Yesterday NBC was showing the Olympic Team Trials in swimming and Michael Phelps set a World Record.  But that wasn’t the coolest thing of the afternoon in Omaha.  Heavy winds tore the siding off the building a day earlier and rains sent tons of water to clog drains.  Still they got the place ready for Sunday’s event.

But what totally blew me away was Rowdy Gaines, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, and now NBC commentator, answered the question on the air about the new-fangled Speedo Laser RACER swimsuit that almost everyone was using.

Rowdy claimed that yes, the swimsuit was tight and the seams supposedly sewn by laser, and that the look and feel was perfect for the swimmers, but that wasn’t the most important part.  There is even a zipper that goes up the back, making the corset-like suit fit even tighter.  He said it took him 20 minutes to put one on.  And yet he said the suit was not what helped the swimmers break world records or swim faster than they had ever before.

Gaines, born in Winter Haven, Florida, said that when swimmers put that suit on, they “think” they can swim faster.  The suit gives them that power that they need, mentally.  So, he said, it totally prepares them mentally.  If they think they can swim faster – they will.

And I thought that was SO good that I paused the Tivo and replayed it for myself, and my son who was watching and texting his friend in Australia (can’t kids stop for a sec?).  It was powerful and is powerful.  It’s just a synthetic suit – nothing more.  But mentally, it’s a lot more.

So today, as much as I’d like to fit in a Laser suit, I am going to gather around me the things that make me “think” I can go farther, do more and be better at it.  And that’s my wish for you, today, too.  Find your Laser suit and put it on and believe it will make you do what you need to do to win your Gold.

As far back as I can remember studying self improvement, the mind is the most powerful element in the mix. And what we think about money, the thought we put and the place we put it in our lives is really important. Especially now with all the rough stuff happening in the US economy. As it trickles down to you, I want you to make sure you’ve gone into your quiet place and get totally certain what your belief about money is.

Because the way you think about the stuff, that determines how much of it you will accumulate more than anything else. You know better than I that your attitude towards money affects your emotions and your motivation. If mom pounded into your head that money doesn’t fall from trees, i.e. it is super scarce – right now, today, is the time to change that.

If you are really serious about becoming a millionaire then you’ll want to know how fortunes are made, at least in the US. Did you know that the number one way is self-owned businesses? Ha! I love it! Because I know most of you are involved in self-owned businesses! 74 percent of all self-made millionaires in America – and not only in this century but the last century as well – came from self-owned businesses.

And these businesses weren’t handed to them. These guys worked these things from the ground up! Remember Andrew Carnegie, Jacob van Astor, Thomas Edison, Commodore Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and others? They all started from scratch just like you. Here are a few modern ones – Bill Gates, Steve Case, Larry Ellison, Ross Perot, Sam Walton. These people started with nothing.

I know you want to know the next group – and they are the senior executives. A good 10 percent of them joined companies and made their way to the top. You know the routine; they were paid well, given stock options, profit sharing, bonuses.

Did you know that Richard Eisner of Disney received a $126 million bonus one year. No, that’s not his salary. That’s his bonus! Lee Iacoca was paid $26.7 million one year as a bonus.

The third level are the doctors and lawyers and such. These are people who got good at what they do and rose in their professions. The top dogs here earn 10 to 20 times what the rest of the group does.

Fourth level are salespeople. Five percent here are self-made millionaires. Most never went to college or have professional degrees. They just became great at what they did. Their secret was that they invested their money and held on to it.

Finally, there are all the people in the other areas, actors, singers, inventors, show biz types, sports, authors, lottery. But that’s only one percent.

There are so many ways for you to become a millionaire that it’s almost impossible not to if you are really serious about it.

Decide what you really enjoy doing and then throw your heart into doing it extremely well. Next, be honest with yourself on an on-going basis that what you are doing will really lead to financial independence – or do you have to make some changes?

If you do – do them now! Take action – I am cheering for you!

I’ve written on Starbucks before. One reason is I have a son who works there, and the second is for quite some time I owned a bunch of their stock. I made out like a bandit on it and it to date was my best investment move with stocks.

But now things have changed. Competitors have come in and made things even more convenient and cheaper. So Starbucks added drive thrus and started serving sandwiches and assorted things that were not coffee like.

In an effort to stop the downward spiral of the stock, Howard Schultz, founder, decided to take some drastic moves.

Make the espresso machines shorter so the baristas can chit chat with the customers. Right now you can’t see the barista behind that tall machine. Next, get out most of the sandwich stuff. And finally, a big move is to bring back grinding beans in the store which makes the whole place smell like, well… coffee.

But that wasn’t enough for some. A rather rich person recently bought a ton of stock in Starbucks to shake up the company even more. And this will end in even more changes. Since the company is public, someone can buy up a bunch of shares and have voting power.

Shake it up, make it more profitable.

I thought about that for a bit and wondered what would happen if someone took stock in your life for the sole purpose of making it more profitable?

Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? I mean someone who cared and wanted to see good come out of all you do. They would give you ways that you could leverage your time and ideas that you could use immediately to better your life.

I am working on a product that will hopefully do just that. This is a small system that you can keep on your computer or print out and go through to make sure you are lined up in all areas of your life. Sort of my way of coming in and shaking things up for the better.

In a few weeks I will let you preview the product. You’ll love how well this works. And it’s something we all need. Make sure you are signed up on the newsletter list because I’ll be giving more updates there.

Anybody knows that if you can get some great minds together, you’ll probably have some great ideas percolate up. And so many times we depend on other people that we short circuit what great stuff we can come with ourselves. For example – there’s a ton of great ideas that can come simply from asking focused questions. Something about a well-worded question that just gets to the meat of what we’re after and triggers new ideas and insights.

When you’re trying to come up with the best ideas, stimulate your creating thinking by figuring out what your end result should be. What are you trying to do? And when you get frustrated with the whole thought process, step back and ask again – what are we trying to do?

The next question should be, how are we trying to do it. If you find it hard to get it done, or experience resistance from people, maybe your method is wrong. That’s where that question comes into play – how are we trying to do it? And is this the right way? Maybe there’s a better way? What if what you were doing was completely wrong? There may be another way to get the job done.

I know this is rough, especially if you are in a position of leadership, but facing the possibility that you may be wrong opens yourself up to new possibilities. Look at what’s right before deciding who is right.

Another good question to ask is what is our assumptions? You can ask this about your prospect, your products, your business. Maybe you’re assuming something that isn’t correct. I’ve heard the saying – Errant assumptions lie at the root of every failure.

What if your implied assumptions were wrong?

Here’s another tough one my wife and I do – put past decisions on trial. Sort of like looking at your track record and sometimes it’s not fun. You ask a question like – knowing what I know now, would I have made the same decision? Try to find similar ideas or decisions to what you are trying to cover now and look back.

I want you to be very clear about what you are trying to do. Write it down and then describe it as if you already achieved it. Next, always question your assumptions – especially in the marketing you do. And if there may be a better way… be willing to try something completely different.

I don’t know how you were taught, but when I was a child, transported to and from church each time the doors were open, there were certain things the adults in my sphere of influence told me were simply from the devil.

If anything strange happened, it was either a miracle or something from the other side. This all depended on how the strange thing took place. If it benefited the church – for some reason it was a miracle. And if it didn’t – then it was straight from hades.

Do you think things are so cut and dried? Or maybe we’ve gotten more lax and have a more open mind about these things.

I believe that with age comes wisdom and when I was in my twenties, these things were more cut and dried. There was no gray area and if there were you couldn’t talk your way out of it, easily at least.

But now as I look back on all things I’ve experienced, I can see that everything God has created has some sort of very spiritual side which is deep and hard to understand. And I’m not sure why we are this way – or why things are this way. Perhaps when we all get to heaven we’ll only use that side and somehow it will all make sense.

I see this spiritual side in more than humans. I see it in other animals and even some plants. It’s as if they had feelings (plants) and could understand us on some spiritual wavelength. Some say when we communicate with plants, they do better. Or is it that when we communicate with them, God is really just eavesdropping and He cares for the plant?

Animals I’ve come to know have a spiritual side. They sense things somehow before they happen in ways that we cannot understand given our knowledge of their senses. They seem to be able to reason and there have been incidents of animals traveling cross-country back to their home – not that this is spiritual, but to me that is more than just being a pet.

So I believe that there is a spiritual side to us that most of us are afraid to use. I am one. It’s the fear of the unknown and the fear that you have always been told that any feeling like that is not Godly – so you best not wander there.

I remember being told that meditation was evil and was an easy way that satan could enter your mind. And yet, today – I know that multitasking and keeping our mind on overload is far from healthy – and that clearing our mind – thinking on Godly things in a peaceful environment is so beneficial to our productivity.

I wonder what you think. When the Secret came out a while back, were you confused? Did you think that part of it may be good, but that you felt it wrong to follow? Tell me where you stand – Don’t you think there is more to it than what we’ve been told?