Stuck To The Bedpost


The story was released last week about an elementary-age child who detested the thought of going back to school after Christmas vacation. He hated the idea so much that he glued his hand to his bedpost with his dad's industrial strength glue. Thinking ahead, the child made sure that a television was close by as he had planned to spend the rest of his life glued to the bedpost, foregoing the agony of attending school.

His mother discovered the quandary her son had initiated and tried nail remover for about an hour to no avail. In desperation, she finally called the fire department. They were finally able to free his hand after no small effort, and the child found himself back at school, with a very sore and bandaged hand.

Adults do the same thing every day. They 'tie their hand' to a dead-end job to make ends meet and pay the bills, but the reality is - they're stuck to the bedpost. Soon, creativity is stifled, life becomes a seeming endless routine, and change and other opportunities seem impossibly remote. Complacency becomes the default way of life, and the adult sits down to 'endure'
their days with no excitement or hope for change. Ironically, they often pass the time and numb the pain with a television set, year after year after year.

That would be the exact opposite of life at Advantage Conferences, where new thinking and new ideas are an exciting way of life. The worn-out paradigms you've grown accustomed to can be replaced with a truly stimulating, new reality empowered by the thinking and training of highly accomplished entrepreneurs.

Often, new ideas are spawned on our Mindset Tele-Mentoring calls or at the Mindset Mentoring SM Conference "indirectly". In other words, the Attendee is subconsciously toying with a new business idea, or mulling over how to tweak their current business when a single statement stimulates an ingenious new thought that turns out to be the exact missing ingredient and key to new growth.

You see, the training is rich in so many ways that it becomes catalytic to all kinds of new ideas for current and future business. The ongoing Mindset Mentoring SM challenges stale, stagnant thinking and germinates revolutionary new thoughts and possibilities. Sometimes it's not even the person hosting the call or being interviewed that provides the "Aha experience", but rather a comment or question from another Attendee who is not at all in tune with the newly inspired Attendee's financial or business situation. I love it when our "think tank"
environment comes up with totally unanticipated gems!

Be Encouraged

Mike Melvin
Advantage Conferences

Man Of Valor

Our measure of faith and power today is in direct proportion to our communion with Him. We hear His heart. We partake of His wisdom. We see His holiness and purity. The Holy Spirit makes us aware of our sin and uncleanness. Living in sin dissipates the power and blessings of God in our lives, but drawing near to His Spirit causes us to hate sin in our lives.

A man of valor believes he has the power to accomplish whatever God tells him to do, because Jesus said to His disciples, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NKJV).

The Spirit-filled person of valor rises up and speaks out. He knows what God wants, and he acts on it. Even before it happens, he speaks of it as though it has already come to pass. He knows that God “gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were” (Romans 4:17 NIV).

He doesn’t see obstacles, shortages, or lack. Like Caleb, who looked confidently into the Promised Land, he says, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30).

The man of valor knows and values the anointing of the Holy Spirit in his life. He will not allow sin and uncleanness to dissipate the anointing. He makes a clean break with sin. He keeps his mind and spirit clean. He knows that he cannot live without the anointing and presence of the Holy Spirit.

The life of faith is the only way to live.


From Don Ostrom’s book, Millionaire in the Pew.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Are you speaking success? Are you believing for great success? Are you thanking and praising God for that tremendous success in advance? In faith you will experience a new economy – God’s economy. Faith and money are inextricably linked. God’s economy will become more visible as your faith grows. His economy is of a much greater scale than what we have known in the past. In stewardship, humility and great power, we triumphantly move forward! TD

Blessings,

A long time ago in a remote valley, there
lived a farmer. One day he got tired of the
daily routine of running the farm and
decided to climb the cliffs that brooded
above the valley to see what lay beyond.

He climbed all day until he reached a ledge
just below the top of the cliff; there, to
his amazement was a nest, full of eggs.

Immediately he knew they were eagle's eggs
and, even though he knew it was profoundly
un-ecological and almost certainly illegal,
he carefully took one and stowed it in his
pack; then seeing the sun was low in the
sky, he realized it was too late in the day
to make the top and slowly began to make his
way down the cliff to his farm.

When he got home he put the egg in with the
few chickens he kept in the yard. The mother
hen was the proudest chicken you ever saw,
sitting atop this magnificent egg; and the
cockerel couldn't have been happier.

Sure enough, some weeks later, from the egg
emerged a fine, healthy egret. And as is in
the gentle nature of chickens, they didn't
balk at the stranger in their midst and
raised the majestic bird as one of their
own.

So it was that the eagle grew up with its
brother and sister chicks. It learned to do
all the things chickens do: it clucked and
cackled, scratching in the dirt for grits
and worms, flapping its wings furiously,
flying just a few feet in the air before
crashing down to earth in a pile of dust and
feathers.

It believed resolutely and absolutely it was
a chicken.

One day, late in its life, the
eagle-who-thought-he-was-a-chicken happened
to look up at the sky. High overhead,
soaring majestically and effortlessly on the
thermals with scarcely a single beat of its
powerful golden wings, was an eagle!

"What's that?!", cried the old eagle in awe.
"It's magnificent! So much power and grace!
It's beautiful!".

"That's an eagle", replied a nearby chicken,
"That's the King of the Birds. It's a bird
of the air... not for the likes of us. We're
only chickens, we're birds of the earth".

With that, they all cast their eyes
downwards once more and continued digging in
the dirt.

And so it was that the eagle lived and died
a chicken... because that's all it believed
itself to be.

See, we're not really born chickens or eagles, predestined to fail or succeed. We are all about as successful as we DECIDE to be, aren't we? We become what we think about.

Champion, you have the choice: either believe that you are what God said you are and not what others say you aren't, or you can be a chicken.

A Closer Look at Priorities

What are your priorities? One way of finding out what your priorities truly are is to observe how you spend your time and your money. Those areas of your life that receive the most time and money are your priorities. The question is - are our priorities ordered correctly?

One of the reasons we believe so strongly in helping people participate in Free Enterprise, Entrepreneurship, and Personal Business Ownership, is that once a person’s business is properly and successfully established, they begin having access to more time and money, thereby becoming much more likely to live their life in a more fulfilling manner. They are more likely to optimize other, more important areas of their life.

Stated another way, successful entrepreneurship can afford us the luxury of being able to spend more time and more money on the things that are truly important – Godly ordained priorities. Rather than being enslaved by money (making it), we can gradually be freed from the necessity of creating it, and begin living our lives in a more exciting, meaningful, and rewarding fashion!

The following categories of priorities are placed in order of importance, as believed and taught by the officers, trainers and speakers associated with Advantage Conferences. You may be surprised to notice that “business” falls into 4th place in order of importance. However, it is that very category that can help fortify the other three categories - helping them become more fully optimized. Indeed, successful business can be the facilitator to a wonderful life!

Are you paying attention to and excelling in each of the following categories?

God

Family

Health

Business

Note: if you have a job, you’ll find that you spend the majority of your time – Creating Revenues, which in essence means that most of a wage-earner’s waking hours are spent focused on making money. Balanced entrepreneurs question the emphasis of spending most of their time making money, and know that there is a better way - choosing to work smarter rather than harder. Do we as human beings really find fulfillment in constantly pursuing money? The answer is “no, we really don’t”.

As a successful entrepreneur, you will, in due course, be able to decrease the number of hours that the normal wage or salary earner spends on money making activities – one of the greatest reasons (among many) to have a personally owned, successful enterprise.

The reasons a successful entrepreneur can spend less hours a day at creating revenues includes artful delegation, successful duplication, and also, finding the right business that not only creates monthly profits, but also affords Residual Income – the latter being one of the most sought after concepts in business.

With the proper business vehicle (Company and Concept), Residual Income can genuinely become a reality. Residual Income means you are no longer trading hours for dollars. Revenues come into your life based on past decisions, past work, and past investments. It means you are not constantly relegated to exchanging your most precious commodity – YOUR TIME – to make a buck.

I believe it is time for people to approach life’s priorities more seriously. Someone once said that so much time is spent at work (a corporation) that their job becomes their god! That may be a bit hard to comprehend, but it is undeniably true that too many people place too much dependence on a job, a salary, and a company for which they work. Those things can insidiously become our gods if our trust is on them rather than Creator God.

We can make better money. We can spend more time with family. We can honestly place our dependence on God and not a company, job, or salary.