in our career, we start to listen and communicate with our loved ones more, we face feelings and insecurities. When we take on responsibility of the value we can offer (not compared to others), we give more value that has been inside of us waiting to come out. This value (that is in many ways, several values) branches us out as we take on more responsibilities. We then are providing more value in our position at our company, in our homes and in our community as we see our talents and abilities more fully realized and utilized.

We have heard we can't be all things to all people. I agree, but we can be all we can be of ourselves to those around us. The hard part to that is figuring out what those around us need that we can offer and these can be material or nonmaterial. If I may, I would like to shift to companies and organizations as they too provide value. The value businesses provide are in three areas: low price, good service, quality work. Those are the three things that businesses and organizations have to balance out in what they can offer to customers or members. You can offer really low price but the service may not be all that great, or you may have really good quality and the price is a little higher. Products can vary but as an example, if we take a product like a cellphone, something that's really cheap like $50 may not even be a smartphone, or an $800 cellphone and it does way more than you will ever need but it's got really good quality. When you do these better than your competitors you have your "competitive advantage".

As individuals, when you're working your own position or your employees are working their own position they want to be the best at what they are good at. Everybody has a talent, everyone has a skill. You know we get told this idea that we should be anything and everything that we dream up, and that's really good until you find out you're not going to be seven feet tall and you're not going to be an NBA basketball star. You more than likely are not being recruited as horse jockey because we are too big physically. It's easy to tell when we have a talent in height or similarly but there are different talents and abilities in intellect and arts and so on and so forth.

We want to have the best employees in positions where they're at, and we want to put them in a better position at where they can excel. Isn't that the goal? To have the employees happy at what they are doing because it fits what they're good at or they have a desire to get better at. So everybody has talents, skills and abilities and when they discover these or want to nurture them, they are setup to succeed in their job. Employees add real value by being in a position they have skills and talents in, and are then responsible enough to take initiative with their skills and talents.

In your own career, in your employee's career, in what we can offer in our relationships or to those around us we need to take responsibility for what we are good at, what our talents are. That is actually where we get to excel at that we are good at so we reach the potential that is inside of us as individuals and collectively as a group.

Block #3: Don't Want Responsibility

One of the top three reasons we see some people not having a better perspective is because they don't want responsibility. "Well, they are afraid". They have fear, fear of the unknown and they don't want to face that fear. They don't want to leave their comfort zone or take on more responsibility. Do you think responsibility is fun? It's a lot more fun having others do it for you. Sometimes we just don't want to come out of our comfort zone. We might think of the 30 or 40 year-old that still lives in their parents' basement playing video games. (Mario sounds, or I guess into today's games it would be the sounds of Halo or gunshots...) "Ya, Mom, be up for pizza in a minute!" And they can blame their parents on how they turn out, at least in their own mind. If others are taking care of it, it is a lot easier.

We don't want responsibility, or it's hard sometimes to step out of our comfort zone. A person who is afraid to try new things doesn't learn anything new. A person who dreams but doesn't act on those dreams doesn't expand their comfort zone. A person who has talents but doesn't use them diminishes their ability to use those talents. This desire to not take on more responsibility is blocking them from seeing what we can all see, but they don't see it. It is blocking them from the potential that they have in them.

If seeing these blocks and limitations and gaining a better perspective so we can reach our goals, dreams, and desires is so beneficial, why do we see others with so much potential continue to carry these around? Why do others not gain a better perspective? Why don't they see what everyone else is seeing?

Why is it they date the wrong person? Why is it one person enjoyed their vacation but another didn't enjoy the exact same vacation at the exact same time? The top three most common reasons are: one, Lack of Knowledge; two, Thinking in Absolutes or Extremes; Three, Not Wanting Responsibility. But there's all kinds of reasons and they're good reasons. Our imagined dreams that never came to fruition, it wasn't supposed to be like this, bad advice, abusive homes, addictions... Too many times I see people asking how can they get that job, they want to improve their relationships, they're reading another self-help book... How many times have we seen someone that goes to the doctor and they are constantly looking for a magic pill or a quick fix and they cure the condition but not the problem? They put a bandaid on it. We need to get to the root of the problem, the foundation, the reality of it all, then you can build your expertise on it. The root of it all is our perspective. When we remove these blocks and limitations it enables us to gain that better perspective.

To better help us remember the top three reasons people block their potential or prevent themselves from reaching their goals, dreams and desires, here is a short acronym using the word car with a K: K.A.R.

K=The Lack of Knowledge,

A=Thinking in Absolutes or extremes,

R=Lack of Responsibility or not wanting to get out of our comfort zone.

Those are the three biggest potential blockers that we see others carry around, and sometimes we ourselves carry these around. As I mentioned before, making the career change to Utah wasn't easy and it definitely was going to take me out of my comfort zone, but being responsible, I did. I started down the path of being more responsible of what I have to offer. To be clear, I am not saying that taking leaps to start your own company is right. I don't think most people should. What I do propose though is that if we are staying in our comfort zone then we need to make a change. Either by sharing more in our current roles by applying the Six Advantages or by sharing our talents and abilities into an expanded or new role.

Finally, because I took on the responsibility to share what I have been given, I now have trained and spoken for W J Bradley Mortgage Capital Group, Marriott, Goodyear, Caesars Entertainment, colleges and universities and many more. Additionally these are some of the comments I've received because I stepped out of my comfort zone:

"After listening to Kevin, my performance improved at work, my sales increased, and I carry myself with more confidence." – Arthur at W.J.Bradley Mortgage Capital

"The book Being Wise is required reading at Shelton and Steele." – Fred Shelton at Shelton and Steele

"Your content changed my life." – Aroune Gibirila, CPA

That comment by Aroune was the very first comment I got... It was very humbling. These comments are too kind. It humbles me a lot because I've really just stood on the shoulders of giants. The people that came before me, they're the ones that helped me, the decent people, my support network, my family, my friends, my coworkers, my bosses, they're the ones who have helped me, so these are really humbling to receive and kind but I owe it to them. I owe it to them because of their support, because of what they have been able to give me to learn from.

Way back in the beginning year of high school I made a difficult decision to give marriage a shot. I learned a lot of things about myself, about life, and the difficult things that happen to us in life. It has been 17 years since we made that decision... After all the tough times and difficult situations we have gone through and the striving to continually get better I'm pleased to announce this past December my wife and I just celebrated our 17 year wedding anniversary and I'm grateful for that. 17 years at the age of 33!

You've been through things in your life you didn't think you would need to do, haven't you? Have you ever found yourself stuck between a rock and a hard spot and needed to make a decision? Have you ever had something blocking your progress towards your goals, dreams and desires, but didn't know what?

If you want your employees to see a difference, to feel a difference in the great place they work and who they work with; with the opportunity to achieve breakthrough performance, enhance relationships and develop meaningful growth. Then may they gain knowledge, apply that knowledge in a balanced and appropriate way, and then take responsibility of their gifts, which is what they are good at. When they do this they reach those all important goals, dreams, and desires that are set out for them. Being wise and working from a Real Life Advantage takes gaining a better perspective, and when you do that, there's no limit on where you're going to go with it.
Afterword: Is It Happily Ever After?

I could end the story here as most people do and then add "happily ever after", but through history we know that life doesn't exactly happen the way we think it will, although this is good because in the majority of these instances it gets better than we had initially hoped (even though sometimes it doesn't immediately seem to be better, we later find out it is). This happens to be the great case in my own journey as it certainly is getting better than I initially thought, but before I get to that let me cover some genuine and real ground first:

We know that no matter what background, race, religion etc. you come from, gaining a better perspective in whatever city, state or country we live in, the people that gain a better perspective have more success, increased happiness and deeper relationships than those who don't.

Still don't believe me? I think you do, but it's fun to bring up more examples. Think in the extreme case of a city full of terrorist groups and that of the great USA. Or think in the cases of companies that are successful like Apple or Google or Amazon and that of the companies that go out of business. Countries or companies that think more abundantly are creative and innovate. They think more decently and love others not because they deserve it but because they want to. They think by predicting what could happen instead of getting frustrated when their expectations fail. They are grateful for what they have and what others now and before them have given them. They fill their needs by making and purchasing things of quality. They are confident in who they are in their abilities and character. What would the impact be to you and others around you if they gained a better perspective?

People take chances and chase their dreams and I don't mean shots in the dark. People take chances from calculated risks and those who don't get a break are better for trying instead of doing nothing with their time and talents. Additionally in America and a few other countries we have that opportunity to try and to try again. We can fail and learn from failure and I think that is another reason why America and these other countries are great. We get the chance to try and grow and because of that we have created some of the best inventions and companies because we were allowed to fail so many times until we got it right.

The reality is life is hard. Some invest 95K of their savings and take out additional loans, others spend time in the form of many months and years honing talents, while others use even larger amounts of time and money. They are not concerned of what could have been or what they don't have any longer because they used it. They didn't lose it or had it stolen from them. They used it and in the end they are better for it. These people all gain by trying and in addition to this another positive is that some may even catch a break because they timed it right or they got in front of the right people (sometimes it is who you know that is more important than what you know). Where would the comedian Jim Carrey be if he never met Rodney Dangerfield or the several athletes that made a great play in front of a recruiter? They may not have made it to the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB etc. but the more times they tried the more times they increased their odds that they would catch a break.

The reality is that life is hard. I continue to be transparent because it doesn't do any good to tell you a great story and that success is a simple path, it takes guts to step out of our comfort zone. (Those that tell you it's a simple path are the same ones that sell the next hot new self-help book with a new idea that everyone has heard of before but they call it by a new name so some people think it is a new idea).

When I first started my journey speaking in front of small groups of 20-50 people way back in the beginning I got great advice from a good friend of mine David Horsager who speaks and trains professionally for a living he helped guide me in the beginning. More recently another good friend of mine Chad Hymas who also speaks and trains professionally shared with me the story of Jimmer Fredette and how he was to play NBA basketball and was benched three years and then China believed in him and he makes more than Lebron James in the NBA. More importantly though is that it is opening up doors for his faith and the children in China are playing sports more than getting into trouble. It is his story and as we too live out our lives our story will collide with opportunity. So stepping out of our comfort zone is not easy but it certainly is worth it.

My life hasn't been easy. Nobody I know personally has had it easy (you too can probably attest to that in your life as well). My perspective at the beginning was mediocre at best. What I have gone through has helped me to learn and gain a better perspective and that continues to increase as I improve.

I think one of my favorite books is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Maybe it is because his life was hard too so I can appreciate and relate to him, but what he learned from his hard life he was able to share in his book that has helped so many people because of the life he lived.

I go back to the statement I made earlier about "Is it happily ever after?". Happily ever after is more of a happy in the journey because a journey doesn't have an end it just has a direction. Whereas the phrase "happily ever after" doesn't exist because that means you have arrived. You don't get to your dream job and stop. An athlete doesn't get to the professional level and say they have arrived and they stop. We get achievement and improve but it is continually changing and getting better. It is happiness in the journey which is a direction not a destination. We could say in some way we are already living our happily ever after. We are in the journey right now.

My journey is continually changing and this is how it is getting better: When I started this journey sharing my story and the Six Advantages I initially wasn't going to write another book after the book Being Wise. This book that you read now is now available to more people than I could have ever shared to live audiences in my entire lifetime. My journey continues and in large part these principles continue to guide me in reaching more and more potential that is inside of all of us if we give it a try. Who knows what the future holds for each of us except that it's going to be better than we can currently imagine.

I have hope in a day that more and more people will gain a better perspective to think in terms of how they can think of better solutions, how they can make a difference in uplifting others, how they can make predictions instead of expectations, how they can be grateful for what they do have and what others do to add to their lives, how they can get needs met and how they can feel confident in who they are and who they are becoming.

We know there are several people in history or currently who are making millions on telling people to believe in themselves (Self-assurance) or to think outside the box (Abundance) or any of the other Six Advantages, but it is my hope that readers of this book see how the best information can now work together to help us be more wise. We now can get past the hype and have actionable items to help us live better and improve. We have a baseline now on which to grow from, and we can make more sense of the chaos and the noise of information that is available to us.

Closing Comments: My Hope Going Forward

We don't claim we created the best information to improve lives and organizations; we just organized it so it makes sense so it is easy to apply. After all results are desired. It also helps to clear out confusion and conflicting advice from so called gurus and fads. If another person or company dismisses our claims, 1) they have little to no knowledge of what we offer and clearly haven't tried it themselves, 2) they are a competitor, or 3) or with a little humor... they eat cartons of ice cream while watching TV all day long, LOL.

If I may share, when I gave up full-time work to pursue speaking and corporate training and eventually writing this book it should have been a scary experience but I have been filled with peace. I believe I was doing what I was supposed to have been doing and I value my relationship and closeness with God our Heavenly Father even though in this world it can feel like there are hungry sharks and they are swimming around us. I felt as though I was in a shark cage and was in no harm. This experience only strengthened my commitment and testimony in a living and loving God and in a living and loving savior even Jesus Christ that no matter what happens in my life I can be close to them.

I realize in this day I hear of some people not believing in a God or clinging to one religion or another. Although there are differences and church members sometimes put church policy or culture above or equal to the doctrine it is founded on, I have a testimony on the doctrine of Jesus Christ to love God and to love our neighbor.

I have hope in a day that we as a people can dwell in a place where we are as of one heart and of one mind. I think those there would have gained a better perspective. In religious terms this place is called Zion. Zion is a place of everyone being of one heart and of one mind. I don't know exactly what that entails. Maybe it's like a place where everyone is nice and honest, but I think it certainly includes people with a better perspective.

I like to think Real Life Advantage is a better perspective version 1.0 and Zion is a better perspective version 2.0. Version 1.0 is like addition in math that we can all understand and 2.0 is like multiplication in math that we can understand if we learn and investigate it for ourselves. I believe in Zion but I don't fully understand it because I am learning it too. Who does know is God our Heavenly Father, and of what I know his purpose and mission is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39). If he is our Father and he wants us to learn and grow to become like him then he knows what each person needs to experience to learn it. He does this in love. It may not be easy for us but it is done in love for us and more importantly knowing his son Jesus Christ accomplished the atonement to make it possible for us to live with them again.

I know God's plan of happiness or plan of salvation. I trust in him and I have what I most cherish which is my continually developing testimony. My testimony is what I know to be true and it has been developing over steps and over time through study and application. Even things revealed to me while studying and praying has added to my testimony. I don't wish to share those with the general public as I hold them sacred. My testimony is something that can't be taken away from me and I hold it as my most prized possession above cars or homes or even my family or children (although they are dear to my heart and certainly above material things). My testimony continues to grow and this isn't something I just got. I have verbally and publicly testified of its truth the majority of my life and I know it has helped me in many instances of my life to date.

Give me any other religion that gives you answers to where you have been before you were born, your reason to exist on a planet that is exactly positioned in space to have sustained human life and the answer of where you go after you die. Tell me a religion that is just as accurate to what science proves and explains the feelings and unexplained things that have happened to me and I'll listen, but the blessings are great by being a Mormon, a member of God's true and restored church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because it lets me see a little more of gaining a better perspective. It lets me find peace amongst the storms and I value it tremendously. If you don't that's fine, but we can all agree of the truth and benefits of Real Life Advantage version 1.0 and I hope at least this can benefit our lives as we will become more wise.

The End
