Fantasy Happiness. The bill of goods you are sold on a daily basis!

There you are looking at the world and it is all a lie. It is a bill of goods that has been either sold to you by TV, parents and the educational system OR forced upon you by peer pressure and endless bombardment social expectations.

Bold statement huh? Well it is the undeniable truth. From an early age happiness is FORCED upon us. We are told what we must do and what we must have in order to be HAPPY and we believe it. If you by some chance to not fit the definition you end up in therapy trying to figure out what you did wrong.

Go to college, meet dream spouse, get job with company, have 2.5 children, Buy the right stuff, save for retirement, die before you become a burden on your children.

You MUST fit the mold you have been SOLD.You Must live the fantasy happiness that has been written out for you. If not then you are obviously not happy and must be given happy pills. Just say no to drugs….unless you are not happy then we have some for you……scary huh?

Somehow through all of this I have remained happy. I don’t fit the mold at all. The last time I worked for anyone was when I was 23. That was the last job I had where you could count on a paycheck every week. I was a manager in training at Godfather’s Pizza. The moron that was the district manager believed 2 things. Lie detectors never made mistakes. Everyone lies. So needless to say I failed the lie detector test. It said I stole 1200 dollars. I was not even allowed to handle money yet.

Yes that was the first time I fooled a lie detector.Although not in a positive way 🙂

A day later I tossed my keys  at the front door of the store I was supposed to open while driving by. Imagine their surprise when no one was there to open the store. So I get a call. They want to know why I was quitting. My answer was simple. I don’t work for morons. I really don’t work for morons who accuse me of stealing. Yes at 23 I was already a bit of a smart ass.

I have never had a steady paycheck since. I have worked in sales but that was long before I knew what I know now. In hindsight that was a good thing! I consider myself lucky because I had to learn to do things in a different way. I had to make things happen rather than wait for things to happen. If I did not go out and find business I did not eat. I was unemployed every time I finished a job. That meant that about 5 times a month I was out of a job. It was just the way it was.

I began installing carpet for a living. I liked it because I could visually see how much I had gotten done each day. Then workers came in from other countries and drove the price of installation down. My income was cut in half by competition and having to lower my prices. Sound familiar? Yes it is the same crap that people are whining about now. What did I do? Did I cry for a bailout? Did I ask for a stimulus package so I could keep doing the same stupid crap and losing the same amount of money? No

I did what GOOD business people do. I changed the way I did business. Instead of just installing carpet I worked a deal with a carpet company to sell me carpet for 50 cents over what they paid the mill for it. Then I sold AND installed the carpet. What that meant was that I did LESS work and quadrupled my income. This was 20 years ago.

I also learned an important lesson. Never spend all the money you have made. Learn to live on half of what you bring in. This is quite the opposite from the belief that in order to be happy you must have certain stuff. To his day I have never had a new car. My current car is a 1999 jeep and it is the newest car I have ever had.  I live in a small house and pay off my credit cards every month. I certainly could afford much more than I have. I am happy with what I have now.

How is this possible?

Simple…It is possible because I was not stuck in the ONE WAY of thinking that so many have been sold. Instead of looking for answers, now people are trained to look for a bailout. They are more concerned with how many weeks of unemployment insurance they are going to  get than the are with how they can take a crap situation and improve upon it. They are more focused on who to blame that looking for opportunity.

Then they fall into a pit of depression because it is not the way it is supposed to be. The script that they were sold is not working out. The truth us this. Happiness was never supposed to be dependent on life being 100% predictable. It is supposed to challenge you. It is suppose to make you be creative. It is supposed to generate a wide range of emotions and not all of them are happy. They are suppose to energize you to move and create.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity pushes creativity. Predictability is the death of invention.

I am not talking about inventing a new product of machine. I am talking about inventing yourself. Not many people take the time to invent themselves.   The let other people tell them what happiness is and then they try to fit into other people’s definition of happiness. When that does not work they again fall into a pit of depression and helplessness.

They are letting someone else write the story of their lives.

A while back I wrote an article about barnacles. barnacles float around the ocean until the find a place that they can attach to and feed. Then they digest their brains. It is no longer necessary. If by some chance they become dislodged from where they attached they become food. They have no brain to help them find a new place to attach.

It is this kind of barnacle thinking that drives people to find someone else to make decisions for them. When a problem comes up the first thing they do is find someone else to fix it for them. They make decisions out of desperation and the lack of a functioning brain. They are willing to give up so much in order to stay safe and predictable. They give up so much in order to keep the lie alive.

If this is all a lie then what is the truth? Can you handle the truth? Do you even want to handle it? Do you think you are capable of handling it?

10 years ago we decided to try and teach some of the skills we had come up with. Anchoring- sticking a Pavlovian response on people to get them to feel  a  certain way when triggered. Great for sales and persuasion. We were doing it much differently than anyone else had done it.  Magical Rapport– light years beyond anything being taught. Really feeling and tuning on on yourself and the others you want to build rapport with. I have a great story of how we used that to get a 6000 dollar pool table for 2500 dollars just last week. Finally the 3D Mind- the most powerful yet easy to understand way of reinventing yourself and making changes. It was scary. I was ma,king great money in my business. More than most 9 to 5 people were making and I was only working 4 hours  a day for 3 days a week.

I had to make a change because my knees and back were not going to last forever. I was coughing all the time from breathing in carpet fibers and smoke from seaming up the carpet. The internet was little more than a place to post websites that were nothing more than announcement pages. No blogs. No video. No Twitter. No Facebook. Yet we had sometihng unique to offer. So instead of working 4 hours a day I was not working 12. I would work all day installing and selling carpet and all night anwsering emails to promote our business. We worked hard. It took 3 years before I could end the carpet business.

Now life is much different.

They say the truth will set you free. It certainly has for me. My life is pretty great. I get up and turn the radio on so I can listen to you guys stuck in traffic. I get my coffee sit on my back porch and think about starting my day. Then I come in and answer a few emails. Then look at the website. Then I go out for a while. I might go out on the lake or just go for a walk. Sometimes I get my best ideas when doing that. After I do this today I am going to work on my other house. I just planted grass and need to go get a battery for a truck I have. Then later I will sit at my computer again and just see what else comes up.

Life is good. Every day I have no clue if I am going to make money or not. I think that keeps me sharp.

So what is the truth??? The truth is this. No one is responsible for your life other than you. No one should decide what your version of happiness should be.

So today….start deciding on the story of your life the way you want it to be. Pretend that you have no story at all and start reinventing yourself as if you were not a barnacle. I know this is a mind blowing concept but for most of us it is a great time to do so. Redefine yourself with total abandonment of what your life has been. Allow yourself the freedom of letting your imagination run wild.

After you decide. Look for ways to make your new life true.

If you run into any block, That is where we come in. When you want to reinvent yourself you might hit a few walls. If you do then look at our 3D Mind product. To reinvent yourself you might have to re balance the way your brain works. You could join the Gold Member area or sign up for our new Jump Start program that we will be announcing next week.

Whatever you do it is time to reject the lie of fantasy happiness and start creating REAL happiness in your life.

Have fun

Tom and Kim