Look around you. Get up high and look at your social network. Friends. Family. Online.

There are two kinds of people in your world. Two.

One tiny group wants you to win. They want you to succeed. They want you to develop enough wealth to make your life secure and better for your family.

They might push you. They might challenge you. They might argue with you. They might APPEAR to be against you but they are constantly TRYING to move you toward your CHOSEN OUTCOMES.

More common are the people who resist the idea of your success. They resist you being happier than they are. They resist you being wealthier than they are.

They might not even be aware of their influence on you. But you must protect yourself from those who steal your energy and distract you from reaching your CHOSEN OUTCOMES.

The emotional vampire is someone in your life who has discovered a way to suck energy from your life.

All successful people face the problem of having people in their lives that suck the energy from their wealth building outcomes.

If you are on the right path, you’ve definitely experienced this problem.

Today, you find out how to TAKE CONTROL of the solution to getting your ENERGY and PROPER FOCUS back. You learn how to get rid of the vampire(s) and find personal motivation when your energy has been drained.

Now, why in heaven’s name would anyone want to suck energy from you?

My son came home from University one night this April and said, “Dad, there is a big project in the business class. I have three partners and they are sitting on their asses doing nothing. All three are fourth and fifth year students! They won’t work.”

He was incensed and seemed to have forgotten that this scenario had happened more than once in the last five years.

I explained as I have before that the science of freeloading is simple. Freeloading will never go away until they are punished for their behavior. But almost no one wants to punish the freeloader except the few that do the work.

“You have two choices. You can do everything in your power to bring these idiots to justice. You can try to convince your prof they are doing nothing. They clearly aren’t helping and essentially they are sabotaging you and the project.” The question is do you use all of your energy and try to get them out of the course or do the entire project yourself and give away three “A”‘s and keep one for yourself.”

“They don’t deserve an “A,” or anything else, Dad.”

“Doesn’t matter. You do. You will never see them again. They are no competition for you. They are PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLIES. They will work for the county. You’ll grow a million dollar business.

“But you can’t grow a million dollar business if you spend all of your energy getting the stupidity of others dealt with.”

And it IS as simple as that.

You can seek fair and reasonable justice, revenge and compensation…or you can put that energy into YOUR PRESENT and YOUR FUTURE.

This is a real world problem. The successful person does 80-100% and the others involved do next to nothing, or nothing at all.

He grumbled a bit and then I went right back to push the right buttons in his brain.

“Kiddo, you have been bound up with emotional vampires again. And it’s going to happen over and over again.”

“So you really want me to do the work for them and REWARD CRAPPY BEHAVIOR?”

“You walk through the fire of doing what is best for you and those you love. You can’t concern yourself with the outcome of someone else getting something they don’t deserve.”

It’s not easy to hear this kind of thinking. It only comes with many similar experiences.

“But, if I get the A, so do they. They don’t deserve it and you always say ‘Never reward behavior you don’t want replicated.’ So you are contradicting yourself.”

My son reads too much of my work.

“It is a paradox, son.”

I’m here because I want a solution to the paradox.”

“Crummy options in choices make up a big part of life. There is a right decision, but that doesn’t mean the decision will ‘feel good.'” Either way is going to suck. One choice is you do all the work and get the A. Join the Defectors and get an F. Worse? You do a half way job and get a C. In each case, defectors contribute nothing to your project.”

“But, it’s harder than just that. I am stuck in the same room with them. If it weren’t for that, I’d do the damn project and just get the A. But I have to listen to them all month on this thing. They are driving me nuts. What’s worse is one of them will be presenting the project in front of the class, not me, so he can say anything he wants about who did what, and the fact that it wasn’t his idea to use a certain picture or headline or to arrange the stuff on the presentation board like I am doing.”

“So what do you want to do?” (I really am feeling his pain.)

“I don’t like the game. I want to do the project myself.”

“You’ll definitely do it yourself and you will learn the critical lesson of how the blisteringly stupid can often rise to the top, even for a short while.”

He looked down struggling with options in his mind.

“Here’s the deal, son. IT IS A NO-BRAINER. You’re going to do an AMAZING JOB on this. You are going to go to bat and make a presentation that looks like the whole school was a part of it. This is going to be your best work.”

“A feel good message…really Dad? That is lame.”

“Oh….no….it’s not.”

“Son, what was the joke about quantum mechanics you told me once?”

He looked at me quizzically.

“You mean Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar and …he doesn’t.”

“Exactly.”

He looked stupified like a Harry Potter Spell had struck his brain. The light bulb.

“The point is, You have to be intelligent to understand the joke?! and I promise you, they will never understand the joke.”

“They get punished later because they eventually screw everyone including themselves?”

“In good time, kiddo…never when you’d feel justified for it…but in good time.”

Vampires Need to Be Defeated

The undergrads were vampires and they needed to be defeated. They were psychological bullies. They were cruel manipulators.

What ultimately happened in May?

By doing the opposite of what normal human behavior would have dictated (punishing them) and instead excelling, my son got a “B” and the bullies got a “B” as well.

Vampires come for you in one of two ways…

Two Types of Emotional Vampires

These problem people come in two types. Those with good intentions and those who have planned to throw you under the bus.

You can communicate to the well intended what you need from them in life.

Those who take you off track…must be cut off.

After you deal with the others, you deal with yourself.

While not as venomous, your Self can be a big obstacle!

Millionaire’s Survey reveals You are Your Own Risk

You first deal with the rest of the world, then you turn that same process to your own behaviors.

Recently a survey of millionaires worth from one to twenty million dollars was completed.

You can learn a great deal when you pay attention to what successful people are doing.

The first thing that caught my eye in the most recent Millionaire’s Survey as “new” was the number of millionaires having personal mentors and coaches.

Winners rarely make it without someone who sees you and your skills in a different light than you do.

In fact, it was found that 2/3 of millionaires have a coach they report to. An accountability person.

TWO THIRDS OF MILLIONAIRES HAVE A PERSONAL COACH.

How much of a clue does someone need to see that correlation?

How many people on your block have a coach or a mentor?

Someone who has succeeded in spite of the most difficult of challenges.

Probably none…or one. And they will never grow wealth.

It’s really tough to build a life that matters without a coach.

Find the right person and tell them that you want them to be the person you report to.

You don’t need a boss. You need to be accountable.

You need someone to tell you what you REALLY CAN DO.

Your view of yourself is almost certainly not as accurate as that of a good coach. A mentor, a coach will point out your blind spots and will strongly encourage you to reduce time with unproductive people.

You need more from a coach, but wealthy people report that one of the key things they get from a coach is accountability.

No one likes to look stupid and not get stuff done. Especially when it’s easy stuff.

OK, the coach was one factor that caught my eye. The second was more revealing.

The surprise?

Can You Hold Yourself Accountable?

Before you come to the big revelation, I want you to at least have a “substitute coach” for a few weeks.

A way to hold yourself accountable and track your progress is by starting an Accountability Journal.

Right now, begin taking notes about what you are doing today. What is REALLY happening in REAL TIME.

Most people think they have done so much in their “busy day.”

They’ve really done nothing.

TAKE NOTES all day long.

The FIRST FACTOR you look at in personal accountability is what specifically did you do in the last three hours that catapults you toward your highest SELF CHOSEN OUTCOMES?

Most people?

They do nothing or invest 7 – 10 minutes.

Result next week, month, year?

It’s obvious.

This is why a COACH is critical but you can at least PROVE TO YOURSELF that you need a PROVEN mentor to be in your corner.

And you have to begin to trust your Self.

Self accountability at this stage is iffy at best. But you need to begin today and you don’t have a world class coach today.

In your journal, state your outcomes. Itemize your plan to meet your outcomes.

Journal what you do every day that’s significant. Once you’ve selected your coach, share this information with them and only them.

Journaling not only helps you hold yourself accountable while you line up a great coach (it seems more “formal” when you write your goals down), but it’s also a good place for you to work out your challenges, difficulties, and fears until you get the right person in your corner. Because those fears are going to be realized and your coach is going to be there to help.

Your coach will chuckle when you tell him you don’t like failure.

Get used to it.

Your mentor has failed more times than you could guess…if he is for real. If he hasn’t had THREE MASSIVE FAILURES in life, the chances he is truly successful is almost ZERO.

Failure is going to be the number one topic of conversation. Don’t get me wrong – you won’t be talking about failure as a philosophical issue, per se. You’ll be talking about what to do when you fail. How to fail quickly. You’ll learn how to avoid failure and turn many failures into ridiculously grand successes.

Failure is…100% crucial.

Failure is a big part of everyone who succeeds.

Coming to face failure and fear is not simple for anyone. You should hate to fail, but you will never let failure be dramatically important in life.

How to Recognize Fear

Sometimes fear comes out in unproductive ways, such as procrastination. You find that you’re not following your map or making any progress towards what you think you want.

If you find it difficult to be motivated, fear might be at the root of your procrastination.

In most cases where you find fear is causing inaction, the “cure” is to be taking action.

It sounds circular, doesn’t it? Fear is causing paralysis. The solution is to MOVE.

How?

This is cool and you’re going to discover a little known secret about millionaires….

More Millionaire’s Survey Data?

OK here is the startling piece of data that was reported:

People with a net worth of a million dollars or more who didn’t inherit their wealth had an average of 3.5 major failures in their life.

They built a big business that went belly up. They went bankrupt. They had a divorce. Big stuff. On average it took 3.5 MAJOR failures to get to millionaire status.

Meanwhile, turning away from the 1%… when you look at people who were in the 50th to 80th percentile in income, they had an average of 0.5 major lifetime failures in their life.

“Normal” people never have failed once or have never had a major failure in their life.

Or you can say it like this: People who succeed have 7 times as many failures as people who accomplish nothing.

People think by being completely risk averse that they will be safe.

Wrong.

That aversion is what causes people to go broke.

Attempting to be completely risk averse is simply bad use of judgment.

To have ANY CHANCE at building even a MODEST amount of wealth, you need to screw up a few times….big time… in life.

If you don’t, you will be a permanent failure.

Hillary Clinton, for example, was the first woman to be a serious candidate for the Presidency. She failed.

When she failed, her probability of success dramatically INCREASED. The same holds true for women in general.

But it’s not just “taking action” that causes success.
Action is definitely big.

BUT BUT BUT…

This is the sad truth:

The way to take a lot of action and not get anywhere is through perfectionism. If your fear – your life schema – is manifesting as perfectionism, you’ll find that you’re probably taking a whole lot of action – and maybe even blasting your way through several steps on your road map. But you won’t get to the destination.

The problem is that because of your life schemas, the closer you come to your outcome, the slower your move forward. Suddenly nothing seems right to you. For example, if you’re writing a book, you start an endless cycle of re-writing. Or perhaps you start writing query letters, but you never get any sent out because you’re trying to tweak the letter until it’s absolutely perfect.

In short, you’re keeping yourself from reaching your goal because you never really get around to fully completing the last steps.

You may even pride yourself on being a perfectionist.

But if you won’t let anything go until it’s absolutely perfect – and you find that nothing ever IS absolutely perfect – then it’s time to sit down and examine your fears and resistance to change.

If you die before you are perfect, now how are you doing?

Get stuff done. Make lists of tasks you will do. Then beat the resistance to give up and instead follow your SELF CHOSEN desires.

What are those desires?

You wrote them down YESTERDAY. LAST MONTH. LAST YEAR.

What you wrote down TODAY is a DISTRACTION.

Blaming Others

Another thing you’ll need to recognize as fear is when you find yourself making excuses or rationalizing your lack of progress or enthusiasm. You may start faltering on your path to change, and then quickly make an excuse as to why you faltered.

You go on a diet. You do OK. Then suppose you had a few days of weakness where you indulged in all sorts of desserts and fattening foods.

At this point, the correct thing to do would be to step back, acknowledge that you slipped a bit, and get back on track. You’d also want to examine the reasons you faltered – but you wouldn’t beat yourself up over it. After all, a few crummy days is pretty meaningless over the scope of a year.

But, that’s not always the way it plays out. Instead, some people will make excuses and blame others. “My husband bought cupcakes and he knows I can’t resist them! It’s his fault I went on a binge.”

The problem with blaming others is that it means we’re giving control of our lives to someone else or some extraneous event. In order to make real, lasting, and positive changes in our lives, we need to realize that we are solely responsible for everything that happens to us, both good and bad. We can’t just take the credit for the good stuff! We must also take the responsibility for the “bad” stuff.

This notion alone can make people resistant to change. For many it’s a habit to look at something outside ourselves as the reason something bad happened to us. After all, it’s a hard thing to admit that we failed because we made bad choices. It’s much easier – and much more comforting – to blame our “bad luck” on something else.

Consider this: imagine that two students (Joe and Jack) take a math test. Both of them fail.

Joe says, “I got an F because the teacher made the test too hard. She included a bunch of trick questions. It wasn’t fair.”

Jack says, “I failed the test because I didn’t study hard enough. I will next time.”

Now think about these two students. When the next test comes up, what happens? Joe won’t change his study habits, because he believes it’s the teacher’s fault that he didn’t pass the last test. He won’t change because there’s no reason to change.

On the other hand, we have Jack who took responsibility for his poor grade. Because he took responsibility, he knows he also has the power to do better on the next test. And he does, because he studies harder than ever.

This is why taking personal responsibility is so important, because it also means we have the power to control our future. If we aren’t meeting our goals or making the changes we want to make, we need only step back and honestly ask ourselves “why?”

If you find yourself answering for your failures by pointing a finger outside yourself, it’s time to start taking responsibility. Be honest. What could you have done different to change the outcome? Here it is…

Recognizing Self-Sabotage

As mentioned earlier, resistance to change can and does cause self-sabotage. Your job is to recognize anything you might be doing to squash your own success.

For example, look at your friends. Are you hanging out with people who are time and energy vampires, drama queens?

Do they take up so much of your time that don’t really have the time or energy to focus on your own stuff?

If so, you may be sabotaging yourself. You can tell yourself you’re just being a “good friend,” or a “good relative,” but what you need to do is examine why you’ve chosen to hang out with people who suck away your time and energy….your life.

Don’t wind up popping your own life bubble.

Believe in Yourself Through Action

Sometimes it is hard to believe that you can make your dreams a reality, especially if you’re just starting out. For example, if you say your goal is to have a one-million dollar business, that negative voice is going to have a good laugh at your expense and say, “but you live in a trailer….!”

So what you need to do is go back to your road map and focus on the mini-outcomes first. Instead of focusing on the overall goal (building a million-dollar business), focus on step one: your business idea.

And the good news is that with each smaller step you successfully complete, you are all that much closer to your overall goal. Before you know it, the negative voice won’t be able to say anything bad at all, because you’ve already made a permanent positive change and met your goal.

There will be days and weeks and months where you aren’t just taking little steps every day. As “action” replaces “inaction” as part of your personality and identity, you will BUILD MOMENTUM by taking NUMEROUS SIGNIFICANT ACTIONS each day.

That’s when you start to go, “WOW” and things begin to change in life….quickly.

Your next step is to take action right now. No, not tomorrow – right now.

You might be tempted to put it off because you’ll still be energized tomorrow (and it’s true, you will be). But why put it off? Why not start right now?

You don’t have to do anything earth shattering today, but at least get started on the first step. You don’t have to change your entire life. Instead, choose that one outcome, that one positive change you’d like to make in your life. And then get clear about it and DO IT.

Once you’ve done that, create your road map. How will you achieve your outcomes? What tangible steps will you take to get there? What mini-outcomes will you set for yourself?

Tweak Your Road Map

Next it’s time to observe and listen. How do you feel as you start working on your road map? Are you unproductive? Are you finding yourself being a perfectionist?

What other fears do you see cropping up? Nip those in the bud now and say goodbye to them forever.

Finally, find supportive people, get a real coach, keep a journal, get things done NOW and TODAY and treat yourself well.

And remember this: when you do this…. you deserve it.