Could you imagine winning $1,000,000,000?  

You can buy a lot of stretchy pants with that kind of cheddar…

Last year the multi-state lottery here in Arizona got to over one billion dollars.  For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the winner.

You’ve probably heard that 70% of people who win a lottery or get a big windfall end up broke within a few years.  And let’s face it, that’s usually people who lose millions.  Could you imagine failing to keep over 1 billion dollars?

I don’t think most people wanna live with that kind of failure on their resume.  Even if you’re in Manolos and driving a Bentley.

I used to worry about failing. 

Even in school when I played pick-up basketball games, I wasn’t a fan of losing.   I liked to have fun playing but I liked winning too.  I loved to do what David Goggins calls “snatching souls”.  I relished winning with a game winning shot or by blowing out the other team by a big margin.  

When I got my first sales job I hated failure there too.  Being told ‘no’ and sucking at sales goals was something hard to get used to.  Especially for a guy who looked at losing the same way Lex Luthor looked at losing to Superman.

Eventually I read the book, Go For No: Yes Is The Destination. No Is How To Get There by Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz.  The book was a nice shift in approach.  Instead of focusing on sales and overcoming objections, this book told you to focus on no’s.  After all, if it takes 10 no’s to get a yes, you should want to burn through those 10 no’s as fast as possible.  

For about six months I was in love with no because no got me that much closer to yes.  Then I noticed something strange happened.

I started caring TOO little about yes.  And my sales process in general…  It reminded me of a call I took at my old insurance job.  A lady told me she was depressed after a death in her family so her doctor gave her Prozac. She said the prescription was so strong she didn’t give a f*ck about anything.  

They lowered her dose.

I lowered my dose too by leaving my go-for-no philosophy behind.  

In my 30’s I figured I could outrun failure like Usain Bolt.  I read about a book a week and submerged myself in success principles.  It’s like I wanted to drown away failure like Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

It was time I stopped treating success like a vaccine that I hoped would keep failure away.   

I decided to look at failure like  Kobe Bryant does.  Kobe said failure only happens when you refuse to keep on going and decide not to learn anymore. Disappointments are not failures but are necessary learning tools for growth and self-improvement.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

J.K. Rowling  

No failing by default…

Embrace failure.  Embrace learning.   Live your life.

Adam

You ever notice that your brain doesn’t really shut up?  

Did I lock the front door?

I paid that already, right? 

Do these jeans make me look fat?  

Author Michael A. Singer in his book The Untethered Soul calls this voice your “Inner Roomate”.  This voice is more than an annoying roomate, it’s more like a bad marriage that you can’t divorce out of.  

You can’t take it out with a Smith and Wesson either.  It just hangs out with you like herpes.

We’re kind of used to having an over protective, nagging, mom-like voice in our heads.  We understand maybe you shouldn’t eat that pizza before you swim or stare directly into the sun.  But there’s a more nefarious version of this voice too.

Mine told me…

I wasn’t good enough to be an artist.

I could never date a girl that pretty.

Opportunities like that don’t exist for black people.

Blah, blah, blah.  I listened to that nonsense for way too long.  One of the first things that helped me get past that was understanding that the brain has one job and it’s not helping you ‘follow your dreams’. It’s job is to keep you safe. 

“Your brain is biologically wired to protect you from harm. So when you’re about to switch jobs, move to a new place, or try something new, it tries to stop you.”

-Mel Robbins

Not only does this voice never go away but it changes its colors like a chameleon and manifests into other things like procrastination and perfectionism.  It’ll make your ADD kick in more relentlessly than ads on YouTube.  

That’s why to quiet this voice, you want to focus on what Dan Sullivan calls, ENERGY.  Energy is…

Everything you permanently love.  

Everything that produces growth.

Everything that grows confidence.

When you develop the daily habits of doing what you love and combine that with your personal development routine, your confidence grows and ignoring your Inner Roomate gets easier and easier.  

And don’t forget about your environment too.  That can be just as important.  Great white sharks are badasses but if you throw one in a Manhattan apartment, it’s not going to thrive.  It will suffocate and die.

Focus on your energy and creating an environment that is an incubator for your success.  But  also… stop doing what drains your energy too.  

Adam

I had a friend who went thru a harsh divorce.  

His ex basically screwed him over in just about every way she could imagine.  It’s like she burned down their house and kicked him in the nards on her way running out.  Leaving him to pick up all the pieces of his life.  I felt for him.

For years he played the victim card.  

The ‘whoa is me’ card.  

The ‘if only’ card.  

I thought, he really needs a new card to play…

As I did my own personal development over those years I knew one thing that could have helped him ease the pain faster than Tylenol for a headache.  

It’s forgiveness.

Lewis B. Smedes said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

My friend was a prisoner for years, and so was I.  It seems forgiving other people was easy for me to do but I never really considered the value of forgiving myself.  

Forgiving yourself is one of your ultimate super-powers.

I read books and listened to seminars where we would forgive ourselves and then jump to goals and affirmations to attain what we wanted to do or have.  

Eventually I realized forgiveness is like fitness.  If you want guns like Terrell Owens or the abs of Jillian Michaels, you gotta work on it.  

Every day.

This effected me most with money and growing my business.  I had to forgive myself.  

Every day.

Sometimes 10 times a day.  

There were days I could feel the head-trash coming in like sonar.  My lizard brain would kick in and start to poison me by bringing up what I did wrong in the past.  

Could I stop it?  No, I couldn’t.  But I let the past be the past and I forgave myself.  

I would say, Adam, you didn’t know.  I forgive you.

Denise Duffield-Thomas has a good one, she says:  “I forgive you… I’m sorry… I love you…”

If you have blocks in your money, your life, or your career you may need to forgive someone.  

And that someone may be you.

Adam

I want to talk a little serious, so let’s get right down to it.

I know what you’re thinking.  Adam, no time for Star Wars metaphors?  Really?

No comic book quips?

No Harry Potter segues?  

Nope. 

Well, maybe later…

What is so serious that I don’t want to divert your attention with hippogriffs or a joke about how two lesbians and a midget walk into a bar?  

It’s what I consider a truth.  

It’s something a lot of people can’t wrap their brain around. But you don’t have to believe it. It’s like gravity.  You don’t have to understand or accept the Law of Gravity to apply it every day.  

This truth is applied to our lives.  Our work.  Our callings.  The change we seek to make in the world and how to move forward.  What I’m talking about is this…

Our work is NEVER done. YOU are never done.  No matter how hard you plan or try to prepare for it.  

Sorry Virgos.

You may choose what your work is, but how you get to do that work is often a mystery.    You should not only embrace this but you should enjoy the journey along the way.  

For example, I was called back to being an artist.  

I was miserable at that insurance company at that time!  I knew I could figure out a way to replace my corporate income freelancing again.  And guess what?  When I got hooked up with Marvel it was like Christmas being an artist again.

Then I got a different calling.  

I wanted to draw live caricatures.  At first it was a side-hustle and then I thought, I could do this and do it bigly. 

But how?  I had no idea.

If you think leaving a well funded big ass insurance company was tough.  Now imagine how leaving one of the biggest comic book producers in the world to start a new business felt?  

I struggled like crazy at first but I got it to work.  And it allowed me to apply my skills and intentions in a bigger way.  

Abraham Hicks says over and over again, “You can’t get it wrong and you will never get it done.”

Write that on a 3×5 card and stick it on your fridge so you you can see it everyday.  You can’t get it wrong and you never get it done. 

That’s why it’s so important to focus on becoming who you want to be and doing what you are passionate about.  Do it with grace and satisfaction and leave the mystery of how you get there to something outside of you.

Albert Einstein said, “I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life”.  If that worked for Einstein it’s fair to say that maybe it can work for us too.

Adam

When I first started working for my last insurance company my goal was to get promoted.  

I knew I was overqualified for the position I had and I even had most of the qualifications for the promotion I wanted.  So for me, it was all just a matter of time.  Once I had the required time in my position I was going to move on to bigger and better things. 

For months I was working with people and committees to be poised to get promoted on my first try.  It was gonna be like taking candy from a baby!  

Turns out, it was my candy that got taken that time around.  I didn’t get the job.  

No biggie.  

A much better candidate than me got the job.  I’ll try again.

I didn’t get the job that time either.  But this time the person who did was much less qualified than me.  So I thought anyway…  I couldn’t help but feel a little more pissy this second time around.  

Like if you eat at a new restaurant and get food poisoning. Maybe the food was good so you call it a fluke and try it again.  And if you get food poisoning a second time…  It could be coincidence, or maybe the joint just has WAY too intimate of a relationship with bacteria.

Luckily my frustration and not getting promoted led me to leaving.  Which of course was a great thing.

But in the meantime back then, I didn’t feel very worthy.  “This is what I want, and no one is giving it me.”  Maybe I should…

Get an insurance designation.

Network more.

Work even harder.

There’s ALWAYS things we can desperately do to bridge the gap between what we want and where we are.  But sometimes, that’s not necessary.  Sometimes, it’s just about timing.  

When Kevin Hart interviewed Judd Apatow, Hart talked about his first audition for an Apatow movie.  Hart didn’t get the role and he said he took not getting it as a person rejection.  He said he thought Apatow didn’t like him.  

He later found out that was total garbage.  When Hart saw the movie he realized the part needed to be played by an older person.  Hart was like 25 at the time.

Looking back he learned it wasn’t about rejection, he learned it was about the best person for the role.  He said he didn’t have the “logic to digest that” back then. 

I know the cliche, timing is everything gets old to hear, but it can still be very true. 

Think about it this way.  For some occasions we buy cakes at Nothing Bundt Cakes.  Why shouldn’t we? They’re delicious.  But could you imagine what the cakes would taste like if they left them in the oven for only 10 minutes?

Same batter.  Same cake.  But same texture and same taste?  Not so much.

And don’t even get me started on bacteria again…

If you’re looking for better opportunities, clients or relationships It’s probably because they’re not done cooking yet.  

Or YOU’RE not done cooking yet.  

They’re not ready for you or you’re not ready for them.  Don’t take it as a personal rejection.  And don’t use it to fuel your head-trash.  It’s almost never rejection! 

Well, except that one time…

I did see a video where a guy cut off and flipped off another man on the freeway.  The driver was incensed (crazy is a better word) so he shot at him with a gun.  

Ok, that’s a rejection to take personally. 

There is good news though.  You have the logic to digest and understand which is which.  And to KNOW that what you want is coming.  

Adam