Dear High Achiever,

Since you and I were kids — and even right now — people we love and people that we may not even know personally have certain expectations about what we say and do.

Parents, teachers, employers, clients, family and friends, all have expectations of us.

But, know what?

Personally, I don’t put much stock into what other people’s expectations are of me.

I care about their expectation.

But not that much. I don’t say that out of disrespect, I say it out of self-respect.

Here’s why…

I Raise My Own Bar

Let me explain.

I can vividly remember being at the lowest point of my life on my eighteenth birthday. My self-confidence and self-esteem was non-existent.

I had dropped out of college. I was thirty pounds overweight. I was unemployed and I had a drinking problem. Before hitting the lowest of low points, I had also suffered from severe panic attacks that lasted from the minute I woke up until I fell asleep at night.

There were days I couldn’t even leave my house to go to school. My inner anxiety would take a physical form by me breaking out into a profuse sweat. This happened every day for two-and a-half years.

Finally, it must have been Divine Intervention which led me to my breakthrough:

I got a job selling pots and pans door to door.

Huh? I appreciate that most people wouldn’t consider selling pots and pans an Act of God. But I feel otherwise.

Let me spell it out for you.

Imagine driving to an unfamiliar neighborhood … and knocking on a stranger’s door … to persuade them to let you in … and do a cookware demonstration — while having panic-attacks.

Just the thought of it can give you a panic attack, especially in Jersey.

During my first week on the job my sales manager, Mike Grande, gave me the book The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino.

That book changed my life, forever.

Here’s why: It helped me regain and rebuild my self-esteem and my self-confidence. It taught me the philosophies to develop the self-discipline necessary for personal and professional success.

Within months of reading The Greatest Salesman in the World I began exercising and losing weight … my self-confidence and self-esteem were getting restored and becoming stronger … my sales and income increased and – hmmmm – my panic attacks began to subside.

The greatest gift: However, the greatest gift I received from being exposed to personal development was -

The belief in what was possible for me. Once I understood and believed that I could achieve anything I put my mind to, I actually started to see results.

It doesn’t require outsiders. I began to expect more from myself than anyone else could ever expect from me. I was building what I call “Success Momentum” and my life began to dramatically improve in every area I could imagine.

FYI Takeaway: I realized that part of my challenge was looking for outside or external validation from other people about what was right or expected of me. Unknowingly, I had -

Allowed other peoples’ opinions of me become my reality. This thought process lead to my panic-attacks and the chipping away of my self-confidence and self-esteem until it was virtually non-existent.

But that’s all changed.

My primary mission over the past two decades has been to help people have a life-changing personal breakthrough and reach higher levels of success by sharing my story and giving them the tools to –

Raise Your Own Bar!

FYI ACTON IDEA: High personal expectations, coupled with high standards, create high character. Expect more from you than anyone else ever could.

Remember: Create a life worth living and a legacy worth leaving.