Think and Grow Rich self-assessment test

September 24, 2009 by JD · 4 Comments
Filed under: Books, Self-Improvement, Success and Failure

Earlier this evening, I wrote a post on 21st Century Affiliate Marketing about Getting Back to the basics of affiliate marketing.

I mentioned that I was rereading Napoleon Hill’s best selling book, Law of Success, and came across the self-assessment test that was first presented in Think and Grow Rich.

I wrote:

Earlier today, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Think and Grow Rich, and it sparked an idea I’m going to put into action on my John Dilbeck And Friends blog.

There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.

I could do this just as well in private, but I’m going to answer the questions publicly. I may reveal more than I want about myself in a few of them, but that’s okay.

Even more importantly than giving my answers, I hope the series of posts will spark some intelligent discussions and maybe lots of people will benefit, instead of just me. We’ll see how it goes.

Think and Grow Rich Self-Assessment Test Questions

These are the 54 questions I’ll be writing about:

1. Do you often complain about “feeling bad?” If so, why?

2. Do you find fault with other people easily?

3. Do you often make mistakes in your work?

4. Are you sarcastic and obnoxious?

5. Do you deliberately avoid anyone? Why?

6. Does life seem futile and hopeless to you?

7. Do you often feel self-pity? If so, why?

8. Do you envy people who are more successful?

9. Do you devote more time to thinking about success or failure?

10. Are you gaining or losing self-confidence as you grow older?

11. Do you learn from your mistakes?

12. Are you permitting a relative or friend to worry you?

13. Are you sometimes elated and sometimes depressed?

14. Who is the most inspiring person you know?

15. Do you put up with negative influences?

16. Are you careless about your personal appearance?

17. Do you avoid your troubles by being busy?

18. Do you let other people do your thinking for you?

19. Are you annoyed by petty disturbances?

20. Do you resort to liquor, drugs, or cigarettes to calm you down?

21. Does anyone nag you?

22. Do you have an aim in life and a plan for achieving it?

23. Do you suffer from any of the six basic fears?

24. Do you have a way to shield yourself from the negative effects of others?

25. Do you actively attempt to keep your mind positive?

26. What do you value more, your physical possessions or your ability to control your own thoughts?

27. Are you easily influenced by others?

28. Have you learned anything of value today?

29. Do you accept responsibility for problems?

30. Do you analyze mistakes and try to learn from them?

31. Can you name your three most damaging weaknesses and explain what you are doing to control them?

32. Do you encourage others to bring their troubles to you for sympathy?

33. Does your presence have a negative influence on others?

34. What habits in others annoy you the most?

35. Do you form your own opinions or do you let yourself be influenced by others?

36. Does your job inspire you?

37. Do you have spiritual forces powerful enough to keep you free from fear?

38. If you believe that “birds of a feather flock together,” what do you know about your friends?

39. Do you see any connection between your friends and some unhappiness in your life?

40. Is it possible that some close friend or associate has a negative influence on your mind?

41. What criteria do you use to determine who is helpful to you and who is harmful?

42. Are your intimate associates mentally superior or inferior to you?

43. How much time out of every day do you devote to:
* your occupation?
* sleep?
* play and relaxation?
* acquiring useful knowledge?
* plain waste?

44. Who among your friends and family:
* encourages you the most?
* cautions you the most?
* discourages you the most?

45. What is your greatest worry? Why do you tolerate it?

46. When others offer you unsolicited advice, do you accept it without question or do you analyze their motive for giving it?

47. What, above all else, do you desire? Do you intend to get it? Are you willing to subordinate all other goals for this one? How much time do you devote to it daily?

48. Do you change your mind often?

49. Do you usually finish what you start?

50. Are you easily impressed by other people’s business titles, college degrees, or wealth?

51. Are you often concerned about what other people might think or say of you?

52. Do you try to make friends with people because of their social status or wealth?

53. Whom do you believe to be the greatest person living? How is this person superior to you?

54. How much time have you devoted to studying and answering these questions?

I’ll tackle each question in turn.

What do you think?

I welcome your comments on this idea and on each of the questions as I get to answering them over the coming days.

Act on your dream!

Tags: Law of Success, Napoleon Hill, self-assessment, test, Think and Grow Rich

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-20

September 20, 2009 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Twitter

Starting to catch up after being offline for a week. I don’t even want to see how many emails are waiting for me! #
I’m enjoying the rain on a late-summer, early-fall morning. These mountains are beautiful, even when wet. #
Attempting to rekindle some discussions at http://MurphyConnections.com – Are you interested in Murphy, NC? #MurphyNC #
Brasstown, NC – The Campbell Folk School Fall Festival is coming soon. Takes place first weekend in October. http://bit.ly/WybUw #
@barbaraling Congrats on getting your WordPress.com blog back. Be careful not to post any commercial or affiliate links there! #
@barbaraling Hi Barbara. Last week was rough; I was sick. This week is much, much better! How about you? #
@barbaraling Coffee – the breakfast of champions, or just for anyone who wants to wake up! (grin) #
@davewiner Good morning, Dave. I love that phrase, “tweeting at windmills.” (grin) #

Tags: tweets, Twitter

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-13

September 13, 2009 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Twitter

I woke up feeling bad today. It feels like I am moving in a fog, but I am still moving! Act on your dream! #
@Mitch_M Hi Mitch. Thanks. Not feeling better, yet, but “keeping on keeping on.” #
@Mitch_M Thanks, Mitch. I’ll get through it. Part of it is my annual fall allergies and that generally lasts until mid-October or so. #
@cjbart Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate the support and encouragement. #

Tags: tweets, Twitter

President Obama’s Speech to Students

September 7, 2009 by JD · 2 Comments
Filed under: Musings, Politics, Success and Failure

As you may, or may not, know, I no longer watch TV. That means that I no longer watch all the news shows and the Sunday morning political shows.

I find that I don’t miss all the bickering and misrepresentation that goes on and my life feels just a little more peaceful as a result.

So, I was pretty much unaware of President Obama’s scheduled speech to students in American classrooms until I saw tweets showing up (on Twitter, of course) saying that parents were being given the choice not to have their children watch the speech in their classrooms.

Now, that’s all I know about the controversy surrounding this, but it feels like more political wrangling and bickering more than anything else.

So, I went looking to see if the White House had released the text of the speech, and they have. Here are the Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009.

Being a somewhat thoughtful person who would rather respond to facts than react to vitriol, innuendo, and mischaracterizations, I read the speech for myself. The first time, I read it to understand the gist of it. The second time I read it, was to look for anything that might be objectionable. The third time was to enjoy the meaning of it.

I only wish I could write that well and be that inspirational.

Success is not easy. It takes a long time and lots of hard work, and education is a vital component in achieving the success we want.

Those who learn how to depend upon themselves for learning, who set goals and work to achieve them, and buckle down and keep working when the going gets tough are the people who will succeed at what they want to do.

We need more of these people.

When I was a student, I was complaining about one of my teachers and Mom told me, “The best teacher cannot teach someone who does not want to learn; the worst teacher cannot stop a dedicated student from mastering that subject.”

Now, my memory is dim on this, but I think she said that Martha Berry said that to the students when Mom was attending Berry Academy way back in the mid-20th century.

Tomorrow, President Obama will tell students across America this…

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

What parent would not want their child to hear the President of the United States of America address personal responsibility in such a way?

Why is this objectionable?

(Hang on a moment. I’m going to go and read that speech one last time…)

I’m back.

This paragraph jumped right off the page when I read it…

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s the American dream expressed in four short sentences.

We make our own future.

He will continue…

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

No matter what we want to accomplish with our lives, in order to be successful, we need to set goals for ourselves and then work to achieve each of those goals, one step at a time.

Find ways over, around, under, or through the obstacles that will show up in our path. Keep on trying until we succeed at what we want to do.

If you’re looking for the secret to success, “keep on trying” may not be the only secret, but it is a vital component.

That doesn’t mean we have to keep knocking our heads against a wall when we run into one. We have to evaluate our approach and our goal and where we are at the moment. Then, we need to apply our intellect, imagination, and experiences to the problem and try a new approach.

Keep on trying.

Everyone encounters obstacles that must be overcome…

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Finally, President Obama will challenge the students to do their best…

…I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it….

This is a great speech. It tells the truth about accomplishing what we want for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country – and I might extend that to include our world.

It reminds the students that everything won’t be smooth sailing, but we can accomplish the things we set our minds to achieving.

It challenges each student to do his or her best – to be an asset rather than a liability.

I feel sorry for any child who is not allowed to watch President Obama address the students of our nation tomorrow.

Do you think there may be something objectionable in it? Then take a few minutes and read it for yourself…

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009

Act on your dream!

Tags: achieve, address, President Obama, school, speech, students, success

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-07

September 6, 2009 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Twitter

Recommended reading: Marlon Sanders – Are You Gonna Produce Or Are You Gonna Consume? http://www.marlonsnews.com/713/ #
NC Dept. of Transportation now offering travel info on Twitter: http://www.ncdot.gov/travel/twitter/ #
NC Dept of Transportation travel information about western mountains region: http://twitter.com/ncdot_westmtn #
@GrowMap Good morning. Thank you for linking to my marketing article. I appreciate it. #
On your first visit to Murphy, what do you absolutely have to see? #MurphyNC – http://bit.ly/see-in-Murphy #
@RealLifeSarah Hi Sarah. No, you can’t use blogs hosted at WordPress.com for commercial activities, including affiliate links. #
Henceforth, I will immediately unfollow anyone who sends me a DM that says, “I just gave you (something)…You should send me a gift back.” #
@lakeerieartists The first two or three of them didn’t bother me, but now I’m getting more and more and don’t like it at all. I hate spam! #
@lakeerieartists Thanks for the laugh! #
Recommended reading: @DannyBrown writes: “Old Dogs, New Social Media Tricks” – Family farmers use social media – http://bit.ly/8eJvb #