Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone. It has been a busy time for me as of late, what with visiting my family in West Virginia, preaching a sermon nine days ago, tracking down paperwork to make sure that credentials are in order, and starting another semester at Temple University. However, one thing that I have been thinking about for several days now, after Martin Luther King Day, is about the nature of what it means in order to have lived a multi-faceted life with a challenging and complex message, only to be remembered as a two-dimensional character.

The Impetus for the Post

Eight years ago, while I was stationed in northern Iraq, I saw a drawing for some material commemorating Martin Luther King, and the winners would be announced on Martin Luther King Day. I went to the mess hall the next day, and I saw my name on the list of winners. To my surprise, I found out that there were more free books than there were people who entered the raffle, so I was allowed to get whatever book I wanted. When I picked my book, I saw one that compelled me more than the others: A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this book, there are several of Martin Luther King’s sermons, from the 1950′s into 1968, the year he was assassinated. A lot of people think of Martin Luther King as someone who gave a great speech on the Washington Mall with the refrain, “I have a dream…” Anyone who has ever written music or any oral form of communication knows the importance of repeating a key word or phrase in order to help the audience remember it, and anyone who has studied at a seminary can recognize the preacher’s rhythm of the words and tone of the I Have a Dream speech, and can probably sit down and diagram each of the major points of a well-crafted sermon. Here is the speech in its entirety:

Many of us in the United States hear of that speech, and we also hear of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1955 event spurred on by Rosa Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on a bus, that eventually prompted an effort by black people in Montgomery to refuse to ride any bus that would not treat them equally, which eventually broke the back of the bus system in Montgomery, and after a year, it ended in victory.

However, this sanitized version of Martin Luther King is not the whole truth. Civil rights was and is an important part of King’s legacy, but it is not the only part of his message. He was a brilliant man who was taken from us far too soon, dying at the end of a gun at the age of 39. However, he began his national role at the age of 26 years old. He went across the country preaching a message of justice, and making sure that the message of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applied to all, and not just a few.

A Broad Message

As I read the book, I found that this book covered one area more than any other: poverty. Over and over, he pointed out the unjust nature of an economic system that too often focused on greed and focused on the haves rather than everyone. In his lifetime, King advocated a national guaranteed income and he opposed the Vietnam War, both because he opposed violence, and because of what he saw happening to poor people in the region whose farmland was destroyed. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1968 in Memphis, he was not there for a civil rights march, he was there to stand in support of striking sanitation workers, as part of his Poor People’s Campaign. If you have never heard Martin Luther King on poverty, here is a powerful video juxtaposed with images of what poverty really means:

Martin Luther King was a great man with a great message, but I believe that we do him a disservice by ignoring the whole message of Martin Luther King.

How do you fight to make sure that someone’s entire legacy is remembered and not turned into a cartoon?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Lord, grant us the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.- Reinhold Niebuhr

Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. The last two posts I’ve written on have focused on the nature of some of the criticism of the world of personal development. However, as I said recently, I am going somewhere with this criticism. So, if part of the criticism is the idea that everything is absolutely limitless turns into self-centered behavior or disappointment when things don’t go exactly how we think they will go, what will we do instead?

Well, I decided to wait to write this series (which I had been think about for some time) because I had a book in my reading queue that seemed perfect to address this question: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change– and When to Let Go by Eileen Flanagan.

Smart Personal Development

What I think is so great about this book is the way that it focuses on a way that we make a mistake when we think that we are the center of our own universe, and that trying to say that every single thing is in our control will lead to experiences that will ultimately humble us.

One of the big themes in the book is how that life has a funny way of not really moving in a straight line. This is something I can sympathize with, as someone who went to high school wanting to go to West Point, deciding instead (in part because of an inability to do the eight pull-ups necessary to pass the physical fitness test, peaking at two no matter how hard I tried) to go to a maritime college. Then, I realized that the world of the sea was not a world for me, and I thought that my path through life would be as a military chaplain. Then, I ended up going to the one college I swore I would never go to when I was younger (West Virginia University) and ended up finding a place that I absolutely loved and felt at home. I then went to a small town in the Ohio River Valley in western West Virginia and made an attempt at running for public office. Realizing that life was sending me in a different direction, I then moved to the main campus in the Philadelphia suburbs, and eventually to Philadelphia itself.

I don’t think that all of these things were predestined for me in any way. However, I do think that my life experiences helped inform each of these decisions. Ultimately, I came to realize that I was basing my decisions on my best judgment based on the information and the knowledge and awareness that I had at the time. This fits in part of the lessons that Eileen Flanagan teaches. She points out that we are limited in our understanding at the time, and that we can develop to do something better once we have humility.

A Fuller Picture

The other thing that I found so fascinating about this book was the way that we should think about what things we can and cannot do. In something that mirrors teaching in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Wisdom to Know the Difference focuses on the way that taking a humble attitude and being open to life’s experience actually makes it possible for the things that we can change to expand rather than contract.

One example in my own life was when I decided to run for public office for the 2006 campaign. I knew that my efforts would be quixotic, but I thought that I could make a bid for Congress. Ultimately, talking to a friend of mine, I realized that this would be biting off way more than I could chew, s0 I should consider a smaller office instead. I realized that running for the state legislature meant that I could run in a geographically compact area and get a chance to talk to more people in my district.

I lost by a huge margin, but I did ultimately make an impact in policy. I made one of my key issues public transportation, which many thought was a waste of time for such a small state with no city having a population greater than 57,000 (the most recent census now says that West Virginia’s biggest city only has 51,000 people). However, there were others who were trying to make the same argument from bigger cities, and the fact that someone who lived halfway between the first- and third-largest city in the state wanted to see it happen made it a little more feasible. While people in my party thought it would never happen, and people in the other party thought it was ridiculous, ultimately, there was momentum behind the idea, and two years later, my opponent actually voted for a pilot program to bring public transportation back and forth to the two largest cities in the state as a pilot program. I’m not saying that this would’ve never happened without me, but there were definitely people who didn’t think about the idea before I ran, and those people eventually became believers.

How do you try to make an impact when you can make a difference?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you doing well. Recently, I read the book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The basic premise of her book (written after a bout with breast cancer when she described the way that she felt that her cancer was turned juvenile with the insistence on use of the color pink and that the instance on the survivor narrative removed all others) is that an emphasis on focusing purely on positive thinking and a literal understanding of the Law of Attraction means that people ignore the things that need to be fixed in society. With this in mind, I am beginning a three-part series examining the question of personal developments dark side.

A Note Before Beginning

I am not writing this note to say that I have completely given up on personal development. However, I think that it is very important that those of us who believe in personal development engage those who criticize the field and, when the critics have a point, refine our understanding of personal development. While personal development is not science per se, I feel that it should be capable of withstanding scrutiny.

Personal Development or Societal Development

One of the biggest criticisms that Ehrenreich offers (that I feel has merit) is that some works of personal development completely ignore the societal issues at stake. While I do believe in Jim Rohn’s belief that we focus on the set of our sails, I do think that we should also make a continued and persistent fight for justice. I have heard some personal development writers talk about how that we can become philanthropists when we become really wealthy (and I realize that sometimes they have a point that some things take a lot of money), but the simple truth is that people in the United States who make less than $50,000 a year give a much higher percentage of their money to charity (including religious organizations) than those who make more than $100,000 a year (4% vs. 2%). Some have said that efforts at improving the lot of others is futile, so why even bother?

Perhaps the absolute worst thing of all that I read excusing selfishness in the personal development world was in The Science of Getting Rich, where Wallace Wattles says that “true philanthropy” is building one’s own wealth so that there is one less person who is poor, and that donating to the poor should not be done because it not only makes things worse for the poor person, but it makes someone think about poverty, which makes it impossible to ever get rich in the first place. (This one paragraph alone was enough to tell me to keep looking this spring when deciding on the books for my eBook Giveaway.)

A Different Presentation

I am not defending the Wattles quote (because I feel that it is indefensible), but I think that there are some things that are written in the world of personal development that have good intentions, but are worded in a way that could be harmful for others. One of those is the idea that our outer world is the reflection of our inner world. With true atrocities like the Holocaust and, as someone who lives in Pennsylvania is painfully aware of with the scandals that have been revealed over the last two months, of people abusing their position of authority to harm children in a profound way, I think it is safe to say that these things are not their fault. Instead, I think that those works that talk about the response to events in the world around us have a much better message to convey to help those who have gone through some truly horrific things.

With the Law of Attraction being used by some as a way to turn the universe into a genie or a mail-order catalog, we should look to works of personal development that teach us to live a life of generosity, discipline, hard work, and thrift. I’m not saying that we should try to avoid success, or try to improve our situation in life (my businesses, my blog, and my investments clearly demonstrate that I do not believe that), but that we should continue to examine our reading in personal development and the kind of personal development that each presents. I am going somewhere with this, and I ask of you to continue to look back and join me on this effort.

How do you test your works of personal development?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone. It has been a while since we’ve had the chance to talk to each other. Recently, I finished reading the autobiography of Rex Ryan, Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game. What I found so interesting about this book, as it showed insight into the mind of the man who has already established himself as one of the most successful coaches in Jets’ history after only two seasons, with his two trips to the AFC Championship Game. While this book is in the autobiography/memoir genre, there is definitely a lot that anyone interested in personal development can learn from reading this book.

Believe, Especially When Others Don’t

Ever since the day he became the New York Jets head coach, Rex Ryan has insisted that he saw his team as the one that would be the team to beat, and a Super Bowl-caliber team. This is something that a lot of people have seen as a joke. After all, he became the Jets’ head coach 40 years after their one and only trip to the Super Bowl, and the Jets spent a lot of time in the cellar since then, making two trips to the AFC Championship Game since, losing both times, and only making the playoffs 11 times in those 40 seasons, with a total of six wins in playoff games. It was also a team that was often seen as the “little brother” to the New York Giants, to the point where the Jets played for nearly 30 years in Giants Stadium. (They have since moved into New Meadowlands Stadium, which has been renamed MetLife Stadium.)

He also used his first draft pick to select Mark Sanchez of USC as quarterback, and he became the starter at the beginning of season one. Sanchez has had some problems as he has gotten used to the NFL, but Ryan has continued to believe in his quarterback, even when no one else did. In his first season, the Jets finished 9-7, which was good for a spot in the playoffs. The Jets had an up and down season, and they ultimately needed a win in their last two games to make the playoffs. When they did, they ended up winning two playoff games, with the Jets’ rookie tying the Joe Namath, Richard Todd, and Chad Pennington for the most all-time playoff wins in Jets’ history. (There were fewer playoff rounds in 1968 than today.) The next year, the Jets finished 11-5 and won two more playoff games, with Sanchez tying the all-time NFL record for career road playoff wins.

Learning from Your Heroes, Including Mistakes

No one can deny Buddy Ryan’s skill as a defensive mastermind in the NFL, as two of his defenses, the 1968 Jets and the 1985 Bears, won Super Bowls, with the latter one of the all-time great defenses, and he was so respected so respected on his team that his defensive players carried him off the field, the only time someone other than the head coach was carried off the field in the Super Bowl. However, Buddy Ryan’s record as a head coach was much more mixed, making three playoff appearances in seven seasons (five with the Philadelphia Eagles [where he made his playoff appearances] and two with the Phoenix [now Arizona] Cardinals) and never winning a playoff game. Rex admits that part of this is because Buddy was so focused on defense that he often neglected his offense.

While Rex is primarily a defensive coach (he spent ten years with the Baltimore Ravens, first as a defensive line coach, then as a defensive coordinator, before becoming the Jets’ head coach), he knew that he couldn’t win just by focusing on defense. He showed this by using his first pick in the draft to get a quarterback, and this year he has even been willing to experiment with opening up the passing game more. (It affected the team’s culture and took away from the larger philosophy, so they have gone back to their emphasis on the ground game.) He will tell anyone that Buddy Ryan is his hero, but he learned both how to emulate the good and improve on the bad.

Be Where You Want to Be

His other great lesson was making sure that he was fully invested in each of his jobs. He stayed in Baltimore for ten years, and this is something that is not common these days for assistants. He said that he wanted to spend his career in Baltimore if at all possible. However, his ultimate goal was to become a head coach. He thought he had his chance with the Ravens after the 2008 season, but he lost that job to John Harbaugh. The Jets’ head coaching job opened up, and he took the position with no hard feelings from his former employer. Because he wanted to be in New York, he wanted people whose focus was on the team, and people who wanted to play in New York.

What are some personal development lessons you have learned from unlikely sources?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone. Lately, I’ve been thinking about things that don’t seem like they should work, but things that work very well. In my efforts to build toward my five-minute mile, I’ve noticed that there tends to be a lot of soreness in my ankles when I try to push my weekly workload above 30 miles per week. However, I am working to try to build to 40 miles per week by the time of my next big runs early in the fall. With this in mind, I read the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougal. In this book, he talks about something very interesting: a group of people in the deserts of Mexico who, despite violating every spoken and unspoken rule of modern distance running, happen to be the greatest ultrarunners (those who run distances greater than the marathon) who ever lived.

A Mystery and a Question

Christopher McDougal starts his journey trying to figure out why his feet hurt so much. At 6’3 and 230 lbs., he tried to run many times, only to be stopped by painful feet. Sports doctor after sports doctor tells him that the human body was not made for running, and it is just a matter of time before runners get injured. After all, 80% of distance runners have some major injury every year. With this evidence in hand, he was told repeatedly that he could get a cortisone shot, but it would only buy him time, and if he insisted on running, he would find himself hurting over and over again.

However, while covering a story, McDougal found out about the Raramuri, a tribe in Mexico that managed to survive the Conquistadors simply by deciding that, rather than fighting them as others did and got destroyed, to run farther into the desert. This way of life served them well, and with sandals rather than fancy running shoes, costumes that most would find restrictive, no stretching or nutrition plan, they won every ultramarathon they ever attempted.

Find the White Horse

However, very few had learned about this group. A mystery man, known as Caballo Blanco (The White Horse), was considered a legend, but rumor had it that he had managed to enter their world and be accepted as one of their own. Thinking that this might be his entryway into this world, McDougal went to Mexico, braved a world where assassinations and deaths from the weather was common.

Ultimately, he saw a sunburned man wearing very old shoes, and he found out that this was the legendary White Horse. He was able to befriend this man, whose big goal was to put together an ultra with some of the greatest runners in the world going against the Raramuri on their own turf. This caught the attention of Scott Jurek, the seven-time winner of the Western States 100 who had won nearly every major ultra in the West he entered, including a grueling 134-mile race in Death Valley. Once he joined the field, other great runners decided that they wanted to be a part of this race, assuming it would actually happen.

The White Horse managed to pull this race off, a 50-mile race through the desert that went through town four times as a cloverleaf course so people could see the race unfold. McDougal also decided to make his race, learning about their paradoxical running style of shorter strides and faster steps, all while running with simpler shoes, because of the idea that modern running shoes actually compound the problem. McDougal went through the first half of the run in four hours, but his goal was simply to finish. Finally, after 12 hours, going through excruciating physical and mental pain (my longest run was the marathon, which I joked didn’t really begin until the 20-mile mark, so I could not imagine what it would be like to run nearly twice that), he crossed the finish line.

I heard about his journey while driving to work and listening to the local NPR station as they interviewed this local author. After this amazing journey, he found out that his life had changed dramatically, and his feet don’t hurt any more.

What happens to you when you push yourself to your limits?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone. I’m writing today because I’ve been thinking about the nature of challenges. Recently, I completed the Clever Marketer Prove It Challenge hosted by my friend Heather Stephens. What was so great about this challenge was that it went for a fairly long time (14 weeks) so it really separated the ones who were serious from the unserious, with seven left standing by the end.

I have been involved in more than one challenge over the last year in the blogosphere, so I’ve been thinking about contributing by leading my own challenge, Steve the Owl’s Parliament Boys and Girls of Summer Challenge. This challenge is a way to work together to grow your blog and make some great new friends in the process. In order to join the Parliament, this is the challenge:

1) write 60 posts (excluding posts with affiliate links) between June 21 and September 22

2) join the group on Facebook

a) you must comment on at least two posts for every post you put on the page
b) put the post number with each blog post

3) join the Parliament mastermind group for at least three discussions

a) we will ask for a list of available times and post the list when the challenge starts
b) on the Facebook page, we will have a chat where people can join together to talk about their blog and building their business, but not pitch their business
c) a list of participants will be collected during every meeting

The prizes: there will be ten (10) prizes at the end of the contest. If fewer than ten people complete the challenge, prizes will remain unclaimed. While all are encouraged to join the challenge, the goal is to encourage excellence. I will participate in the challenge, but I will not claim any prizes.

Grand Prize (five: three automatic, two by drawing): the first three finishers will automatically win copies of The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. The first book is one that I have found vital to help someone learn personal development, and the last two are the books Jim Rohn’s mentor Earl Schoaff told him were the places to start the journey of personal development and building fortune.

Runners-up (five) will receive copies of The Slight Edge.

Sharing will begin on June 21st at 9 AM ET (GMT 1300). Until then, I encourage you to come to the group and get to know each other.

What have challenges done for you?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my blog. Today, I’ve been thinking about a book that I’ve recently read by Muhammad Yunus, the man known as “the banker to the poor” who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work founding Grameen Bank, a bank in Bangladesh that devotes its work to microlending that involves loans that average the equivalent to just a few US dollars (when he first started, the average loan was the equivalent to $27 US) that, along with the other social businesses Grameen has started, has lifted millions out of poverty and greatly improved circumstances in his native land. In this book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Yunus describes a vision for a different type of capitalism that has great potential to help billions across the world.

Conscience Plays a Role

Muhammad Yunus started out his professional life as an economics professor at Middle Tennessee State University. However, in the 1970′s, while explaining economic theory to his students, he saw the devastating effects of civil war and natural disaster on his native land, and he knew that he must do something to break the vicious cycle of poverty. With this in mind, he returned to Bangladesh. He listened to people to find out what they needed to break the cycle of poverty, and he talked to the banks, but they told him the same thing over and over again: these are people who are unreliable risks for loans, and the loans are of so little value that money that they can’t produce a profit.

Understanding Leading to Change

For Yunus, this answer would not do. While some unscrupulous business make money off the poor who have no access to the banking system by charging ridiculously high interest rates, Yunus started by giving people money out of his own pocket. He had no desire to become a banker, because he saw himself as an economist, and he kept trying to get people who were bankers to see the potential. Even after years of a nearly 100% repayment rate which most banks could only dream of, the bigger banks insisted that people would never repay and it was impossible to make a profit lending to the poor.

The Value of Vision

In addition to understanding the need for people in Bangladesh, and the courage to act in good conscience, Yunus started to see a business model that could help more than just those who receive loans from Grameen Bank. His bank was not a non-profit enterprise. He exempted the poorest of the poor from interest, but he does charge interest for most loans, with no loan having a higher interest rate than 20%. Eventually, he felt that it was necessary to not just lift people out of poverty through their smaller business, but that this money should be reinvested and leading to something bigger. This included women who purchased cell phones and went from village to village allowing people to have access to cell phones. As time went on, more and more Bangladeshis got phones of their owns, as well as Internet access.

Yunus did this and played such a huge role in improving the conditions in his country because he refused to accept the safe answer, and he developed a new idea for “social business,” which involves companies that seek to make a profit, but use the profit for the betterment of society rather than to pad the portfolio of investors, that competes alongside traditional companies. He also saw poor people as people with dignity, and he set up investment programs for people who made little money to encourage saving.

In the United States, a country with poverty that, admittedly, sees poverty in a different light than Bangladesh, the poor are also marginalized. For example, most banks require at least $100 in order to open an account, which means that people who don’t have that kind of money have to go to check-cashing and bill-pay centers that charge high rates to provide these services, or to loan services that charge rates that would make the worst loan sharks blush. (Most banks also have minimum loan amounts of $5000. I’ve known banks in West Virginia that have smaller loans, but they are the exception rather than the rule.) I don’t know to what extent the rest of these things happen in the rest of the industrialized world, but I wonder how much different things would be if people work to try to fight poverty instead of make money off of it in a way that continues the cycle.

What ways do you think that we can think about capitalism in a way that helps as many people as possible?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Take an Inventory of Yourself and Find Out How Many of the “Ghosts” Are Standing in Your Way- Napoleon Hill

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the final installment in my weekly series on Napoleon Hill’s classic book, Think and Grow Rich. It has been my honor to present the overview of the book and weekly summaries to help you on your path of personal development. We have talked about each of the thirteen steps to riches that Hill presented, each of them in a logical pattern that begins internally and then works its way to the outside and action steps. Today, I will mention the six ghosts, and focus on the one that is the most important one to exorcise in the path to success.

The Six Ghosts

Napoleon Hill argues that there are a total of six mindsets, or ghosts, that stand in the way of one’s success, and he insists that the first three are the primary drivers of all of the other ghosts. The first three are the fear of poverty, criticism, and ill health. And the more secondary ghosts are the fear of loss of love of someone, old age, and death. We can see so many of these in effect in our lives. Three of the four are the basis of a multi-billion-dollar industry. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to take care of ourselves, but I have to wonder what the line is between healthy concern and dangerous obsession. The fear of criticism can be seen in those who worry so much about pleasing others that they don’t try to do their all because of the remarks that will come their way if they fail.

The Fear of Poverty

However, the one that is most insidious of them all is the fear of poverty. When Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich, the country was recovering from the Great Depression, but unemployment was still 12%, and then an austerity program that the country just wasn’t ready for (read into this what you will) lead to another deep recession that pulled unemployment back up to 19%. While this was the New Deal era, we were only at the beginning of the establishment of the social safety net (for example: food stamps were not established until 1965), and it wasn’t nearly as big as it is today. While credit cards have problems of their own, there really wasn’t much of a way at the time for people to be able to afford basic necessities of life if they ran out of money.

Fast-forward to today. While we are not in the situation we were 75 years ago, we have unemployment that has remained stubbornly high, and the groups that usually step in to get the engines of the economy moving when stalled have said that they are tapped out. With people out of work for so long that their unemployment runs out, and their saving run out as well, and it is very easy to think that “playing it safe” is the only real option. Unfortunately, the only way to completely break the cycle of poverty is to do what seems counterintuitive and take risks.

If one defines wealth as a way that one has enough assets that produce enough residual income to actually exceed all expenses even if something does happen to a source of income (For example, if someone spends $2500 a month for his/her family’s lifestyle, and assets produce this kind of yield.) it is necessary to invest and find the vehicles that produce this kind of money. The other thing that the fear of poverty does is make one look for something that is simply a “safe job” over a fulfilling job that leads to one’s goals.

Of course, there are times when these jobs that are seen as satisfying happen, and if this happens, your goal for wealth-building might not be that of a lot of people in the world of network marketing who try to make enough to replace their business, but to do as Jim Rohn said, “Work full-time for your income and part-time on your fortune.” This is advice that was confirmed when I read an article the other day about millionaires next door, and one of those great tips was that if there is a two-income family, to live off one and invest the other.

Everything that I have ever read about the world of building wealth has pointed out that it is vital to devote a portion of income to building wealth through investments. (David Bach says the more the better, but that 10% should be the minimum. He also advises building a safety net and saving for long-term expenses and for fun purchases. T. Harv Eker recommends living off of only half of after-tax income, with several different investment, fun, and security vehicles.) Investing that percentage when all of the chips seem to be down takes a courage that cannot coexist with a crippling fear of poverty. There have been times when I have struggled immensely, and it has made any effort to step forward that much more difficult.

I hope you have enjoyed this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Here’s to conquering that fear and building for your future!

How do you fight your ghosts of fear?

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Hi, everyone. Today marks a very special day for Steve the Owl’s Blog. With two humble posts exactly one year ago: one shortly after midnight, and one at 10 pm that quiet Sunday evening, I entered the world of content-driven blogging. My first post talked about some experiences that I’d had earlier that year with people insisting on “their” parking space during a blizzard, and how this only led to fewer parking spaces available for everyone. My second, fitting for something that was written on a Sunday inspired by thinking through some things on the way home from church, got to the very core of why people want to build a business, and how some have gone to a message of prosperity gospel that, in my opinion, misses the entire point of the Bible and turns God into a genie.

With these humble beginnings, I began my blog, which has to this day operated under the idea of “life, business, and so much more.” While some may argue for a more narrow niche, I’ve found that my niche has been about the everyday experiences I have had (including the books I’ve read, the music I’ve heard, and the TV and movies I’ve seen) that teach so much about our personal development and business.

There has been a lot of trial and error along the way, but I thank each and every person who has been there with my as I have worked on this labor of love for the past year. With that in mind, I would like to thank the five most frequent commenters on my blog over the last twelve months, in order from 1-5.

Coach Freddie Coach Freddie has done some wonderful work in the world of video blogging, including a lengthy and excellent series on each of the 64 success principles presented by jack Canfield. He is truly a great mind in the world of personal development. We are at the top of each other’s commenter list, and it has been a great honor getting to know Coach Freddie. Keep your eyes out for a blog exchange between the two of us coming soon.

Oliver Tausend Oliver held the number-one spot among my commenters for a pretty long time. Like me, his interests are pretty varied, with a large focus on personal development and business with a lot of stories based on his personal experiences. He has done a lot of work in several different syndication groups, so if you’ve seen him around but haven’t stopped by this blog, be sure to do so.

Karen Marrow Karen is someone who focuses primarily on personal development, with some emphasis on business. I have found a lot of great value on her blog, and I had the honor of guest-posting on her blog earlier this spring after winning a contest for a great book on personal development, Happy for No Reason.

Jayne Kopp I met Jayne this winter on the Clever Marketer Prove It Challenge, and both of us crossed the finish line together on the same day. Considering that she was pretty far behind the pace for the challenge toward the end, this shows her dedication to her blog and to her readers. Be sure to read about her experiences with personal and business development, and how she weaves them into a life narrative.

Vicki Berry Vicki is someone who has several blogs, and the blog where I know her the best is the one that I linked to. She offers some great advice on business and blogging, with an emphasis on SEO and copywriting. If you want to learn about how to build a business and how to learn the rules of the road for creating a great blog, I can think of no better place to start.

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and commented. I will never forget you. I hope to provide even more value in the second year of this blog than the first.

The Door to the Temple of Wisdom: The Thirteenth Step toward Riches.- Napoleon Hill

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my continuing series on Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I apologize for the lateness of this week’s presentation. We are getting closer to the end of the book, as this is the review of the penultimate chapter of this book. Up to this point, we have examined principles that one can use to create wealth.

However, there ultimately comes a point where we are limited in what we can do. Our research may be solid, our efforts may be based on sound principles and diligent work ethic, but there are times when we still struggle in the path to success. What can we use in those times when our efforts seem to have reached their limits, and we still have not accomplished our goals? Napoleon Hill saw the answer as what he referred to as “the sixth sense,” which may also be referred to as intuition, Infinite Intelligence, creative imagination, God, Providence, luck, etc., depending on who you ask.

So, let us examine what he means in this search for that extra step. Napoleon Hill argues that the only way to truly embrace the sixth sense is to understand each of the preceding twelve steps on the path to riches. This is the element that appears in ways that we cannot understand, but it helps to provide inspiration and help us find what we seek in our path to success and realizing our greatest potential.

What I think is so interesting about how this was applied was something that I’d read in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. He said that the seven habits were like a spiral that takes us upward on our journey, and we are constantly working to improve each of the seven habits once we learned them and oriented our lives around them. In a way, I think this is how the sixth sense works with the thirteen steps toward riches. Each of the steps toward riches work in sequence, and once we work toward each of the steps, we find ourselves getting higher and higher in our path to success. So, if you want to succeed, we have to remember that success is a continual process, and that our steps will give us the momentum to take us where we want to go.

How has the sixth sense helped you along your path to success?

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