Don't Follow the Follower

I received this in my inbox early Friday morning, as I always receive a "Friday Story" by being on Bob Proctors email list, and I wanted to share because it is an awesome story. If you are not on Bob's list you can go here to sign up.

Processionary caterpillars travel in long, undulating lines, one creature behind the other. Jean Hanri Fabre, the French entomologist, once lead a group of these caterpillars onto the rim of a large flowerpot so that the leader of the procession found himself nose to tail with the last caterpillar in the procession, forming a circle without end or beginning.

Through sheer force of habit and, of course, instinct, the ring of caterpillars circled the flowerpot for seven days and seven nights, until they died from exhaustion and starvation. An ample supply of food was close at hand and plainly visible, but it was outside the range of the circle, so the caterpillars continued along the beaten path.

People often behave in a similar way. Habit patterns and ways of thinking become deeply established, and it seems easier and more comforting to follow them than to cope with change, even when that change may represent freedom, achievement, and success.

If someone shouts, "Fire!" it is automatic to blindly follow the crowd, and many thousands have needlessly died because of it. How many stop to ask themselves: Is this really the best way out of here?

So many people "miss the boat" because it's easier and more comforting to follow - to follow without questioning the qualifications of the people just ahead - than to do some independent thinking and checking.

A hard thing for most people to fully understand is that people in such numbers can be so wrong, like the caterpillars going around and around the edge of the flowerpot, with life and food just a short distance away. If most people are living that way, it must be right, they think. But a little checking will reveal that throughout all recorded history the majority of mankind has an unbroken record of being wrong about most things, especially important things. For a time we thought the earth was flat and later we thought the sun, stars, and planets traveled around the Earth. Both ideas are now considered ridiculous, but at the time they were believed and defended by the vast majority of followers. In the hindsight of history we must have looked like those caterpillars blindly following the follower out of habit rather than stepping out of line to look for the truth.
It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything - a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood.

But for some reason most people wait passively for success to come to them - like the caterpillars going around in circles, waiting for sustenance, following nose to tail - living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully.

It's a good idea to step out of the line every once in a while and look around to see if the line is going where we want it to go. If it is not, it might be time for a new leader and a new direction.

For those who have tried repeatedly to break a habit of some kind, only to repeatedly fail, Mary Pickford said, "Falling is not failing, unless you fail to get up." Most people who finally win the battle over a habit they have wanted to change have done so only after repeated failures. And it's the same with most things.

The breaking of a long-time habit does seem like the end of the road at the time - the complete cessation of enjoyment. Suddenly dropping the habit so fills our minds with the desire for the old habitual way that, for a while, it seems there will no longer be any peace, any sort of enjoyment. But that's not true. New habits form in a surprisingly short time, and a whole new world opens up to us.

So, if you've been trying to start in a new direction, you might do well to remember the advice of Mary Pickford: breaking an old habit isn't the end of the road; it's just a bend in the road. And falling isn't failing, unless you don't get up.

Earl NightingaleFrom The Essence of Success

Tarantula's in Network Marketing Part II of II

Okay, so now we all know I was a hysterical little girl deathly afraid of tarantulas and how I overcame my fear and got over it and now can hold my daughter Jessica’s tarantula Vorto. If you don’t know the entire story but want to read about it, check out my previous blog. And just to prove I did hold him here are two pictures of me with Vorto.


















So here is another lesson I learned by watching Vorto one day. If you don’t know, Tarantulas eat live crickets, so Jessica brings a couple home for Vorto and we put them in his glass enclosure, here is a picture of that.

And the cool thing about watching a tarantula catch his prey and eat it is pretty interesting and something that made me think of the newest way to build your internet business.

Vorto didn’t run around his home chasing the crickets like a crazed spider and getting all tired out, hoping to grab one or the other which ever he could get in his grasp and spitting his web this way and that. Kind of like newbie network marketers who will speak with anyone within a few feet of them, and just spew out all this information trying to get anyone into their new business.

What Vorto did was just pick a comfortable spot and he waited and waited and waited, for what seemed like a long time to me, but was really only a few minutes. But he waited until one of the crickets came up to him and still he didn’t snatch them up, he waited until they got a little closer, and closer still, until the crickets antennae were touching his legs and then the tiny hair on his legs (now I am not in anyway suggesting you let prospects touch your legs, this is just an analogy ok?). The cricket got closer and closer, getting more and more curious and when he was right underneath the spider, that is when Vorto moved faster than I could blink and he had the cricket and pulled him in. I couldn’t stay and watch after that, but here is my point. Vorto waited for the cricket to come to him and then he made his move, he didn’t chase. He even overlooked the first cricket that did that and waited until the bigger cricket showed up. And that is what the professional network marketer does.

He finds a way to draw in his prospects through articles, google ads, autoresponders, systems, whatever promotion that particular leader is using, and if he/she is smart, they will be using a lot of them. They have a system in place that generates their own leads, has prospects making the first step towards them and with the right system, even get paid before they speak to that prospect. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather build my business the tarantula way then the old fashioned way. I want to pick and choose who I work with and I also want them to find me. If my lead/prospect is not willing to do some work finding the right leader, they probably are not going to want to do any work.

To learn more about this brand of mlm and building your own online business, get a free report here. Or check out some awesome ebooks available about building online here.

P.S. There was also a lesson to be learned from the original story about my big brother Joe scaring me with the picture. As even something that seemed so devastating at the time taught me something and made me stronger in the long run. So a huge shout out and thanks to my big bro Joe, who without I wouldn’t have this story (and plenty more)! You really were doing it for my own good. LOL.

A tarantula in network marketing!!??

Part I of II

A tarantula in network marketing, now that would be scary, but let’s put it into perspective. My oldest daughter has a tarantula, I know, I know, YUCK! But as I always say things happen for a reason and you can learn something from every experience. So here are the things I learned by Jessica (my daughter) having a tarantula.

The first is personal and may seem like it has nothing to do with network marketing, but it does. I was deathly afraid of tarantulas almost my entire life, since I can remember. It probably had something to do with my brother chasing me with a full blown poster of a tarantula until I was sitting in the corner crying hysterically. Do you have a visual? LOL. But anyway, I was scared of them and all spiders for that matter, but when Jessica brought this tarantula home, I faced my fear and held it. Only for a second mind you, but I did do it. I overcame my fear by telling myself it was silly to be scared it was not going to bite me and even if it did, I wouldn’t die. It might hurt a bit, but I would survive. Well I have become more accustomed to the tarantula – which by the way is named Vorto – Vorto is Otrov spelled backward and Otrov means poisonous in Croation. I know, and I held it right? Well since that day I have been even more courageous and I had it on my belly the other day. Felt really weird. Don’t get a visual of that please. Well my point is this. I could have continued to be scared and not held Vorto, but I made the decision to do it anyway. And that is a skill needed in any business but especially a home based online business in the network marketing industry.

If you are going to build a business and speak with people you are going to have to face some of your fears like rejection, communication, either written or oral, learning new skills, your friends and family possibly laughing at you, failure and there are plenty more. You are going to have to decide what is important to you and how badly you want it. You see I didn’t want to be afraid of the spider but something ingrained in me a long ago time ago, which served no purpose now was holding me back.

What is holding you back? What will it take to get you past it? It starts with a thought, so what are you thinking about?

A great book I would recommend is "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" by Susan Jeffers. Great for personal development and to move past your fears. My mentor when I first got started in this industry, and whom I still work with Aaron Rashkin, a successful entreprenuer and six figure income earner, recommended that book to me years ago, and it has proven to be an invaluable part of my library.


Check back for part II of Tarantula’s in Network Marketing and some pictures of me with Vorto!