This is COURAGE week for me in the Franklin Makeover.  I have always looked at the word COURAGE as the absence of fear.

Let me take you back to September 2015 when I was invited by my friend, Flo Bradley, to take a look at this course called the Master Key Mastermind Alliance.  I remember that as I watched the launch videos for this course, my resistance was whispering in my ear, “you don’t have time for this”.  However, there was one single sentence that MarkJ spoke that piqued my curiosity.  I remember him saying, that you will not only overcome your fears, you will eliminate them.  Wow, how grand would life be with no fear.  Fear was holding me back at the time and I really felt paralyzed from taking action toward achieving my goals.

I mastered the daily requirements for this course and around weeks 13/14, I experienced a massive shift in my thinking and consequently, my actions.  Imagine what it would feel like to move toward rather than retreat from your authentic self.  Stay true to these daily habits and exercises and you will experience your own shift in your hero’s journey to your authentic self.

I am forever grateful to Flo Bradley for having the COURAGE to invite me into the Master Key Experience.

Since this time, what I’m learning is that sustained COURAGE is really 80% specialized knowledge.  When I break this down for me, it’s really about learning, applying and mastering the specialized knowledge that I require to build my confidence, which translates into action in the pursuit of my goals.

As MarkJ illustrated in this week’s video, be the Hedgehog not the Fox.  The Hedgehog has and focuses on specialized knowledge where the Fox lacks specialized knowledge and knows a lot about a lot with no plan.  No plan, no progress.

COURAGE is making progress which means spending 80% of my scheduled time in the A & B activities that drive my business forward with 50% on the A activity and 30% on the B activity.  Progress, not perfection.  Here we go!

Peace, Love and Harmony to all.

One of my tribe members so beautifully illustrates COURAGE in her life.  Enjoy:  Week 21 – Courage – by Deb Schnitzer

It’s week #19 in the Master Key Experience and week #6 in the Franklin Makeover.  I chose Persistence as my virtue for this week.  This means I ranked Persistence as #6 in the list of 13 virtues that I require and seek improvement in my life.

Now I’ve been very successful in several businesses over the past 20 years, however, there are areas I wish to excel in that my persistence seems to wane at times.

As the week began, I always seek insight in my daily Sit or meditation time.  All that kept coming up for me was this unpleasant feeling of defeat and judgment on myself that I’m not where I should be in my business.  I am so grateful for the residual income I have created and receive every Monday without fail, but my goal when I started was to reach the level of income I enjoy in real estate sales so if I choose to step out of real estate then I have that option.

I decided to persist in my Sit seeking insight on my persistence virtue when something told me to look up.  And there they were.  They have been adorning my office shelf for years yet I had forgotten about them.  In 2013, I was awarded two awards simultaneously for Persistence.  The persistence award  reads, “The race goes not always to the swift but to those who keep running.  You have powers you never dreamed of.  You are capable of doing things you never thought possible.  There are no limitations on what you can do.”  The 2^nd award is titled “Whatever It Takes, Above and Beyond”.  Isn’t it interesting how the Universe has a way of reminding us of what we are capable of.

Wow!  How had I forgotten this and more importantly how have I stepped away from my persisting toward my goal?  I find myself questioning, “is this my true bliss?”  I really don’t doubt that it is.  What I believe is that when I achieved goals in the past, I was operating out of pure ignorance on fire with unbridled enthusiasm and we know that enthusiasm will move our subconscious mind further and faster toward our goal achievement.

I also know that in the past I was not leveraging DEFT, OATS and Framed Firelighters in my business building activities.  Therefore, I was extremely out of balance in my personal and business life.  I experienced burnout and exhaustion and backed away.  I can not back away, I must persist.

Reading Og Mandino three times a day is so helpful.  Og wrote in The Greatest Salesman in the World, “Nor I allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.”  Guilty!

What keeps coming up for me is focus on the skills because the skills build confidence and confidence creates action.  Action that is sustainable for a lifetime with balance in all areas of my life.  Og says, “Never I forget that many have attained great wealth and success with only one sales talk, delivered with excellence.”  BAM!!!

When the Universe answers your call for insight, it flows from everywhere.  I read daily from a book titled, Saving Grace by C. John Miller.  There was a message this week that goes like this:

If you don’t stick to things, if you don’t prepare, if you don’t persevere through difficulty, you’ll always be frustrated because deep down what you really want is your own way.  You want the success, but not the blood and mud that goes with it.  Whose will are you doing?  There is a Father who loves you so much that he punished his own sinless Son for you.  He welcomes you as righteous just as his Son is righteous.  Give him your will.

Peace, Love and Harmony to all.

There is nothing sexy about the word DISCIPLINE.  Just the thought of discipline elicits thoughts of pain, drudgery and difficulty.  The most common new year’s resolution is weight loss.  For most it requires developing discipline in the areas of working out and making conscious decisions about what you decide to consume for nutrition. So why do we seek more of it?  We seek change, but it doesn’t always come easy.

Discipline is required to get me to my goals.  If I want to finish that half marathon race, then I require discipline in following a running schedule.  If I want to generate a 5-figure a month residual income check equal to my real estate income, then I require discipline in growing my team.  If I want to compete in figure competitions, I require discipline in doing the figure workouts, posing and following the food plan required of me to compete in this category.

Once you have mastered the art of discipline, do what is required without even thinking about it.  It just happens without fail.  The question becomes how bad do you want it.  How enthusiastic are you about achieving your goal.

What’s really interesting in having this virtue so high on my list of virtues to improve on is that I often get compliments from people who say to me, “you’re so disciplined!”  What they don’t know is that you have to move through dis-ease in order to experience ease.  So it’s true, I have conquered discipline in some areas of my life, but in other areas, it still eludes me.

One thing that I find that helped me to appreciate and feel grateful for how far I’ve come in this virtue is making a list of all that I am disciplined in first.  Here’s my list and I encourage you to make your own.  Lead with gratitude and more will flow!

• Daily quiet time
• Daily gratitude journal (list of 10 Monday through Saturday and 20 on Sunday)
• Required reading 3x/day
• Daily Prayer
• Daily Meditation
• Food Log
• Exercise
• 7-8 hours of rest each night
• 100+ ounces of water consumption daily
• Weekly check-in with my fitness coach with photos and food log
• Blog weekly

Making your own list allows you to be kind to yourself in your pursuit of Discipline.

Peace, Love and Harmony to all.

My virtue this week is “well-organized”.  Remember we are covering the virtues in the Franklin Makeover based on the order in which we require the most work first.

I can’t tell you how many times I have taken organization classes in hopes of finding the missing piece to catapult my efforts further faster.  I believe dis-organization is a form of orchestrated chaos leaving overwhelm in its path.  But why though?  A form of resistance maybe?

This week has moved at a super crazy pace as my real estate business was full and profitable.  I found that the week was slipping away yet I had spent little time focusing on my virtue of “well-organized”.  I kept glancing at my desk top and the piles of paper and feeling a bit of a failure at being well-organized. Does one’s desktop really define well-organized?

In Master Key 18:33 it says “This week concentrate upon your power to create; seek insight, perception; try to find a logical basis for the faith which is in you.

During my next sit I decided to seek insight on well-organized.  I was reminded of two beautiful examples of “well-organized” that I had encountered during the week.  Oh my how I almost missed this.  Never underestimate the power of a Sit.

There is no thought in my mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power and organizes a huge instrumentality of means.  ~Emerson

 Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is the journey so few are willing to take, the journey to one’s authentic self.  Life is full of conditioning that we often have no clue that we are even cut off from following our bliss in life.  I love the Master Key Mastermind Alliance because this course is all about busting away the cement (conditioning) in our lives and discovering our true self and taking the hero’s journey and discovering and following your bliss.

Why do members choose to quit MKMMA?  They view this journey as danger rather than an adventure.  Change can be scary, unfamiliar, and much of society not just our members choose to stay with what is comfortable and familiar.

The dragon is the voice that holds us back that says, “you can never do that”, and so the cement or life time of conditioning keeps us stuck and separated from our authentic self.  The hero is the voice that says, “yes I am doing that” and seeks out change and follows their bliss.  Choose to take your hero’s journey!

Peace, Love and Harmony to all.

Ep. 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — ‘The Hero’s Adventure’