If you want to get where you want to go, you have to Dump Your Duds. Your duds are clients, people and friends that are going to hinder your success or keep you from moving forward. They might be close friends, family members or even your old fraternity or sorority members. It’s anyone that does not encourage you to become more. This was something I have had to learn the hard way. I held on to for a long time to my duds thinking they were my friends. Truth be told they really weren’t. They were encouraging me not to do something worthwhile and it took me along time to realize it.
In my opinion, a true friend wants to see you succeed. They encourage you to become great. They want to see you become more. It took me a while to see that my duds didn’t want this for me. They didn’t want to see me succeed. They wanted me to stay the same or worse, fail (some even attempted to sabotage my results). Hugh Macleod puts it this way, “Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That’s why great ideas are initially resisted.” You will become like the people you spend the most time with. Do you want what they have? If you don’t, then you need to surround yourself with people that have what you want. Do your friends encourage you to be the best you can be? Or give you permission to stay the same? I don’t spend time with those people anymore. I surround myself with folks that want to see me become great. They encourage me to become more than I am. And I do the same for them. It has made a huge difference in my life and my results. Do this: Write down everyone you spend the most time with. Are they positive towards your goals, or negative? It’s time to dump your duds.
There are two types of people, anchors and motors. You want to lose the anchors and get with the motors because the motors are going somewhere and are having more fun. The anchors just pull you down. – Wyland
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. – Jim Rohn
It seems a lot of people are looking for the easy button for their lives. They want to hit a button and have their lives instantly fulfilled overnight. I hate to break it to you but there is no easy button to achieve greatness in anything. To get where you want to go it’s going to take work. Serious hard work. I think Americans see musicians and actors all of the sudden pop up out of nowhere and become famous and wealthy. They think that it can be done instantly. What we don’t see is the years of hard work that got them to that tipping point that they broke over. All achievers put in hard work into getting there. There was some magical chant or potion that made them that way, they simply put in the time to get where they wanted to go. 
If you want to achieve something great, it is going to take a whole lot more than just a dream. It takes hard work. It takes an unshakable determination to succeed. I believe you must start with a dream, but most importantly, you must have action to move towards your dream. You cannot wait around for your dreams to somehow materialize. Hate to break it to you, but they never will without action from you. Without it, they are simply thoughts and pipe dreams. You must be willing to step up and put in the work that it is going to take to actually get there. I think that is why so few actually get where they want to go. They wait around for something to happen to them as if someone is just going to one day pop out of nowhere by and say: “Here you go!” then hand them their dream on a silver platter. It doesn’t work that way, yet that is the plan of so many. Average people dream of great accomplishments. Extraordinary people stay awake and do them. Dreams of bettering your world are just the beginning to your adventure. You have to learn to make progress and TAKE ACTION to accomplish your dreams. 
Opportunity is all around us just waiting to be found. In order to find it, you must open your eyes and be ready for it to appear. You have to be willing to walk away from what you already know and are comfortable with in order to pursue and see it. If you won’t allow yourself to be ready then it will never come knocking on your door. You will be blinded to it and stay the same. I think a lot of people are so stuck in the past or with what they already know that they won’t allow themselves to see anything new. They dispel opportunity from themselves. Finding opportunity means you must be willing to seek it out and ready to act fast when it comes to you. You can’t just wait for opportunity to find you. You must make your own opportunity. 
I read a great quote today by Hugh Macloed, my favorite artist on 
I recently read an incredible study that focused on divergent thinking as we progress through life. Divergent thinking is original and creative thinking. It’s thinking outside the box. The study found:
I think there is a desire inside all of us to be accepted. We try to look, talk and think like everyone else. What happens? We become like everyone else. We hide who we are inside, in order to fit in with the herd. We lose what makes us great. Our personality, ambitions and style. We give up our originality so that we can become a carbon copy of what “we are supposed to be” in everyone else’s eyes. Frankly, we do this because we fear others will think we’re nuts. We worry that others will call us crazy. 
You can always stop and take the easy route! You can not speak up, color within the lines and sit back follow the rules. That’s what is great about our world, you always have a choice. You have two paths right in front of you. To follow your passion or not. To live a life satisfied, or a life yearning to be fulfilled. 
Today I watched the death of a professional.
