“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”
- As A Man Thinketh

Aviva, one of our Champions Club alumni, sent me an incredible video that really brings to life this powerful quote of James Allen’s.

Paul Potts was a cell-phone salesman who dreamed of spending his life “doing what I feel I was born to do.” Watch him as he takes a huge step toward that dream.

WARNING: This video may cause goose bumps and even tears. Watch at your own risk…and then get your dream out…polish it off….and put it back on the mantle so you see it every day.

Dancing With The Stars is an enormously popular televison show currently airing in the U.S. It’s modeled after the international smash hit series, Strictly Come Dancing. Because Lisa, my partner and fiancee, loves the show, I’ve caught several episodes and been impressed with some pretty nifty dancing.

But nothing I’ve seen on Dancing With the Stars compares to the video below. While you watch it you’ll feel just about every emotion you can feel because of the performance of one of the dancers — who happens to be an amputee.

Marnee, one of our Champions Club members from Spain, sent me the video and it immediately struck me that the dancer is a great example of why we created Claim Your Power Now. While the dancer didn’t attend our Seminar (in fact, we’ve never met), he has obviously learned the principles we teach during the Weekend.

When you stop and think about it, we’ve all lost something along the journey we’re on. In his case, he lost a leg. Others have lost a spouse or relationship, a job or business, self-esteem, self-confidence or self-awareness. The truth is, as the dancer so beautifully demonstrates, it doesn’t matter what you’ve lost — it’s what you do with what you’ve got left that matters. That’s the message of Claim Your Power Now.

So watch the video…and then get registered for Claim Your Power Now — less than 60 early-bird discount seats remain.

She’s appeared on a recent episode of MADtv playing Vanna White (of Wheel of Fortune fame) forty years in the future. You may have seen her in commercials for Lexus or Chase Bank or as a cheerleader on ESPN. She’s 97-year-old Mae Laborde and she’s one of the hottest properties in Hollywood today.

No, it’s not unusual to be nearing 100-years-old and be popular in Hollywood. Bob Hope, George Burns and Gloria Stuart are just a few who can lay claim to that. But what makes Mae more than just a little special is she’s only been acting for four years — she didn’t get her Screen Actor’s Guild card until she was 93!

Thank you Mae for proving once again it’s never too late to live your dream!

Read more about Mae here…

“As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.” - As A Man Thinketh

It has taken me a long time to be able to look at a problem I’m having as a necessary spiritual lesson. To be frank, I’m still not always real excited to be enduring the pain and frustration that negative circumstances usually cause. Some days I’d like to “play hookey” and skip the lesson

But as I look back at my life, it is easy to see that the times when my wisdom and understanding grew to new levels; those times when I approached becoming the person I long to be; it was always the times that followed negative circumstances. The greatest growth you’re going to have is going to come from the negative circumstance you have today that sometimes seems too overwhelming, too big to scale.

Writing in Byways of Blessedness, James Allen is strong in his call for us to embrace our circumstances. “Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope.

“No situation can be difficult of itself; it is the lack of insight into its intricacies, and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable, therefore, is the gain of a difficulty transcended.”

Maybe that explains why it sometimes seems that I can’t shake a particular problem, or I have one that keeps rearing its ugly head. Instead of fighting it, I need to jump in and gain the insight and wisdom to handle it. Then it would be gone, and I would be ready for the next lesson — only stronger, both in spirit and in wisdom!

My long-time hero, Emmet Fox, wrote, “It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

Michael Angier’s email today reminded me of an incredible video I saw recently about persistence. It’s a short clip from the movie “Facing the Giants” and the message will be with you a long time.

Now, take another two minutes and take the persistence test. This eye-opening exercise is one of the many life-altering activities in our TGR Seminar that starts Tuesday.

I saw this piece on Darren Hardy’s great blog. It’s excerpted from an article in Napoleon Hill’s magazine of 1921:

Lincoln wrote the greatest speech ever delivered in the English language, on the back of an envelope, a few moments before it was delivered, yet the thought back of that speech was borne of hardship and struggle.

All down the road of life you will meet with obstacles, many of them. Failure will overtake you time after time, but remember that it is a part of Nature’s method to place obstacles and failure in your way.

Every time you master failure you become stronger and better prepared to meet the next one. The moments of trial will come to you as they come to all at one time or another. Doubt and lack of faith in yourself will cast their dark shadows over you, but remember that the manner in which you react under these trying negatives will indicate whether you are developing power or slipping backward.

“And this, too, will soon pass away.” Nothing is permanent, therefore why permit disappointment, resentment or a keen sense of injustice to undermine your composure, because they will soon eliminate themselves.

Look back over your past and you will see that those experiences of yesterday which bore heavily on your heart at the time, and seemed to end all hope of success, passed away and left you wiser that you were before.

The whole universe is in a constant state of flux. You are in a constant state of change. Evolution is removing the wounds left in your heart by disappointment. You need not go down under any difficulty if you but bear in mind that “this, too, will soon pass away.”

I looked back at my heavy load of grief and
worry which crowded the happiness out of
my heart only yesterday, and lo! they had
been transformed into stepping stones of
experience over which I had climbed higher
and higher.

Source: Napoleon Hill’s Magazine. September, 1921. Volume 1, number 5, page 9.

For the first ever tele-seminar based on Napoleon’s Think and Grow Rich, the number one success book of all time, go here…

Each of us has one or more special gifts. But we spend most of our time focused on the talents or skills we don’t have that we think are critical to our success. In reality, we need to focus on our special gifts and how we can leverage those to help us achieve more.

Stephen Wiltshire is an example of someone who has focused on his special gifts while ignoring what many might think would be his weaknesses.

As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. At three he was diagnosed as autistic. He had no language, uncontrolled tantrums and lived entirely in his own world.

At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London, a school for children with special needs, where it was noticed that the only pastime he enjoyed was drawing. Watch this video and see what Stephen, literally “The Human Camera,” has since learned to do with his special gift.

The annual hype surrounding the Super Bowl is about to begin. And no doubt this Super Bowl will produce some more legends and heroes. But there are some heroes who won’t be in the Super Bowl, but who prove to us everyday that anyone can be a Super Hero. They are a constant reminder that “when the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.”

At 3-foot-1-inch tall, Bobby Martin may be the “biggest” player whose ever played the game. Watch the video and see if you agree.

Remember the web video of an autistic kid shooting one basket after another while the fans and even the other team cheered? Meet the coach who made it happen. Here’s a great story just published in Guideposts Magazine.

Thanks to our long-time friend Carol Rosselle for letting us know about this story. If you missed the incredible video of J-Mac last season watch it here…

Nino Savona has a condition that keeps millions of people from living life on their own terms. But Nino doesn’t see the disability he’s had since he was eight-years-old like other people do. Take a few minutes now to read an excellent story about Nino by my friend and champion natural body builder Tom Venuto. It just might give you a different outlook on whatever “disability” you’re dealing with today…

Read more here…