June 5th, 2017 The man who sleeps on the floor can never fall out of bed

     In one of my last days at work, I heard a great philosophy quote from a TV show. The quote was, The man who sleeps on the floor can't fall out of bed. Sounds like a dumb quote but it actually means a whole lot to me. Just so you know, this quote came from the show Martin. So like always let's dive in.

     Like any other philosophy quote, we can't fully understand the quote by just reading it. The way I translate the idea of sleeping on the floor as hitting rock bottom. If you are sleeping on the floor in modern day it likely means that you can not afford to sleep in a bed. The second part of the quote essentially means to me, once you're at your lowest you can't go any lower. All of the little things that we used to stress about, no longer affect us the same way. Why you might ask, well it's because you have bigger things to worry about.

     What kind of Books by Josh post oils this be if I didn't relate this quote to myself or someone I know. I've theoretically slept on the floor and let me tell you it's hard. There's no guarantee of rising back up by doing the same things as you previously did. You are forced to shift your focus onto solving the biggest problem of the bunch. You obtain a drive that no one can put out. You stop stressing falling out of bed, basically things that used to get you riled up. In my case when I quit my job as a manager to pursue my own endeavors I stop worrying about all of my friends' problems. I used to always take their problems as my own. This was great for them but bad for my productivity. When I was "sleeping on the floor" I had to focus on getting my butt off the floor. I focused soo much on writing my book that I didn't answer my phone for anyone while I was writing. By the way, I was writing for 16hrs straight each day.

     Why is it that we wait until we hit rock bottom to stop stressing the little things? I'm seriously asking here because it's mind boggling how we worry about the little things that are unimportant. Why should we worry about the NBA finals, whoever wins will not affect us in any real way? Unless you are an owner of the team or work for the organization, then don't focus on it. Focus on making sure that you never have to sleep on the floor. It shouldn't take hitting that point to motivate you to only focus on the things you can control. Like I said, I was the same way. The only reason that I changed was because I no longer had a guaranteed source of income. That forced me to bring out my best, this is something that is pretty simple to explain. If I didn't hustle, then I didn't eat. At the time of writing this post, I have walked away from my current job in sales. Why you might be asking, well for that answer you have to stay tuned for the next episode of The Books by Josh Show. If you enjoyed this post feel free to let me know. So like always, I'll catch you guys in the next one.

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March 7th 2017, My take on the famous Confucius teaching on Personal Excellence

   I've had this philosophy quote sitting in my list of blog topics for a while. The reason why I wrote this quote down in my list of possible topics is because of what it represents. Personal excellence is something that I want to achieve. I believe that we should all strive for personal excellence. So without further delay, let's dive into this quote.

   Some readers might not know the definition of the term personal excellence is. This term is really old yet it is not found in any dictionary. To find the definition we must break the term down and define its parts. The first part of the term is personal,  the definition of this word according to dictionary.com is... relating to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private. The second part of the term is excellence, the definition of this word according to dictionary.com is... the fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence.  By using the definition of it's parts we can define personal excellence as being the best at being ourselves. Sounds confusing doesn't it? In layman's terms it basically means doing your best no matter what the cost. As you can now probably see, this is something that is very important.

   This teaching from Confucius breaks down the three pillars that are essential in achieving personal excellence.  The three pillars are your willpower, your goals and your motivation.The will to win is your willpower, this plays an important role in defining us. Behind every person's success is a bunch of failures that they overcame. The game that we call life is the hardest game that we will ever play. Life hits hard but can you get up after being hit? Will power is essentially our ability to tough it through the hard times of life. The reason will power is so important in personal excellence is because it teaches us the price of success. Our will power helps us make it through what I like to call the grind phase. The grind phase is the part in your life when you are trying something new and giving it your all yet nothing seems to go your way. This phase of your life and or business is frustrating and many people quit because of it. Just so that a person can join a fraternity, the pledges must survive hell week. Many of the pledges drop out but those who see it through the end, reap all of the rewards.

   The next part of the teaching talks about our desire to succeed, which can be translated as our goals. The reason why it can be translated as our goals is because goals are our desires. Without goals we have no reason to try our very best. I remember one goal I had as a kid, my goal was to buy a game-boy color with my own money. Sounds like a small goal to you but for a nine year old it was like buying my first car. I saved every little dollar that I had, I didn't even buy ice cream from the ice cream truck. The sacrifices i made for my goal back then were not having the latest transformer toy and not buying junk food. It might sound funny to you, as I type this blog post I'm looking at my magenta game-boy color which I bough in 1998. Instead of going into great detail of goal setting, let me direct you to a previous post in which I covered the subject, here.

   The final pillar of personal excellence is the urge to reach or full potential, this is our motivation. A synonym for urge is encourage and motivation encourages us to succeed. One of the things I learned in network marketing was the power of positivity and motivation. Whenever I went to a big network marketing event they were constantly talking about our internal battery. This internal battery was a representation of our motivation levels, the purpose of the events was to recharge our batteries. Before you say that this is just some spiel that network marketing companies made up, just listen. "People often say that Motivation doesn't last. Well neither does bathing- that's why we recommend doing it daily" - Zig Ziglar. Motivation is important because it brings positivity into our lives. The world is filled with lots of negativity and the negativity constantly sucks the positivity from you little by little until you have run out of positivity. Why does the world suck out our positivity, it's because misery loves company. Like I said when talking about willpower, your life can get real bad before success. That is why you need motivation, you need it to lift you up in your time of need. If you want to listen to a powerful story that will help motivate you click here.

   Hopefully my break down of Confucius' teaching on personal excellence have helped you in some way. Feel free to comment down below about your favorite part of this post. If you would like to support the site in anyway please check out the links posted below. Like Always I'll catch you guys in the next one.

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