11 – January 11
“If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”—Michelangelo
You can learn how to play the piano. You can study music composition and theory, learn to read music and build dexterity in your fingers. You can buy the finest piano money can buy, rent an auditorium, sell tickets and gather an audience.
But if you don’t actually put your fingers on the keyboard and play—nothing will happen. You can sit in front of the piano and think “Ohmmm, I’m playing beautiful music, ohmmm…” but unless you’ve rigged a player piano, no music is going to come out of it.
I meet a lot of people who repeat their positive money affirmations every day, but never send out ships. They are not affirming—they are wishing. Affirmations aren’t magic words. They don’t conjure money out of the air. You use them to build your positive energy to the point where you start feeling and believing in your success—and with enough repetition, it becomes real to you, physically and emotionally in your body. From there you start feeling yourself motivated to take action. Action, backed up by the positive beliefs, creates the music.
A client of mine told me she was practicing her affirmations every day, but wasn’t sending out any ships. When I told her affirmations weren’t enough, that she had to reach out to people to sell her services, she rebelled. “Well,” she said sulkily, “I have a friend who’s in business and she doesn’t have to do that—she gets a lot of business through word-of-mouth referrals and never has to market her services.”
“Great!” I said. “I suggest you call her up and find out how she does it. If there is a magic way to get business to come to you without having to do any marketing, I’d love to know what it is. Let me know what you find out.”
She hasn’t returned my calls lately. My guess is wishing isn’t working.
Are you practicing? Sending out ships? Or wishing?
Today’s Affirmation:
“My affirmations inspire me to send out ships with abundant enthusiasm!”
My dad’s baby grand piano
It always amused me when so many of the auditioning singers were asked why they think they should be the next American Idol, and they replied, “I want it really badly!”
I just haven’t read of any successful people who, when asked how they did it, said, “Oh, I just wanted it badly and one day it showed up!”
Nope. Sorry, I’ve got to disillusion these people. After you want it really badly, it’s going to take talent, drive, ambition, and a lot of ship sending. Otherwise known as “hard work”.
“Hard work” seems like a dirty term to a lot of people, but those are usually people who hate their job. Here’s the switch: Hard work isn’t hard if you love what you’re doing. Oh, there will be times when you just don’t want to write another email, post another comment on Facebook or Twitter, attend another networking dinner, or make another sales call. But your love of your profession, of serving people in your unique and special way, of living your dream, of achieving your goals – that will carry you through. And you’ll have enough little wins and successes along the way that will boost your enthusiasm so the work won’t feel hard. The pleasure you get from your success will outweigh the hard parts.
The affirmations help you feel joy while you’re working, which makes you do the work, which gets you the success you desire. That’s the formula for success.
Because if you practice playing the piano while saying, “I hate playing the piano” you aren’t going to do it for long, are you? And for those of you who want to just affirm success without the “work” part, tell me how many affirmations you would have to do in front of the piano before you could play it?