Think Big Build Small - Eric Ho

SCHOLARSHIP TO ATTEND
SUPER POWER LIVE

3 DAY TRAINING PROGRAM
CONGRATULATIONS on taking your first step by

reading Eric Ho's THINK BIG BUILD SMALL digital book.
In response to your commitment, the author is

offering you and your spouse a scholarship to attend
Super Power LIVE 3 Day training program.
At this 3-Day program, you will reach your true

potential and uplift your life and business to the
next level!
To register your admission tickets, please go to

www.HSponsor.com
The Official Organiser:
The Worlds #1 Inspirational

- Platform for Education
FOREWORD
Eric has a unique gift and profound ability to turn complex
business and life’s challenges into simple actionable
solutions. Whether you’re the head of a global corporation or an
athlete chasing the Olympic dream, he brings your ‘A’ game and
clearly understands what it takes to raise your playing field to the
next level. As with Eric’s live events, there is no holding back here.
Think BIG Build Small supplies the mental tools and proven
frameworks for readers who want to get more out of life. You will
get a true sense of purpose as he peels back the curtains, chapter-
by-chapter behind this masterpiece. This is one heck of a great
find by any means – a must for anyone who wants to achieve what
the mind dares to conceive!
Terence Yao
CEO of Summit Capital Training Group
About the Author
Eric Ho is the founder and proud owner of H Akademy; a group of

companies which has allowed him to achieve financial freedom and
success at a surprisingly young age. His current business portfolio
spans from, a high end fashion brand to a global events organization
(H Giving) which provides a loving home and education for 345
wonderful kids out in Kenya.
Eric is not only an acute businessman, he is also a life coach and

motivational speaker specializing in Peak Performance, Business,
Leadership and Management.
He has been lucky enough to acquire a wealth of knowledge, skills and

experience over the years leading to his success, motivating him to set
up his own personal development company H Akademy, which is a
platform for personal development seminars and life coaching. H
Akademy itself has helped transform the lives of thousands globally,
holding events around the world, making important changes and shifts
in peoples lives to help them realize their true potential.
He now holds talks all around the world across 5 continents and 11
countries to inspire people to take action and achieve their dreams
and goals.
Eric is a firm believer in helping those less fortunate than himself.
4
Published in 2013 by H AKADEMY Productions, an imprint of H
AKADEMY Ltd
Copyright © Eric Ho 2014

Illustrations © Eric Ho 2014
Eric Ho has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this

Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
H Akademy Ltd Reg No. 9891697
Copies are available at special rates for bulk orders.

Contact the sales development team on team@hakademy.com for
more information.
For more information on H Akademy productions and or the Author

Eric Ho, visit, www.ericho.co.uk and www.hakademy.com.
The information in this book has been compiled by way of general

guidance in relation to the specific subjects addressed, but is not a
substitute and not to be relied on for medical, healthcare,
pharmaceutical or other professional advice on specific circumstances
and in specific locations.
Please consult your GP before changing, stopping or starting any

medical treatment.
So far as the author is aware the information given is correct and up to

date as at December 2013. Practice, laws and regulations all change,
and the reader should obtain up-to-date professional advice on any
such issues. The author and publishers disclaim, as far as the law
allows, any liability arising directly or indirectly from the use, or misuse,
of the information contained in this book.
5
Think BIG
Build small
Eric Ho
6
CONTENTS
Prologue 9
Introduction
PART 1 THINK BIG

Chapter 1
THINKING BIG 1
Springboard 1
Emotion fuels action 14
Superpower, not like you know it 22
Positive emotional drive 32
Purpose 36
Visualization 44
Changing Beliefs 54
Think BIGGER 66
PART 2 BUILD SMALL

Chapter 2
Smart work not hard work 74
Chapter 3
Adding value and contribution 83
Chapter 4
Solution focused 96
Chapter 5
Growth and Education 110
Controlled growth 121
Effective communication 125
Focus 129
Chapter 6 136
Dealing with society 136
Get a mentor 157
Choosing the right mentors 164
Chapter 7 166
7
| Positive Energy | 166
Confidence 168
Momentum 184
Finding your anchor 190
Power Distortion Field 195
Chapter 8 205
| Never give up | 205
Chapter 9 215
| Happiness | 215
Appreciation 217
Perspective 223
Model of the world 226
Chapter 10
Health 230
Epilogue 235
Acknowledgements 238
Bibliography 240
8
| Prologue |
THOMAS EDISON: I never quit until I get what

I’m after; negative results are just what I’m
after. They are just as valuable to me as
positive results.
T homas Edison was born in Michigan, Ohio; he was the
youngest out of 7 children in his family. As a young boy Edison’s mind

often wondered. In school he would get distracted and daydream his
way through the day, his teachers having no resolve for the situation
decided to give up on him.
After a turbulent start to his education Edison’s parents eventually

pulled him out of school and home schooled him. Edison recalled later
in life “my Mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of
me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint.’’
At around the age of 9, Edison contracted a bought of scarlet fever which

resulted in early onset hearing problems, ultimately resulting in his
deafness. Edison didn’t allow his disability to hold him back and he went
on to invent the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb.
The process of this invention was a long one, with people, even those
closest to him, often questioning his process. Edison had failed over
9,000 times, during one of these failed attempts; his friend asked him
why he hadn’t given up yet.
9
Edison replied, ‘why would I give up. I now know of over 9000 ways that
an electric light bulb doesn’t work.’
The process had taught him over 9000 things and he was continually
learning. Finally by around his 10,000 th try, Edison succeeded in the
creation of the light bulb and patented his work and system in 1880.
Perseverance, an air of determination and a never give up attitude

attributed to Edison’s success. A success that has allowed modern day
men to live in the light.
Perseverance and determination are so important, and are the key

ingredients to leading a successful, happy and fulfilling life.
10
Introduction
D ear Readers,
Thank you and congratulations for picking up this book and for taking
action. In order to start anything, one must take action, and I applaud
you for taking the biggest leap of all.
All of you will be at different points of your own personal journey, and
many of you will have some preconceptions about this book, but I’m not
going to tell you about positive thinking or visualization or any religious
views or cosmic ordering, superstition or even any magical powers for
that matter, I’m going to tell you purely about the mechanics, the
turning point and the lessons that I have learnt throughout my life which
have helped me along the way.
I’m not going to tell you how you should and shouldn’t live your life. I’m
not even here to tell you what is wrong and right. I’m purely here to
share the knowledge and tools that I have found and learnt through the
events of my life.
Tools that have helped me become the person that I am, and helped me
to build up everything that I am lucky enough to have today.
The reason I do this is because I feel that I am one of the minorities that
11
have been privileged enough to experience these life changing events in
a very short time span and at a very young age.
Whether it has been through a painful or personal experience, or just

that I have been fortunate enough to be a witness to events contributing
to my personal success. I have also been lucky enough to have the right
mentors; some of you may call them guardian angels that have helped
guide me along the way.
I have always possessed a very high inquisitiveness, I was always the why
guy, the one who asked a lot of questions, the person who liked to
analyze or some may say over analyze how people work, why people act
or behave or do things in a certain way.
My high inquisitiveness teamed with my fascination of people has

allowed me to develop an understanding of people, grow a thousand
fold, and reach out to people beyond myself.
Throughout working with thousands of people world wide, I have

discovered that most people are in what I have come to understand and
call a purgatory state. Through my study of people, what I have realized
is that there are only a few minority of us who have a deeper
understanding of communication, human needs, people, psychology
and how to live a life full of happiness regardless of natural conditions
or painful events and I have found that many people actually live their
whole lives not even realizing there is such a ‘secret’.
Out of the minority of us who do know and understand the ‘secret’ there
is only a fractional minority of those people who are willing to actually
speak out to share this message, because this message is not like any
other. Where you can just go out there and tell somebody how they
should and shouldn’t be and distinguish for people, between right and
wrong.
12
Because at the end of the day, what is right and wrong is a personal
conception, everyone has a different belief system and everyone is
entitled to their own beliefs.
More importantly, how anyone should live their life, should be exactly
how they want to live their life. Your lifestyle and the way you live your
life is your choice. This is so important and fundamental to your basic
happiness, yet it is so often the one thing that people forget. The choice
is yours to make, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Some of you may think, if someone possessed the secrets to life, to

unlock the gift of ultimate happiness, then why would they not share the
message, and enlighten people?
You may think it’s a selfish act on their behalf, if they possess the secrets
to leading a happy and fulfilling life why wouldn’t they share it with the
world?
Why wouldn’t they scream it at the top of their lungs so that everyone
can lead a fulfilling and happy life?
What we fail to understand is that possession and maintenance of this

‘secret’ is not easy. We need to realize that not everyone is ready to
learn such secrets and therefore not sharing is not an act of selfishness,
but an act of self-protection and preservation.
Everyone learns at their own pace, and learns in their own ways, some
may seek enlightenment from others spreading a message to them,
others may prefer to learn from their own journey and from resources
they find along the way, we need to allow for everyone to learn and
absorb information in their own way.
For those who aren’t ready to learn or change, we cannot force the
message onto them and make them change. We must allow everyone
13
to create their own path towards their ultimate happiness and so we
must recognize everyone’s right to choose and to be themselves. Having
said that, there are people who are brave enough to stand up and share.
Those of us brave enough to share the secret such as myself, there is a

strong emotional reason that has driven me to open up and share with
you all, which have pushed me to contribute beyond myself and created
reasons as to why I feel the need to speak out.
Why I started this whole journey of speaking out is not a pretty one, and
my life wasn’t always this happy.
Along the way I have found books and seminars and various other
materials to provide me with enlightenment and understanding in my
own life. The materials I have found along the way have acted as a
shortcut in search of my happiness.
Making use of the tools that I was lucky enough to land upon was a
blessing; however searching for these materials has been a long journey.
My desire for this book is to create an even shorter shortcut, to share

my experience and my journey with you all, to contribute back to society
so that the message, this message of ultimate happiness is heard and
spread to everyone. I wanted to create something that will help get you
from A to B in the shortest amount of time possible.
We are students all our lives and what we can do is progressively learn
and grow to become better people and hopefully one day be able to
inspire others and make a difference in this world.
Learning is how we keep growing.
Today I know I can impact and inspire a lot of lives, this is my exact
intention for this book, and it is what I have been doing over the years,
14
providing inspiration to those who have been lost or needed a little
guidance along the way, leading people into the light so that they may
be able to continue on their journey, and most importantly of all,
teaching people the key strategies to leading a fulfilling life, full of health
wealth and happiness.
It might not seem like it now a days, but growing up, I was actually the
quiet kid, and being me growing up wasn’t easy, I was never offered a
voice and I was never noticed. I was the small Asian kid who preferred
to sit at the back of the room and keep to myself, praying that I didn’t
attract any unwanted attention, praying that people wouldn’t see me
and that I would just be left alone.
I was one of those kids that, the teachers have usually identified at an
early age that would grow up to be mediocre, never achieving much.
Never resulting in anything, never becoming the student to boast about.
I, myself never thought I would really amount to anything and I didn’t

have enough belief in myself that I would grow up to be anything
spectacular.
At a young age I had decided for myself that I wasn’t going to make much
money, I didn’t need as much money as my father, and I didn’t need to
have much of anything to be happy.
I was one of those ‘modest’ people who would tell you that I didn’t need
much of anything, I didn’t need to be rich, I didn’t need a nice car, I didn’t
need a nice house and quite frankly I just didn’t need much.
I needed just enough, to pay my bills, to feed myself, to have a roof over
my head. I didn’t feel that I needed luxuries or lavish things.
I was never particularly academic or a good learner. I wasn’t particularly

clever and I was definitely not good at school, floating around between
15
the bottom 2 percentile in my class throughout my whole educational
career, so at age 19, I finally quit education once and for all and went on
to join the working masses.
With the bare bones of what you would call a qualification, I struggled
to find a suitable job, not really knowing what I wanted to do or what I
wanted to be. I floated around in temporary and random jobs.
At first doing a bit of everything, I didn’t have a stable job or paycheck. I

started out my working life in fun fairs. Selling burgers in burger vans,
then moving on to selling balloons on the streets, when the summer
season was over and the fun fairs packed up for the winter, I went on to
doing deliveries for Chinese take-aways, to being the guy who loaded up
your boxes at the cash and carry.
I was living paycheck-to-paycheck earning just enough to cover my bills

and expenses. My family often worried about me, worrying whether I
had enough money to afford to pay rent and eat. Most of all my parents
would worry about what I would do with my life and what future
someone with no steady job would have.
My father watched me through my struggle to find a steady job, and a

steady income. Despite having a series of successful restaurants he had
willingly let me go out there and venture off to find my feet, but enough
was enough. My father was worried about me and so he reached out to
help me. He was opening a new restaurant and so he asked me to join
him in his new venture.
As I had no stable job and no career to speak of, I gladly accepted, and
my father very generously offered me the managers position.
Initially I was excited, and it was quite fun, and impressive, I mean what
other 19 year old out there had a business card with manager plastered
on it? I certainly didn’t know of any.
16
Back then; I thought I was the bee’s knees. I had everything I thought I
wanted, I had a job as a manager and the business card to prove it, I had
a surplus of cash that ensured that I could buy what I wanted, when I
wanted. Not only that. I was able to do what I wanted when I wanted.
I had a nice car, I had a nice house, what more did I need?
My problem was the managers role in my father’s restaurant was all I

thought I would ever achieve. All I had every dreamed about was having
enough. When I had achieved what was, in my head my ‘peak potential’,
I didn’t feel there was anything left for me to reach for.
My life was complete, and there was no more room for personal growth.
I spiraled into severe depression often thinking, what next? What is the
point to my life? What do I do now? What was I put here to do? What
was the point in my existence?
During a particularly bad depression spiral, a good friend of mine

recognized my pain and invited me to go travelling with him to South
Africa, on a volunteering trip.
I didn’t know it then, but this trip would become one of the most
important trips I would take in my life. It was during this trip that I
realized what my ultimate purpose was.
Whilst there, I was shocked by the conditions that people were living in.
Whilst I was growing up, my parents weren’t the wealthiest of people,
we didn’t have everything and, at times they struggled with bills and
money, but in comparison I had grown up with the simple luxuries in life,
my parents had been able to provide me with a comfortable upbringing,
always buying me the latest toys and computer games when they could
afford it, giving me everything I wanted. The poorest I had ever felt was
when I didn’t have enough pocket money saved up to buy a new toy. I
had never been around real poverty and what I found when I arrived in
17
South Africa was something that I was not used to.
I found large families growing up in small huts built with sticks, mud and
manure, the huts consisted of one room and little of anything else. Aside
from providing minimal shelter to the elements, the huts were basic and
scarce.
They were without even the basic necessities such as water and
electricity, no internet to chat to my friends on, no TV to watch my
favorite TV shows on, no comfy couch to lounge around on, and certainly
none of the ‘necessities’ that I had at home. All the things that I couldn’t
live without at home were missing in these tiny huts.
During the days, the women would make do with what they had and
look after their homes the best they could, using what they could find to
produce goods such as woven mats and ornaments out of straw and
grass to be sold at local markets.
These people were too poor to provide an education for their children
so kids would run around and play outside with no shoes on, sometimes
with no clothes on and many often went days without food and clean
water.
Most of the people there were illiterate and some didn’t even know
what it meant to be educated. They had been brought up in these small
villages and knew nothing of the outside world. When we arrived with
all our worldly goods and necessities the children were in awe at the
gadgets and ‘toys’ that we had.
Seeing conditions such as those struck something in me. Seeing children

being brought up in conditions where they didn’t even have a clean bed
to sleep in at night, where families were living with so much less than
myself pulled on my heartstrings. It made me realize that I had been
living under a cloud, so absorbed in my own world, in material goods
18
and focused on my ‘problems’ of what I didn’t have.
After seeing all of this, I made a decision there and then. I wanted to
help these people, to improve the quality of their lives, and so, I took all
the money that I had brought with me and tried to help as many people
as I could.
I bought food and clean drinking water and helped pay for clothes, shoes
and basic medication for dying children. Medication such as malaria
tablets, and simple vaccinations that we take for granted on a daily basis.
People quickly realized what it was that I was doing and a lot of people
were coming up to me saying thank you, although all I had provided
these people with were the basic necessities that we had back home,
they were so grateful and so thankful.
I realized that without these necessities, many of the children would

have died before they reached their teens, and I had helped stop that
from happening. The thanks that people were giving me were so sincere
and honest, it gave me a feeling of happiness and significance.
It brought a lot of emotions to the surface that I never even knew

existed. It gave me a feeling of joy that I hadn’t experience in a very long
time, and it gave me a feeling of joy that was extremely foreign to me.
It felt good that I had helped someone that I was contributing so greatly
in someone’s life and I had actually saved lives. I felt significant and
important and most of all, the feeling of being able to help was so
immensely satisfying it made me happy, something I had forgotten how
to feel.
This is when I realized that contribution was my ultimate way to

happiness; this is what has led me on the path to write this book.
19
Every individual in this world is on a personal development journey
whether you realize it or not and there are many secrets and lessons to
be learnt throughout this book.
Everyone is constantly making tweaks and amendments in their

approach towards different aspects of their life. Whether it is major or
minor tweaks, these are all learnt from past experiences.
Everybody is at a different point in their personal journey. Those further

on in the journey are lucky enough to be closer to the point of
enlightenment, to the point of ultimate happiness.
Whilst I was in South Africa, I realized that there are so many people in
this world who have more money than they could ever spend, they have
lavish houses, drive supercars and own more material goods than one
could ever want in a life time, and yet, they can still be depressed and
unhappy with their lives, why?
When there are so many people living in third world countries living in
conditions you could not even imagine, these people are so poverty
stricken they can’t even afford to feed themselves or clothe their
children, yet they are so happy, alive and content.
They walk around with smiles so bright, you would think that they
owned the world. Your journey is your own personal pursuit of
happiness.
What you are enlightened by throughout this book and the lessons that
you will learn throughout are purely things that are useful to your life
right now, within your pursuit of happiness, within your personal
journey. The lessons that you learn now will form the foundations for
your later enlightenments in your journey. All lessons learnt are things
that can be applied to your everyday life.
Applying the theories learnt through the pages of my book to your every
20
day life will help you on your way to ultimate happiness and help you
reach your higher enlightenment.
Everything documented in this book is a part of what I have learnt

throughout years of my journey so far. Throughout life, everyone learns
lessons. Sometimes you can think that you have learnt something and
that you understand something. However, fail to see that there is a
difference between understanding something and having a profound
understanding of something.
From a young age, everyone has a belief system that has been instilled
in them. As soon as a baby is born, he is thrown into the care of his
family to be nurtured and to learn from them. Our families act as our
basic social group where we learn and pick up various tools which are
useful in our lives; from there whether positively or negatively we pick
up our habits, attitudes and values. From what we pick up we turn these
into our personal wishes and desires.
From our families, we also learn our emotions, we learn to be happy, we

learn to love, to fear, to feel anger, and most importantly of all, we pick
up our beliefs which determine our reactions and our interaction with
the outside world.
This ‘belief system’ acts as a defense mechanism, distinguishing for us

between right and wrong. When someone tells us something unfamiliar,
then our brain will subconsciously tell us to disregard it, to build up a
wall and act in a certain way towards the comments.
Some people may react angrily, some may laugh it off, and depending
on your social conditioning and what feels right to you, you will react in
your own way.
Generally speaking, most people will reach their point of enlightenment

when they have hit a wall in their lives, when they have hit a problem or
21
an event that they can’t seem to solve. This is when strong emotions
are created, whether they are negative, meaning a painful relation to
something or whether they are positive, meaning you now have for
whatever reason a burning desire to achieve something. Being a reader
of this book already tells me that you are ready for enlightenment, and
to learn the ‘secret’ that so many people spend their lives searching for.
Remember this book isn’t religious in any way and I’m not talking to you
about anything religious or superstitious and I’m not telling you about
lucky charms or positive thinking. I am purely going to talk about the
mechanics behind how to create that ultimate happiness.
My intention for this book is that it will be able to carry you throughout
your journey and your life. The contents and everything I tell you within
this book has been carefully prepared for your use, you may choose to
use this as a reference guide to refer back to at different points in your
life.
You can read this book today and you will feel that you have learnt
something from it and you will feel that you can make use of it in your
everyday life.
You can put it down and feel that you have been empowered with the
tools, which will carry you on your journey, in 6 months time you can
pick it up again, read it again and it will enlighten you further and carry
you further into your journey.
I wish each and every one of you the best of luck in your journey.
Eric Ho
22
N ow before we officially begin, I’d like you to take a
moment and write down what your Ultimate goal is. Think about the
reason of why that is your goal. Think about what it is that you want and
the reasons why you want it.
Then I’d like you to write down what you feel you would realistically be
able to achieve from your goal.
To help you with this we have set out the pointers below of how you
should answer this:
My Dream is:
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I [ENTER FULL NAME] believe that I will realistically I will be able to

achieve:
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It’s very important that you do this, as it’s something that you will be
referring back to throughout this book.
23
PART 1 THINK BIG
24
Think BIG Build small
Chapter 1
| THINKING BIG |
DANTE: Remember tonight… as it is the

beginning of always
Springboard
L ife is often described as living on earth, this is often a
misconception, and there are actually 3 realms in life, Heaven, Purgatory

and Hell. The question to ask yourself is which realm do you live in?
Heaven and Hell are realms, which we are all very familiar with.
Often associating them with religion and the after life. We’ve read about
these in storybooks and seen them on TV shows, usually depicted as
fairy tales and places that are not quite within our reach yet somewhere
where we will go after life has taken its toll.
I want to tell you that these realms are purely a state of mind, and exist
in our every day lives. Which realm you personally live in depends on
your own personal state.
1
Your personal state depends on your view and outlook in life.
What we can see from the diagram below is that there are a few people
living in heaven acting as our living social proof that these great goals
and achievements can be made.
Within the purgatory section we will see the majority of people, and in
hell we have people who have fallen through the cracks and believe that
their lives are a in a hellish state.
2
The interesting thing about the realms is that there is a springboard that
can get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Take a look at the bottom right hand corner of hell, there is an ‘invisible’
springboard. What tends to happen through life is that a lot of people
who hit hell will unintentionally bounce off this invisible springboard and
end up in Heaven.
You may be thinking all this is hockey pokey, but there is a simple
equation which explains how you can hit this springboard. The equation
is as follows:
For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, let me share
a story with you.
When I was a child, my father often told me stories of his past and his
childhood. My father came from a relatively large family; he had 3
brothers and 2 sisters, including himself, there were 6 children in total
and he lived with his Grandmother, my great grandmother and so there
were 9 members of his family all living under one roof.
My Grandfather dreamed of a better life for his family and tried many
business ventures in order to make a living, however his ventures would
often fail and my Dad remembers my Grandad as being an unlucky man.
Whilst everyone in the village was able to find work, and was able to
make a living, they were able to convert their tin houses into bricks and
3
mortar, my Dad remembers living in a tin house during his whole

childhood.
My grandparents were unskilled, with my Granddad trying his hand in a
multitude of trades, starting out as a wood joiner, doing the odd job
around the village for people.
When that turned out to be a failure, he tried his hand at being an

electrician, learning his trade at a local college. He was never good at
anything and never graduated from the college. But his trade would
turn out to be a semi useful one.
He became the local handyman in the village, fixing small electrical

appliances for his neighbors; however, work was scarce and not enough
to feed a family of 9 people.
So my Grandfather turned his hand to another venture, making plastic

flower bouquets. I remember my dad telling me that at a young age he
would sit at a table with my Grandmother and his siblings learning to
make these flower bouquets from materials that my Grandfather would
bring home.
The demand for plastic flowers was not great, and still there was not
enough money to feed all 9 mouths, and so my grandmother helped out
on neighboring farms, helping with the harvests and growing crops,
whilst my Grandfather went out there and tried to live his dreams and
create a living for his family.
My Grandparents struggled to keep all 9 mouths fed, often only having
a bowl of soy sauce and some rice shared between 9 people for dinner.
They had to work around the clock just to make ends meet. Whilst my
father and his siblings were young, they would stay at home with my
great grandmother.
4
My Dad remembers that my Granddad would often be out of work as

times were hard and my Grandmothers earnings from working in the
neighboring farms would have to keep them going.
When they were old enough they started attending school, which meant
that times got harder as they had to pay for the education of 6 children.
Due to the lack of money at home my fathers mind often wondered to

come up with elaborate plans and day dreamed about how he would
make money for the family and look after everyone.
When my father was young, my grandfather came to the UK to try and

make a living and send home any money he could to feed the family.
My grandmother was left in Hong Kong with 8 mouths to feed. Life

wasn’t easy, and so my father dropped out of school at an early age to
help support his family. Initially my father found work in a light bulb
factory making light bulbs earning only £20 a month.
When my Dad was around 13 years old his younger siblings had a chance
to go to the UK and study, and so they left Hong Kong to start a new lift
leaving my Dad, my Uncle, my Auntie and my Great Grandma behind.
Before my Dad turned 18 he was required to come to the UK so that he

too would be able to gain British Citizenship, and so he came to the UK
with hopes of a better future.
Although my dad didn’t want to leave his home behind, he had to leave
as it was increasingly hard to find work in Hong Kong, and there was a
promise of a future here in the UK.
5
Growing up my father had suffered hardship and seeing how his parents
had struggled to feed him and his siblings had a lasting effect on his
mentality.
They were they poorest and largest family in the village and often they
would watch whilst the other villagers made money and moved on to
better and brighter things, while they were left behind to live in their tin
hut.
They were often laughed at and looked down on, my Dad had suffered
through this whilst he was young, with people teasing him and bullying
him for being poor.
My father remembered so clearly that the neighboring kids were

forbidden to play with them because they were poor and were told to
avoid them like the plague. This built resilience and desire within my
father, creating his dreams of having money, and being able to afford a
better life for his family.
So being one of the older ones made my father a stronger person, he

had to look out for his siblings and he felt a responsibility in looking after
the family. He felt the need to do something to better their lives.
From a very young age, he developed a strong emotional connection

towards money and he recognized the importance of making money, so
from a very young age he started working.
My father started his working life at the age of 13, doing small jobs to
try and make as much money as he could in order to try and support his
family, trying to help out in anyway he could, making sure that my
grandparents wouldn’t have to work so hard in order to feed them all.
6
He managed to get a full time job at the age of 13, as labor was cheaper
for children they found work easier than adults. My father remembers
that did what needed to be done. He was willing to do anything as long
as it brought home money and he was able to provide food on the table
and an education for his younger siblings.
This built up his mentality.
I used to listen to stories of how my grandparents would come home at

the end of the day, tired, and broken, with swollen hands and knees and
bruises all over their bodies from the backbreaking labor they endured
all day.
They went through war working in the fields, fighting for jobs against
younger, stronger and healthier men and women, with no job
guarantee, and no job security they worked for what they could, when
they could.
Any little work that would be offered to them was often backbreaking
manual labor, my grandparents had no expertise, no skills, and no
education, so both of them had to endure what work could be spared.
When my father spoke of these stories I would often hear an immense

pain in his strangled voice and I would see a tense pain in his eyes as he
recalled his childhood and those years of hardship.
Back then when I heard the stories I thought I understood his pain, I
thought I knew what my father had gone through and I thought that I
really knew what he was talking about, but it wasn’t until years later that
I really developed a profound understanding of his pain and mentality.
7
The hardship that he had endured as a child had created a very big desire
within him. Creating a very strong emotion and a need to make money.
The emotion fueled his desires and made him alert and attentive to any
passing opportunities available to him.
My father took every opportunity by the horns; when he arrived in the

UK he had just one goal in mind, and that was to make a lot of money,
and from the age of 16 he already knew that he had to own a business
to be successful.
But without any money he was unable to do anything. He had to earn

money and save it up so that he reach his dream and own his very own
business. Even though my Dad didn’t speak a word of English, he worked
2 jobs, selling magazines and newspapers in the day, and working in a
restaurant in the evenings so that he would be able to earn more money.
By the time he was 21 teens he had already set up his first business, a
Chinese take away. Listening to my Dads story, when he got to this part,
I could sense the pride and joy in his voice, how happy he was with this
business.
By his mid teens, he had already set up a number of small businesses

and was earning a decent living. He was able to afford a house, a car
and a healthy social life.
Between the ages of 13 and his early 20’s, his personal growth had
reached thousands and thousands of percent. From what he had at the
beginning in terms of resources to what he had by the time he was in his
late teens was phenomenal.
8
He had started out with nothing, no education, and no money, and in

terms of resources or help, it was zero. But within this short time frame
he had managed to earn not only money, but also he had managed to
make a life for himself.
My father’s story intrigued me and got me thinking, how did he succeed

despite starting out with nothing? I went on to do my own research and
what I have discovered over time is that people who have always had a
comfortable existence, people who are lucky enough to be able to grow
up in a house and not have to worry about food and bills, generally float
through life in a very stagnant manner.
Before we go on I’d like you to think about this question, what

percentage do you feel that you have grown so far from the life that you
grew up in, the life that your parents left you with? Where are you now?
Is it in the tens, hundreds? Thousands? Really think deeply about this.
People who have grown up in a comfortable family, with parents who

are able to support a lifestyle of simple luxuries, giving them most of
what they want, being able to provide them with an education, with a
higher education and with presents at Christmas and birthdays and toys
for good behavior, will generally grow to lead the same lives as what
their parents were able to provide for them. This is because they don’t
feel a need to achieve anything more. Their life as they know it is already
very comfortable. They are able to pay for their bills, provide a roof over
their heads and provide for their families.
What I have found through working with thousands of people around
the world is that most people actually don’t grow at all from the lifestyle
that their parents have left them, and many even fall through the cracks
and become less well off than what their parents gave them.
9
Those of us who were fortunate to grow up in these kinds of

environments will grow up to have the same standard of life, because
that was a comfortable life. It was enough for them and anything more
was just a dream.
It would have been nice to have more, however it wasn’t a necessity,

and so they never strive to be anything more than what their parents
were able to give them. Their existence was already very fortunate and
very comfortable in comparison to a lot of people.
These groups of people are the people that we have sectioned into the
purgatory section, they think they have some sort of dream but they
don’t really want that dream. People have been told to dream big but
they don’t really understand why they are dreaming big.
They understand the principles and the theory behind dreaming big and
why they should even have a dream, however, its not something that
they really need as they already have a very comfortable existence and
they don’t really have a need for anything more.
Many of them will end up with doing something with their lives but it
never turns out to be anything spectacular, when questioned about their
ability or achievements, most will put blame on things like, they didn’t
have the right resources or the right financial capabilities or the right
knowledge and tools to be anything more.
A great mentor of mine once told me, it’s never the lack of resources. It’s
always the lack of resourcefulness, this is a principle that I live by. If you
want something enough then you will always find a way!
Have you ever had a look at the richest people in the world and studied
their stories? Let me tell you, most of them have come from less
10
fortunate backgrounds, not everyone was born lucky, with a silver spoon
in their mouth.
Why is it that so many people in the richest list had nothing at the start?
And why are there so many rags to riches stories? A great inspirational
story is that of Chris Gardner.
Chris Gardner (Author of Pursuit of Happyness which was turned into a

motion picture starring Will Smith and his Son Jayden Smith) is an
inspiring rag to riches stories. For those of you who have seen the movie
or read the book you know how the story goes.
For those of you who haven’t let me quickly share with you his story,
Christopher Paul Gardner’s childhood was marked by poverty, domestic
violence, alcoholism, sexual abuse and family illiteracy Gardner never
knew his father, and in between living with his mother, he moved in and
out of foster homes.
Gardner graduated from high school and joined the Navy. On his
discharge he moved to San Francisco to work as a medical associate.
Here he fell in love and fathered his son, Christopher Gardner Jr.
With his new family in tow he was determined to find a career that
would be both lucrative and fulfilling. He developed a fascination with
finance, but without connections, an MBA or even a college degree
Gardner found it hard to find a job in this field.
Gardner couldn’t extinguish his ignited passion for finance, and so he
decided to quit his job as a medical research associate and focus on
becoming a stockbroker, but with no money to speak of his relationship
with his wife hit the rocks, and soon after she left him taking their son
with her.
11
With his newfound fascination in tow, Gardner began his journey,

working towards his dream. He applied for training programs at
brokerages and interviewed for a whole year before success came to
him. He was offered a job at long last, however the job offered him little
money. Gardner didn’t care, as the thought of being able to live his
dream overwhelmed his need for money, he was willing to live on next
to nothing just to learn his new trade.
Finally, after graduating from the training program he earned a spot in

the Dean Witter Reynolds training program but became homeless when
he could not make ends meet on his meager trainee salary.
Despite being homeless and losing his wife and family, he persevered
and managed to continue on his journey to success. Today, Gardner is
involved with homelessness initiatives assisting families to stay intact,
and assisting homeless men and women who are employed but still
cannot get by.
Chris Gardner is now worth a whopping $60m and is CEO and founder
of brokerage firm Garner Rich and Company.
So all of these things that people tell you about not having resources,
not having money or the skills and knowledge are excuses! By nature
people like to put blame on other things, it’s always easier to find a
scapegoat than to shoulder the responsibility of your own actions.
People like the easy way out, and so instead of going out there to get
their dreams, they will tell you every excuse under the sun because in
actual reality, they don’t really need their dream that much as to
inconvenience themselves to do anything about it.
12
Now think about my fathers story again for a second, he didn’t have
resources and didn’t have an education, he grew up humble and poor
and he had endured hardship. This to him was hell, and so it became a
necessity for him to be able to provide a better life for his family.
With his desire so strong, this caused him to take action, and taking
action allowed him to springboard up to heaven.
Now what I’d like you to do is take a couple of minutes, and really think
about this for a second. Is it easier for someone in purgatory to reach
heaven, or someone in hell to reach heaven?
Why is it that the majority of the time, the people in hell reach heaven
and the people in purgatory just float around and never get there?
13
Emotion fuels action
D esire and emotion creates an adrenaline rush that makes
you take action, to break it down the formula is very simple, emotion
creates motion which in turn give you results. Emotion creates a burning
obsession in turn creating an illusion that you are able to do and achieve
more. Therefore in turn giving you more desired results.
14
Isn’t it true that even by probability, the more action you take the more
results you will be able to achieve?
Take Colonel Sanders for example, at the age of 65 he was broke and he
didn’t come to his fortune until very late in his life, it wasn’t until he was
aged 65 that he cashed his first social security cheque! With nothing but
a chicken recipe he decided to take the world by storm and share his 11
herbs and spices.
Colonel Sanders tried to sell his recipe and make a business out of it, he
knocked on door after door after door, and received rejection after
rejection. Finally on or about his thousandth of rejections, he finally got
his break, creating a business, which is successfully trading to this day as
the global brand of KFC.
Age is no barrier to success and neither is capital. Remember it’s not the
lack of resources; it’s the lack of resourcefulness.
Colonel Sanders beat all odds, no one thought he would succeed at his
age. But he carried on despite the views of others and despite the
number of rejections that he received, and finally he got the ‘Yes’ that
he was waiting for. Never give up on your dreams. Believe that you can,
and you will beat the odds.
Remember the story of my father that we explored before? Let’s revisit

it for a moment, what happened to him?
His hardship created an emotion, a strong desire that fueled his actions,
with the images of his parents broken spirits, tired faces, swollen hands
and bruised bodies embedded in his mind, he was determined that he
was not going to let his own family suffer through the same fate that he
15
was dealt as a child. This emotion created the adrenaline rush for my
father and made him do whatever it took to achieve his goal.
For him, it didn’t matter that he had to work more hours than the
average person, it didn’t matter that he didn’t have the job that he
preferred, it didn’t matter that he was being paid less or that he had to
work 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet.
He didn’t care what the job was or what other people would say about
him. No job was too cheap and no job was beneath him.
A lot of people in our current social climate, refuse to get jobs in certain
places, they refuse to do certain jobs like sell coffee, or work behind a
cashier in a fast food joint, because they feel that these jobs are beneath
them, they feel that they shouldn’t have to work in these jobs and that
they deserve better, but what they fail realize is that, the only thing that
is beneath these people is the fact that they don’t even have a job in the
first place.
Most of the rags to riches stories that we hear of now a days, those
people who are on the Forbes richest list, they all started off at the
bottom, doing the menial jobs that people these days are ‘too good for’.
Remember that.
For my Dad, he needed to succeed. He had a need to give his family the
best he could afford, so he did whatever it took and was therefore able
to achieve growth of thousands of percent.
In his mind there was no failing, and he wouldn’t accept no for an

answer, he knew what he wanted, he had a goal set and he went for it.
Plain and simple.
16
There was no maybe I’ll do it tomorrow, there was no I’m tired today
maybe I’ll do it another day, there was no I don’t have enough money to
do this, there was no blame. There wasn’t even any complaint and there
were no excuses.
He just did whatever it took and guess what? He got there.
Let me give you another example, everyone is familiar with the

characters Rambo and Rocky, also known as Sylvester Stallone.
Stallone had a difficult childhood. Both him and his younger brother
were adversely affected by their parent’s hostile relationship that later
ended up in a divorce. He spent some time in foster care and eventually
ended up in Philadelphia living with his mother and her second husband.
There, Stallone struggled academically and emotionally resulting in his

expulsion from several schools. He went on to a school for troubled
youth and eventually went onto college.
Initially he attended the American College in Switzerland where he

studied drama, moving onto the university of Miami to continue his
studies of the dramatic arts after dropping out of college in Switzerland.
Stallone dropped out of the University of Miami before he finished his

studies and ended up travelling to New York City to pursue an acting
career.
Travelling without a dime in his pocket, he worked all sorts of jobs to

make ends meet, whilst waiting for his career to take off. His passion
was for acting and screen writing and so any job he had he was
disinterested in.
17
With his disinterest in anything that wasn’t acting or screen writing, he

didn’t seem to have the ability to keep down a steady job. Unable to
hold down a steady job, he had no steady income. With no money,
Stallone was unable to pay for his bills, he ended up selling his dog for
$25.00, just to be able to afford to keep the electricity on in his house.
In addition to his passion for acting Stallone also had a keen interest for
screen writing; he would pursue his dream and passion at any cost. Two
weeks after he had sold his dog, he wrote his blockbuster screenplay
Rocky that he completed in 20 hours straight. He believed in his play
and knew that it would be the masterpiece that would break his career.
Rocky took his play and pitched it to Production Company after

Production Company. After numerous rejections he finally found a
producer who would produce his movie.
On the spot he was offered $125,000 for the movie and a cast of the
biggest A list stars to star in it. Stallone wasn’t interested, despite not
having enough money for electricity in his house and having to sell his
dog to pay for bills, he was a stubborn man, he believed that only he
could and would star as Rocky in his own movie, and so he turned down
the lucrative offer.
By anyone’s standards it would seem an insane decision on his part. He

had to sell his dog just to pay for Electricity and was now turning down
an offer of $125,000!
He believed in his own vision so intensely that he did what he felt was
right. He followed his gut instincts and followed his dreams.
Subsequently Stallone was offered up to $350,000 for his script, which
18
he again turned down, continuing his belief that only he would play
Rocky.
Finally the producers came to a compromise and allowed Stallone to star

in his own movie. However instead of the $350,000 that was initially
offered to him, they would only pay him $35,000 and a percentage of
the profits as a concession.
Without another thought, Stallone immediately accepted this offer.

After receiving his $35,000 he hunted down his dog. He waited outside
the store where he initially sold him for a week straight. Finally his dog
and its new owner showed up. Stallone purchased his dog back for a
whopping $25,000 and went on to shoot his movie.
The first Rocky movie grossed over $200,000,000 and his sequels
grossed over a billion dollars!
How was Stallone able to finally achieve his dream? Was it because he
had amazing screen write skills and got lucky to land on a producer that
was willing to let him take the lead in his movie?
No!
When people have created an emotional attachment to something this

creates a burning desire. This burning desire becomes so strong that if
manifested properly, will grow into an obsession almost and allows
people to achieve their goals.
What we start to see through thousands and thousands of successful

individuals is that, when an emotion is stimulated that’s when it creates
motion, and even just by probability, the more motions you take the
19
more results will show.
Now the problem with this is that the majority of us were born in
purgatory, a zone where we are so comfortable with everything that we
have, that there is no need for anything else to make our lives ‘happier’
because everything will make do.
Although most of us don’t realize it but we are in fact living a very

comfortable existence, and even if I told you now that you are in a
comfort zone, your natural instincts, otherwise known as stubbornness
would tell you otherwise. Now I know some of you will be thinking but
I’m not stubborn, but come on guys, the first step to recovery is
acceptance.
By the way, how many of you feel that you are not in your comfort zone
and you always give everything your 100%, but you don’t see the results
that you feel you deserve happening?
20
Most of us in purgatory already have things that give us a ‘comfortable’

life. We have clean drinking water, enough food to keep us alive, and for
most of us we have shelter over our heads, and for all those who have
cars, a fancy house, money to pay for bills, and a disposable income,
your already classed as living in luxury, so count yourselves as the lucky
ones.
This is the exact reason for this book, being lucky enough to work with
thousands of people, I have found that many of you are actually living
very comfortably, and this is the problem, so many of you tell me that
you work hard, you do everything you can and you don’t have this or
that and so you’re are not able to achieve your goals and luck is just not
on your side.
No one is born with luck. Luck is created by you, and you alone and
through out this book, this is the message that I would like to share with
you all.
Remember your fate is in your hands. No one is going to hand you

everything on a silver platter, so for those of you who are waiting for
luck to land on your lap. You can stop waiting. Because let me tell you
something. It’s not going to happen.
Take action and create your own luck. Make your dreams succeed.
21
Superpower, not like you know it
W e have now established that emotion creates motion,
which in turn bring us results. The bigger the emotion, the bigger the
results- it’s all relative.
I’d like you to take a minute to put a percentage, a number to the rate
that you feel you are working at right now. Think about it and be true
to yourself.
Do you feel like you are giving it your all? 100%? 80%? Perhaps only
50%?
Remember that the only person who will see this is you, so don’t lie
to yourself.
There are so many people out there who feel that they have given it
there all in everything that they do, and that they try their utmost best
and give everything 100% every single day.
What if I told you that the 100% that people refer to is merely an
illusion?
The fact is that to be at 100% is to be at the top, so if I was to tell you

now that I’m going to write a book to make you work at 200% then that
22
would seem impossible.
So firstly, I’m not going to tell you that I’m writing a book to make you
work at 200%. What I am going to tell you is that you have an unlimited
power resource, which I refer to as ‘Superpowers’ , I am quite simply
telling you that I am extending and raising your power bar so that you
can achieve more, and do more.
Secondly what I’m going to show you is that your power bar has no
limits. This is the beauty about being human, we are limitless. We hear
stories about it all the time, of how mothers are able to lift cars to free
their trapped children from underneath them, and how humans beat
the odds, time and time again beating world records and creating
miracles.
Those who are truer to themselves will know they don’t quite give
everything 100% but perhaps give 80%, and of course the ones who may
be even more honest to themselves will say that they are only giving 50-
60% of their effort to anything they do.
Most people will settle for the belief that they are giving it around 80-
90%. I’m going to tell you that all those beliefs and preconceptions that
you have of how hard you work are just that, beliefs.
In fact, people just think that they are hardworking. They think that
working 9am - 5pm, doing the odd overtime, working till 7pm or 8pm
and on the odd occasion, going into work extra early earning some extra
brownie points and sometimes working at the weekend is very hard
working.
23
Wow.
It seems like your working really hard right? By any ‘normal’ persons
standards that would be correct.
NO!
Now, think of this scenario. You’re out of work right now and your
looking for employment, you happen to land an interview at an
insurance brokers. You walk into the company on the day of your
interview, to interview for a sales position. You have a little experience
previously having worked a short stint in retail sales, but your experience
isn’t noticeably spectacular, but you got good results and your ex-boss
wrote you a good reference.
When you walked in for an interview you were enthusiastic and

motivated and you felt like you had the energy to go on forever, you
were happy and bouncy and felt like nothing in the world could stop you.
Based on your happy go lucky attitude and your positive energy, the
manager finally decides to give you the job. You go out there on your
very first day, you make a few phone calls. Your really enthusiastic, and
even though you get rejected a couple of times, you keep that smile and
you keep on calling, you finish your first day of work and even though
you haven’t sold anything your satisfied and your feeling happy.
Then the second and third day kick in and before you know it you have
completed the first week of work. You go home at the weekend and
even though you have still yet to make a sale your still feeling like you
can’t be beaten, after all it’s only your first week and you will do better
in your second week, or so you tell yourself.
24
Then week 2 comes in and week 3 comes in and the momentum slows
down and your bounciness and energy starts to fade. You feel like your
still giving it your all but on some days you only make around 20-30 calls.
Most of the calls hanging up before you even get to tell them about the
awesome product you have to sell.
Weeks go by and you haven’t made a single sale, your getting nervous.
Your manager is getting anxious, having put herself on the line to hire
you.
One day, she invites you into her plush office and you have a chat. She’s
questioning your ability, so your initial reaction is to defend yourself.
You start off with the usual, “I’m trying my best its really hard, I even
worked last Saturday through the weekend and I’ve been working
overtime.
There was one night that I even stayed till 10pm at the office and it just
doesn’t seem to be happening.”
“I’m doing everything I can.”
Think about that scenario for a moment, your working really hard right?
Your making calls, your working over time, and you’re even working
weekends.
You are doing everything you can. You have put everything into the job,
you’ve given it your 100%, right?
Just imagine this for a second.

You come into work the next day deflated from the conversation you
had with your boss the night before. Your trying to avoid her at all costs
25
and you slouch into your desk just before 9am and start working on your
call sheet.
You’ve managed to avoid her till lunchtime, and then suddenly you
receive a call, it’s from her office. You can’t hide anymore so you slowly
pick up the phone and answer.
Again you have been summoned to have a ‘chat’ in her office. You walk
in feeling small and she tells you in a tight voice, “You know what, I’m
not happy with this, so this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to strap a
time bomb onto you.”
Before you can muster up a protest, she has picked up the time bomb
and she straps it to your body. She sets it to detonate in 30 days giving
you one month. She tells you if you don’t sell any insurance policies
within the next 30 days then she’s not going to enter the release code
and she will just let it detonate.
What do you think would be happening right now?
Your adrenaline will be pumping for one; your blood pressure will be
skyrocketing. Before she even finishes that sentence you will be out of
the office approaching every living soul that you see from the security
guard inside the office building to the old lady crossing the road.
Asking and begging everyone to buy insurance off you. You would be
approaching everyone calling everyone in your phone book, even those
‘friends’ that you haven’t seen since kindergarten that you reconnected
with on Facebook.
To the guy selling newspapers on the corner newsstand. Asking
everyone, “do you have an insurance policy? Have you ever thought
26
about getting insurance?”
Your energy levels will be higher than they have ever been before, even
higher than your first day at work when you were happy and bouncy.
You would be working your sales approach around everyone making
anyone you speak to feel that your product is the best that there is on
the market, and that there is no other product that can do what yours
can do.
Your sales pitch would be elevated to the next level adapting and
changing your selling strategies trying all different ways of selling until
you get the right pitch to the right person.
Would you stop? Would you give up? Would you even be sleeping at
night? The answer is no. You wouldn’t. Why?
Because you have been forced into what we perceive as a living ‘hell’.
Being forced into a position that is so uncomfortable allows us to build
up this extreme negative emotion that is driving you to do whatever it
takes and work at your maximum capacity. Driving you to work like
you’ve never worked before.
How many insurance policies do you think you would be able to sell? Do
you think you will be able to sell at least one in the 30 days?
Now think about the comment that I made previously in this chapter, a
lot of people feel that they work at 100%. But it’s not true; it’s your
perception that you are working at 100%. I want you to really think
about that statement and really think long and hard about the scenario
I just laid out for you.
27
If you were one of those people who felt that you work at 100%, do you
still feel like this now? Do you still think you work at 100%?
People often feel they are working at a full capacity, but in fact you are
just working to the limits of your own personal comfort zone.
Think of it in this way; imagine you are an elastic band. We all know
what an elastic band does right?
Now, imagine you are the elastic band this time, the elastic band as it s,
you stretch the elastic band to its limits and it gets to a point where it
stretches no more, and then you let go of it, what happens to the elastic
band?
It will snaps back to its original shape and size right?
The current limits of that elastic band are the outer limits of your
comfort zone.
When you work within those limits you feel comfortable, when you
stretch to the outer limits this is the limit of your comfort zone and when
you work within this zone, you start to feel uncomfortable like you are
pushing yourself the hardest you can go already.
Most people who say that they are working to 100% are working within
this zone. They have stretched themselves to what they feel is
everything they have, it gives them an illusion that they are working to
full capacity and to their full potential.
Now taking that same elastic band again, imagine sitting everyday for a
month, or for a year stretching the band out again and again repeatedly,
28
what would happen to that elastic band?
Initially not much, the elastic band would bounce back to its original size,
back to your original comfort zone. But eventually it will start to give
way. It will start to get slightly bigger and every time you stretch it out,
its bounce back point will be slightly outside of that circle of your original
comfort zone.
Eventually, it stretches to a new limit and will slowly stay that way. Now
imagine you are that elastic band again, you have been stretching
yourself every single day, slowly you reach out of your comfort zone,
slowly you become used to reaching out and it no longer feels
uncomfortable.
This is how you expand on your own personal comfort zone and work
beyond what you feel is your true potential.
Those of you who have ever ran a marathon before, or have done any
cross country running for that matter or any sport, you would have
experienced a minor case of your superpower.
What happens when you start, training or running? You run for 5
minutes maybe 10 minutes and your huffing and puffing already, you
feel tired, your heart is racing uncomfortably in your chest and the lactic
acid is building up in your legs and you don’t want to run anymore.
10 minutes after that you are equally tired, and 10 minutes after that
you are still equally tired. Before you know it 40 minutes have gone by
and you have finished the run.
Isn’t it weird how within the first 10 minutes you already had that feeling
that you were too tired to go on? And if you really couldn’t go on then,
29
where did the extra 30 minutes come from?
This is purely your brain, playing mind games with you, telling you that
you are too tired to go on anymore and you can’t do this anymore, when
it actually means, ‘hey this is a tiny bit uncomfortable, why are you doing
this?’
Under my careful scrutiny, this is the problem that I have concluded

with, remember the diagram that we studied earlier?
The problem we have here is that most of us are living in what we call a
purgatory state, we’re all living in our comfort zone, and we like it there.
I mean who likes to be uncomfortable? This is the problem!
Although some of you may not agree with me, and some of you may
actually think that you are living in a living hell. I’m here to tell you, you
are not.
The majority of us have shelter to keep us safe, have food to keep us full
and have clothing to keep us warm, we have a clean water supply and a
surplus of worldly and sometimes unnecessary material goods to keep
us happy.
So how can we possibly create such big emotions to drive us to push past
our comfort zone and into such a state that we continue stretching
ourselves?
So what we have established so far is that the higher the emotion, the
more the motion, and the bigger the results.
30
I have great news and I have not so great news.
The not so great news is that I haven’t got 40 million time bomb jackets
to strap on to all of you to push you to achieving your results. Although,
it would be great if I did have them, because then I would be 100% sure
that all of you reading my words would definitely achieve your true
potential in record time.
However, I have the strategies that can take you there. To reach that
emotional drive that can make you strive to become a better version of
yourself, a strategy that can make you reach for the stars.
We are lucky because all the emotion based stories that we were
exploring previously were based on a negative emotional drive, now the
good news is that there is something called a positive emotional drive
and this can equally create results.
So where does positive emotional drive come from? It comes from a

dream. Your ultimate goal.
31
Positive emotional drive

WINSTON CHURCHILL: A pessimist sees the
difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist
sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
N ow, most of us were fortunate enough to be born into
families where from a young age, we did not have to worry about
whether the bills would be paid or whether there would be food on the
table, but that doesn’t mean that we were all doomed to fail.
There is no literature out there that you could read that could deliver
you into such a negative emotional state to be able to force you up to
heaven. This book included.
So instead I’m going to teach you how to acquire the right tools, the
correct knowledge and the right mentality and attitude so we can
extract the same emotions that will allow us to achieve the same results.
So assuming that we all want the same or similar results, we all want to
succeed to reach our peak potentials. How is the emotion created to be
able to deliver us to that result?
The good news is that emotions can be split into 2 categories, one that
we would call negative emotion, which is what we just talked about, and
the other is what we can call positive emotion.
32
Emotions are driven by 2 things; positive and negative thoughts. When

we were talking about my father, Chris Gardner and Sylvester Stallone,
their emotions came from when they felt they were being pushed
against the wall, when they were in what they perceived as being their
living hell. Being in this state they had to do whatever it took to get them
to where they wanted to be. These are what we call negative emotional
drivers.
Now I’m not telling you all to go out there to go and find some hardship
so that you can create a burning desire and your driving fuel, however
there are certain circumstances in life which we are able to call upon to
create the same effect.
We have now identified that there are positive and negative emotions.
Above we have illustrated what sort of negative emotions there are and
how they can act as drivers.
So where do we get positive emotions from? And what do we mean by

a positive emotion?
A positive emotion is lead by a dream or a vision. I have worked with

hundreds and thousands of people across many different countries; a
common question that I always ask everybody is what are their dreams.
In the first instance I find that people give me very generic answers of, ‘I
would like lots of money’, ‘I would like to drive a Ferrari’, or ‘I would like
to live in a big house’.
What I found was whenever I asked the question I didn’t see or feel any
emotion from my participants. Now remember the key to creating
results is limitless motion, but without the emotion, then there will be
33
minimal motion.
Now let me just throw a question out there, have any of you ever been
in one of those situations where you want something so bad that you
cant even hide the excitement from your voice? You can’t hide the
expression from your face?
Because I certainly know how to recognize that feeling and, what I found
was that when you throw that question out there people generally tell
you the generic things that everyone wants, such as a supercar, a big
house, a private jet, a nice yacht, some of you may even say to lose
weight or to find a better job, the list is endless but we all get the picture
right?
You can really tell in a person’s tonality and physiology how much they
want something. When I ask the question and people tell me, “yeah that
would be nice, or yeah I wouldn’t mind that” it’s a problem!
What people have failed to realize is that when they talk and respond
like that they are just setting themselves up for failure. I’ve just asked
them what their dreams are, what their desires are and all they have
managed is to give me answers that they have read off a book.
There is no passion, no want and absolutely no desire for any of the

things that they have just told me that they ‘want’.
There are so many people who tell me that they want to lose weight or
they want a body like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, most of the time I ask
them what they are currently doing to achieve this and they will tell me
that they are ‘planning on starting the gym in the New Year’ or there
‘planning on cutting down on junk food’ or ‘planning to eat healthier’.
34
I know some of you are already nodding to this right? When I hear these
responses I’m already thinking, ‘planning’? ‘New Year’?
Come on guys if you want something so badly why would you start after
the New Year? Why would you be planning to start? If you wanted it
that badly you would start now, you would take action now.
If you aren’t taking action right now then its currently just a want. Not a
need.. Let me tell you this, until you feel a need it won’t happen after
the New Year. And that planning will never translate into any action. It
will never happen!
I’m sure that many of you who are reading this book have either been
there or said that before, or know of someone who continuously say that
they are on a diet and your intelligent enough to realize that when they
say that they are going to start something from next Monday or from
the New Year, realistically its never going to happen.
That’s what talkers do, but successful people don’t do that, successful
people take action now!
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Well done is better than well said.
When people talk about results, what they haven’t been able to
recognize is that without an emotional attachment to the result, such as
happiness, then they will be unlikely to achieve their desired goals.
Emotion is the ultimate trigger to massive action and without action

there will be no results. So dream big, create an emotion, and go get
your dream!
35
Purpose
JIM ROHN: The bigger the why the easier the
how
S o if the key to achieving results is created by emotion what
do we do if we don’t have that emotion? And where does it come from?
This is what got me thinking and what I found was astonishing. My

inquisitiveness got me asking more and more people why they wanted
what they wanted. How would it make you feel if you did get this?
When emotion was involved I could see a shift in people, there was a
change in what people were saying, how they were saying it and even in
how they postured themselves.
I started to see a change in tonality and physiology, the more I dug

deeper for a reasoning behind these desires, the more I started to see a
shift in the physiology and the tonality.
With this shift, what happened was magical; the beginnings of an

emotional attachment were created. This is what I call the ‘Why
Process’.
36
Finding out the why behind why someone wants something is so strong
as this triggers an emotion, which causes or intensifies his or her desires.
Remember the exercise we did earlier?
37
Now I want you to go back to that piece of paper and look at the list
you just wrote down. I want you to really think about why you want all
of those things and how it would make you feel if you had those things.
So imagine this, I’ve asked you what you want, and you’ve told me you
want a Ferrari.
So why is it that you want a Ferrari?

You tell me that its cool to have a Ferrari.
Why is it cool? What would you do with a Ferrari? Where would you
drive it?
I’d drive it, drive it into town
Why would you drive it into town?

Because it’s cool, it looks cool
What will happen if you drove it into town?

People will look
How will that make you feel?

It will make me feel special and make me feel confident and like I’ve
achieved something really great.
Take as much time as you need to do this and dig deep, really feel the
emotions of why you want something, really dig into how this will make
you feel and again be truthful to yourself, be honest. There is no shame
in wanting something because it makes you feel good or it makes you
feel important.
When you have written down all the emotions to what it is that you
want and when you can really feel the emotions, this is when you know
that you really want it.
38
What the why process does is that it allows you to create a burning
desire of why you want something. Remember Emotions equals
motions, which equals results!
When you have the correct emotions in place it will cause you to take
action giving you your desired result and in order to make this emotion
more intense and real, you need total focus on your goal and the why
behind it, and you need to keep repeating it to yourself and make the
vision so powerful in your head so you can almost feel it, you can almost
touch it and you know exactly what is going to happen and what you’re
going to do when you reach your goal.
Many Oriental Asian companies in the East start off their mornings with
a mass meeting of all their employees lined up on their roof tops or
board rooms chanting the company’s slogans as a way of inspiring
motivation and loyalty and as a means of keeping the company’s goals
fresh in their minds.
They do this so that their employees are reminded of what they are
working for, creating a vision and an emotion within their employees.
This is why a lot of people do incantations or declarations, because the

more you say something and the more you think something, the more
you start living that something.
This is not to say that you should get emotional at every turn, but try it
for a couple of days, and you will see a massive shift in how you work
and think.
39
I’m sure most of you if not all of you reading this has been in an
argument before, most of the time when an argument breaks out your
emotions will build up. As your argument gets deeper and deeper, your
annoyance which started off to be something really not so major
becomes something major. You start off with an annoyance at
something small and then as you both go on, your bringing things up
from the past and you start to say a lot of abusive words and you end up
hurting your loved ones, as soon as you have said it, you regret it, and 5
minutes later you know you never meant it and your feeling really sorry
that you ever said it.
This happens because when your emotions are high, it creates a lot of
motion, meaning there will be a lot of momentum and drive created,
your emotions surpass your conscious thinking and make you do and say
things that you usually have control of. Remember, when your emotion
is high your intelligence is low.
How many of you have ever been shopping and seen something that you
really like? You see it for the very first time, you go into the store you
pick it up you have a look at it and the sales lady tells you that it’s a
season must have, or it’s the latest gadget and everyone is going to be
queuing up for one, suddenly you have to have it. Even holding it in your
hands is making you really happy and you feel that you must have this
thing You spend your savings or money you shouldn’t have spent on it
and then as soon as you have bought it you regret it?
40
Why does this happen? Because when emotions are high, intelligence
is low. What we need is something that I call intelligent-motion.
When your emotions are high it creates a lot of motion, meaning that
you will work at a faster speed than you will usually work at. Your brain
is trying to process both your emotions and your new rational thinking
process, but coupled with all that emotion, sometimes your brain isn’t
able to process at the speed you want it to and all that information you
are trying to push through, can sometimes turn what seems to be an
innocent situation into something that is actually quite destructive and
damaging.
Think of it like this, your in your car on your way to work and the road
your driving on is signifying that the 4 lane highway that you are driving
along is about to become a 1 lane road, you see the sign from a mile off
but you feel that you have a lot of time, you don’t need to get in lane yet
besides the lane is lagging slightly.
All of a sudden you get to the 800yard sign, so you start to signal and
you want to get into the correct lane. But by this point all the cars in your
lane are suddenly trying to get into the left hand lane.
If all the cars were to do that at once what would happen? A massive
jam would be created right? However if the cars took their time and
waited their turn then all the cars would be able to turn in and make
their way down the lane right?
When you jam your mind with too much ‘stuff’ instead of getting you
from where you are to where you want to be a lot quicker, more
efficiently, it’s probably taking you around the bush a little, and on a sort
of detour.
41
In order to eliminate this we can embark on a meditative process. While

your emotion is high or you feel your emotions are heightened, I want
you to practice breathing. Breathe in deeply, fill your lungs with air,
expanding your stomach; hold this breath for a few seconds, then slowly
breath out, forcing all the air from your lungs. If you feel that there is
still a lot going on in your mind, then repeat the process.
Breathing in deeply, and then slowly breathe out can help you to clear
your mind. Repeat this until you feel grounded and your mind is clear
again.
When your mind is clear you will be able to reprocess the information
that you were trying to jam in your mind.
So, now we know why we want something, and we know what we want,
but how do we get there? The next step is to create a vehicle that will
get us to our destination.
How I do this is to go through a mind mapping process.
Sometimes thinking big can seem a little bit overwhelming, because

there seems to be so much to the task in hand which could result in
overloading your brain with too much information. This is why we use
the mind mapping method, which allows us to break everything down
into bite-sized increments to allow your brain to process the information
clearly and efficiently.
When you feel that your brain is overloaded or you’re overwhelmed

with too much information, find a nice space, sit down, relax yourself,
breath in, breath out and use the mind mapping method.
42
A lot of the time when you have a problem or a goal you are trying to
achieve, there will be a lot of steps and processes involved in reaching
the destination, what your brain naturally does is that it tries to answer
all the questions at once which becomes very overwhelming and tiring.
The more you start and try to process all the information the more your
brain begins to connect negative dots in your mind. You start to think of
all the negatives and the problems, such as I don’t have the time, I don’t
have the money I don’t have the people or the skills. When you are
focusing on all these problems together, then they become one big
problem.
In our minds it becomes a problem so big and overwhelming that it will

never be solved. That’s why we think to give up and decide that it’s too
hard to achieve this goal, however by breathing and clearing our minds,
then we are able to take one thing at a time, making sure to be solution
focused and to be able to see each of the tasks at hand very clearly and
then to prioritize which parts are the most important, which need to be
dealt with immediately and then to tick them off the list one at a time.
43
Visualization
NELSON MANDELA: Action without vision is only

passing time, vision without action is merely
daydreaming, but vision with action can change
the world.
S o you have found your dream and you have found out why
you want your dream, the next steps to thinking big is to build a vision.
Vision is the foundation and fundamental to your dream. Without a
compelling vision, without knowing exactly where you want to be, and
what you want to be there is no process and no results. A vision creates
strong emotions that creates action and in turn results. This is why it is
so important to have a strong and compelling vision
Take some time think about it for a second, and make the visual in
your mind as compelling as possible, see exactly what it is that you
want. Imagine how you will achieve it, see what you will do with
all the things you have achieved and got.
I know that many of you will be reading this sentence, without having
done the exercise that you have just read through or the exercises above
this. I know what you are thinking; just get to the point already.
44
I was in the exact same position, I have read so many books and been to
so many seminars, when I first attended these things and read these
books, I thought to myself, why are you making me do exercises? Just
tell me what I need to know already. Initially I also skipped the exercises,
but trust me, I would not have learnt what I have learnt without doing
them. I discovered that through these exercises I have been able to dig
deeper and really discover my emotions.
So please just take a minute and do the exercise, because lets face it, if
you can’t spend one or 2 minutes on doing an exercise then it says a lot
about how much you want this and how much you are willing to give to
achieve your success.
A great mentor of mine once said, ‘how you do anything is how you do
everything.’ Now remember, how your attitude is towards reading this
book, is how your attitude is in the real world and everything else, and
equally how you treat these exercises and how you do these exercises is
how you do everything else.
Remember the Positive and Negative emotion which we explored

earlier? Aside from using it to create a burning desire you can also use
it here to create a compelling vision.
What we need to think about right now is where you are right now and
where you would like to be. If you could have any life, how would it look,
what would it consist of?
45
That is your ultimate goal.
So after going through the exercises above, everyone should now have
a strong purpose, you’ve written down your goals and you have found
your purpose of why you want those goals, you have effectively created
a catalyst that will fuel that drive so that you can get from where you are
now to where you want to be.
What I have experienced a lot over the years working with so many
people, is that motivating people is not hard, being able to stand in front
of thousands of people and getting their energy levels high and getting
everyone driven to want to take over the world after a 3 day seminar is
easy.
However, what you start to find is that a lot of people lose momentum
very quickly, so whether it’s after reading this book, or after attending a
seminar, or ever after a coaching session with one of your mentors. The
day after, and even the day after that, perhaps up to 3 days after your
46
session, you will feel driven to take action, and you will be feeling good
so you should be taking plenty of action.
However, then comes the second week, and there will be a lot less
action, and come the third week you will probably have reverted back
to your normal self, telling yourself that whatever action it is that you
were taking can wait. So what I’d like to give you in this section is a tool.
This tool is something that I have given to people around the world. And
it has been effective only to those who follow through and do it every
day. This is called the visualization process.
Now I know from hearing the name of the title a lot of people may be
thinking oh no its not another one of those positive thinking, mystical,
magic things, where you sit there and visualize your dreams and success
and suddenly success is just going to fall on you.
That’s the complete opposite of what I am telling you.
To some of you, this may sound ridiculous, but there are so many books
and videos out there which people misinterpret and I’ve even coached
people out there who have told me about the practices they have been
doing, visualizing their success everyday without any results appearing.
When I went into depth of what these individuals were actually doing, I
realized that something had to be done; hence this section of my book
was born.
The process from visualization to achieving results doesn’t have to be

understood as a mystical and magical experience and can be explained
by simple mechanics. When you visualize something in a positive light,
47
you will create a desire to want something, and the deeper the desire is,
the more action you will take to achieving your goal and the higher the
chances of results.
For example, I know this happens to a lot of guys and maybe even some
girls out there, you go to a bar or a club on a night out. You haven’t been
out in a while, and you start looking around, just scoping out the people
that are there and looking to see if you know anyone else in the bar.
You don’t notice anyone and so you and your friends head to the bar for
a drink, after several drinks you are eventually approached by someone.
Someone whom you think is quite average.
Your both talking and suddenly your both flirting, you end up chatting
through the night while having a few drinks, half way through the night
you realize you have suddenly taken a liking to this person, and so you
exchange numbers and the first thing you do when you get home is to
go on Facebook and add each other. Without sounding creepy, you start
scrolling through photos, statuses and wall posts, making a note of when
their birthday is and anything else interesting on their wall.
And you go to bed that night falling asleep whilst texting the other
person. The next day you wake up still thinking about what had
happened the night before and you get out your phone and send a good
morning text. Throughout the day you’re still thinking about them.
The third day comes along and you’re constantly messaging and waiting
for messages and your going around telling all your friends about this
amazing person that you met..
Notice anything strange about the story? From the moment that these
48
2 people met, they weren’t that interested and there was no intrigue;
however as they started to think about each other more, the more they
started to like each other.
What people don’t realize is that from that very first moment the
thought that was racing through their mind was, their ok, a little
average. If in their mind, the person was only average, how come 3 days
on this person has suddenly become the most amazing person ever?
This doesn’t just happen in adults, it happens to kids a lot too. Another
example, so a kid sees an action figure on TV and the advert is expertly
shot and the action figure seems like the coolest toy in the world and
the kid decided he wants it. The more he thinks about it the more he
wants it and the more he likes it. He sees it on TV, he wants it even
more, he sees his friends holding one, and his desire for this toy is again
heightened.
And every time he sees it, he wants it even more. And every time he
feels that he wants it more, he takes more action to justify how much he
needs to have this and how much he likes this and how much he wants
this.
For those of you who have kids, you will know how it goes, generally
when kids pester you and pester you and pester you some more, we all
know who wins in the end.
So what we start seeing in both of these different examples is that,

generally speaking, when you think about or visually see something,
with a positive light, the more you will create a desire and the stronger
that desire will become, the more action you will take to achieve what
you desire, and the more chance of a result.
49
So there is a right way to visualize and a wrong way to visualize. So allow

me to share with you the correct way to visualize:
Step 1
Create a visual board; it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. On that
visual board, stick on pictures and photos of everything that lies within
your dream. These can be places, cars, work, news articles, or even
drawings of your future. Everything that you wish would be in your
ultimate goal. Remember the exercise we did earlier to write down
what you want in your life, that is a good starting point for this.
Step 2
After you have created your visual board, put it up in your room, in a
place where you can see it everyday. Then sit down in a quiet place, it
would be better if you did this in a private space and not in a public place
otherwise you might have some people thinking your crazy and in the
event that you are actually caught doing this in public, please don’t say
Eric taught you this. So in the privacy of your own home, what I’d like
you to do is to close your eyes and to visualize everything that is on your
visual board. I don’t mean to just close your eyes and see the things.
I want you to really think about each item on your board, one item at a
time, think deeply, and dig deep into your emotions, really think about
how it would make you feel and what you would feel if you really
achieved your goal.
Let me give you an example of one thing that I visualize. I see myself out
in Kenya, in my orphanage with my kids, all 345 of them happily playing
50
in the fields and everyone is smiling so happily with their smiles so bright
you could mistaken it for the sun. I’ve been able to raise a lot of money
through H Giving, with lots and lots of kind hearted people putting in the
effort and helping to organize fundraisers. I’ve taken the money that
has been raised out there, and we’re building together.
We’re building more classrooms and we’re fitting the classrooms out
with better facilities, with new desks and chairs, with blackboards and
lights, we’ve bought new books for them, and the kids are really excited.
I can see them so clearly. Their smiles are so bright and big. The
teachers are all looking so proud and they’re all smiling and looking
around proudly at their new facilities, and thanking me saying ‘thank you
Eric for making such a big difference to these kids lives’.
That feeling is so amazing, it makes me feel so important and feeling like

I can make a big difference. I’m feeling significant. Then I open my eyes
and I’m still smiling.
Now the difference between how I feel now after going through that
process to how I would feel if someone asked me what was my dream
and my reply was just to, ‘build an orphanage in Kenya’ is totally
different.
After going through the whole experience in my head, seeing reactions,

understanding how I would feel in that scenario, really pulling out those
emotions, creates a big positive charge.
So at the end of the process you feel so much stronger about each and
every part of the dream and it makes you want to take action to achieve
your dream.
Now all you need to do is repeat that process for 2-3 minutes everyday.
51
Picking out different parts of your dream to visualize each day,you will
feel a shift in your emotion, a shift in your state, a shift in your
physiology, a shift in your desire and a general shift in your positivity and
the results you will be able to achieve in your life.
All I am asking is for you to take some time to create a visual board and
stick it up in your bedroom, somewhere, where you can see it, and then
taking a minimum of 3 minutes everyday to do the visualization process.
Get into a routine of doing this, try creating a habit out of it by doing it
first thing in the morning. So when you wake up in the morning, instead
of checking your phone, or going on the Internet, or even turning on the
TV. Do something productive. Close your eyes and visualize. And trust
me if you start your everyday like this you will notice something different
in your first week whether its at work or within your personal life. You
will notice that you are much more energized and everyday will be more
positive and fulfilling.
Why? Because it creates a positive charge, and let’s face it, not many of
us wake up in the morning being positively charged, I know most of you
are nodding your heads in agreement right now.
Most people wake up in the morning thinking, I want to go into work

later, I want to sleep for another 10 minutes, I just want to take today
off.
Now, just do this one thing for yourself, make this shift and make it now.
Take action now. Not tomorrow, not next week, because I know that if
you can keep this momentum and keep doing this everyday you will start
seeing an increase of positive results happening in your life.
And for those of you who say you want success and say you want it so
52
badly, if you can’t even commit to 3 minutes a day to visualizing your

future, you don’t deserve to be successful and I think you ought to look
yourself in the mirror and think again. Success is easy. If you really want
it.
53
Changing Beliefs
W e previously touched on the topic of beliefs, what I would
like to tell you now is that all those limiting beliefs that you all have can
be changed.
All of you now know that, I’ve held seminars around the world, through
speaking to so many people I find that a lot of people’s dreams are your
generic dreams – have a Porsche; own a mansion, have a yacht, and own
a private jet.
On the other side of that coin, you have the people, who say things like,
I’d like to make more money, but I don’t need too much, a decent car
and a reasonable house will do. It doesn’t need to be too fancy or
expensive.
What does that even mean? My question is why would someone want
some more money but not too much?!
Where does the idea of not too much come from?
Does that mean if you gave that person $10m they will refund you $9m
of it and say hey that’s too much I only wanted $1m.
A person who hopes for a reasonable car, does that mean that, if you
gave them a Mercedes Benz, they would give it back to you and say no-
no a Ford will do.
54
Is that what would happen? What is it that makes these people feel so
strongly about having too much?
This is a phenomenon that happens across the world and the reason
behind this is down to the conditioning that we all have.
Conditioning is a result of the upbringing of a person, and society. It

creates a library of reactions and memories in our subconscious minds,
which result in us answering questions with things like, ‘I would like a bit
of money but not too much.’ Again whatever that means.
We answer these questions in this way because we feel this is what

people want to hear, and we feel that these are the answers that normal
people should give, because we are all taught not to be greedy, we are
all taught to be modest and that to have certain things in life is already
a luxury, but when disrupted and questioned further we soon realize
what we were just asked and the answer that we just gave were not
things that we consciously wanted to say.
A lot of the time people assume it is greedy to say you want too much
money, ethically and morally they have been trained to give the answers
that they give.
Our upbringing, society, and our surrounding environment have an

everlasting affect on the way our mind works and how our mind
processes and distinguishes information. Allowing us to differentiate
from right and wrong, influencing what our thoughts are, how people
should and shouldn’t act, how people should and shouldn’t be. These
are the processes that determine our success.
55
Belief creates action, which in turn gives you results, which then imprints
the belief even more.
If we have no belief in something we will obviously not take action,

which will obviously not lead to any results.
Meaning that the key thing that I have found throughout thousands of
people around the world that determines someone’s success is how
their mind has been programmed and what their belief is.
In the same context, like in my own story, from a young age my mother
and father were very busy at work all the time, and therefore they didn’t
have much time to spend with my siblings and I.
So, from a young age without speaking out about this decision, or
discussing this with anyone, my mind automatically made some links
and connections and I subconsciously decided that when I got older I
didn’t want to make too much money because I would wanted to spend
time with my kids and family.
56
The questions here is, are there people out there who are very rich and
have a lot of free time? Yes!
So why would my mind make such a connection?
The difference between how successful peoples minds work and the not
so successful peoples minds work, is that people who are not so
successful, believe that they can have only one out of the 2, either
happiness, or wealth.
So when you say would you like a lot of money? They will say no I just
want to be happy. When asked, would you like to spend more time with
your family, they will say no I need to make more money. For some
strange reason, people don’t connect that it’s possible to actually have
happiness and wealth.
Well, successful people will tell you, you can have it all.
The key to health, wealth and happiness is to understanding that you

can and must have it all. I’d like you to take a second here and think
about, what is more important in your life? Health, Wealth or
Happiness?
I have always put health first, because what is wealth and happiness if
you don’t have the life to live it? Wealth is very important and I feel that
a lot of people don’t like agreeing with this theory because they feel that
they are better than to agree that money is important in this world, they
feel they are humble and modest and that they don’t need to bow down
to money or give into money.
However, in this day and age, stats very clearly show and are very readily
available on the internet, that 45% of couples divorce due to finance
57
issues, and it also shows that 65% of couples argue about money on a
regular basis.
Money plays such a big part in society, there is no escaping it, whether
you like it or not you are in the money game, so if your going to be
playing the money game you might as well be good at it. Get yourself
educated!
Train your mind to stop believing that money is bad.
With great health and wealth, how do you find happiness? You will find
happiness through your ability to satisfy your psychological human
needs. As Tony Robbins would put it, the need for Certainty, Variety,
Growth, Love and Connection, Significance and Contribution.
If you can satisfy your 6 human needs and have great wealth and health,
then you are well on your way to ultimate happiness.
So I’m sharing with you and I’m telling you this whole story and writing
this book because I went from not wanting much money, just focusing
on my happiness. To then wanting wealth and happiness.
I’ve been there, I’ve made my mistakes and I have learnt from them, and
I want to share with you my experiences so that you are able to utilize
the shortcuts that I have discovered overtime.
I came into the real world after dropping out of college and got my first
reality check. I realized that for my whole life I had been living in a
bubble with everything handed to me. It wasn’t until I moved out of my
parents house and started on my own 2 feet that I started to understand
why money was so important. And it became increasingly important as
58
time went by and I started to realize what sort of overheads I had to

cover for myself. It became more important in my life than I had ever
intended it to be.
So I had dropped out of college and I had joined the real world, and I got
my first job, earning me my first pay cheque, and whilst I was spending
plenty of time with family and friends and I mean plenty, I was very
stressed. This pressure and stress I was feeling caused me to have a lot
of arguments with my family due to their worries about my financial
capabilities, and whether or not I had enough money to live off and
survive.
So this thing that I had said I didn’t need when I was younger, suddenly
became one of the main focuses of my life, and became very important.
I started to focus on money, when I started to focus on money I started

to make more money and soon enough I was making a lot more money.
I managed to fulfill my parent’s wishes, I was earning more and more
money, I was making a decent living, however I was still very unhappy
and despite having everything that I wanted and more, I quickly spiraled
into depression.
It wasn’t until I started my journey on personal development and self-

realization and really understanding myself, that I began understanding
the roots as to why I thought the way I thought, and I started changing
my beliefs by understanding and accepting new beliefs that were
explained to me or shown to me by my mentors and successful people.
I started to understand the importance of belief systems and how to use
my belief system to create new ones, better ones that would lead to my
success.
Belief systems are formed from an amalgamation of the information
59
that is given to us and is stored in the subconscious mind, meaning that

to be able to reprogram our mind, we will need to dig out that
information from our subconscious and replace it with the new belief
system or information.
So firstly what we need to do is take each belief that we have, for

instance, it’s not easy to make money, we need to find out where that
actually came from.
I’d like you all to do a quick exercise; I want you to write down 5
negative beliefs about rich people
For example, rich people are greedy.
Now I want you to write 5 negative beliefs about money.
For example, money doesn’t grow on trees
Then I want you to write down 5 negative possibilities that would

occur if you became rich.
For example, if I become rich, it will change me and people will

dislike me.
Your belief may have come from seeing your parents working hard all
their lives and not be able to make money, or whether it was a friend or
relative who has had a very bad experience with making money, or
whether it’s that you read in a newspaper that someone made lots of
money and lost it all, or that someone became really rich and then
became a drug addict. The way to change your belief that you have
60
about money, whatever it may be is to replace it with a counter belief.
So for instance, your parents have worked all their lives and haven’t
made any money, in order to counter this belief, find a real life scenario
in this world that has been very successful and has a very positive story.
For example, the Chris Gardner story which we explored earlier.
Our minds automatically connect more to the negative than positive

things in life, and that’s why we all know and remember all the negative
stories about people having money, for example, Mcaulay Culkin, child
star, aside from remembering his epic Home Alone movie franchise, the
only other thing people remember about him is his drug addiction.
Lindsay Lohan, very rarely do people associate her with anything but
DUI’s and drug abuse. Britney Spears, people rarely talk about her rise
to fame when she was 17 years old or all the hit singles and albums she
has released, they often associate her with her meltdown.
We hear so many negative stories and remember them that we often

forget and pass over on stories such as Mark and Craig Kielburger, the
founders of Free the Children.
I’m sure many of you have come across the charity Free the Children and
its founders Mark and Craig Kielburger, but how many of you remember
the charity or these 2 names? These 2 kindhearted people are the prime
example of people who make a lot of money, and have a very positive
influence in the world.
Mark and Craig run a social corporation called Me to We which provides

socially responsible products to the market place, half of the profits
obtained through this corporation, goes towards supporting their
61
charity, Free the Children.
Mark and Craig started small and at a very young age, but with the
money that they have been able to make, they have been able to help
more people, the more money that they make the more people’s lives
they are able to contribute positive change to.
And now I want you to all take a second and focus on these scenarios.
Money is purely a magnifier, if you had a person who was a big bully all
through their lives and they were really selfish and they had minor issues
of drugs, or violence, if they suddenly became very rich, what would
happen?
They would, become a bigger drug addict, they would be even more
selfish, even more violent, however on the other hand, if you find
someone who doesn’t have much money and they always like to
volunteer and help others, and always like to do charitable events and
activities, if they suddenly became very rich what do you think will
happen?
They will probably take all that money and do even bigger charitable
events and help even more people, whether its building orphanages,
helping world poverty, or world health issues.
So, remember money is purely a magnifier, now I want you to counter
What I’d like you to do is write out all the positive beliefs you have
about money and take a minute and reflect on this, and focus on the
positive, think about it and digest it.
62
the beliefs from before, taking those beliefs and changing them into
positive beliefs.
Feel how money can actually be good because, only when you
understand and accept that money is good, and that you really want to
make money, is when you actually start to make money.
Now this is something that sounds really simple, and you either accept
this belief or you don’t. Personally when I first heard this I thought,
‘yeah ok whatever’. Until one day something really hit me and I really
started to understand this concept and I thought, boy is this true.
Imagine you have a 6-month-old child, and a spider crawls along, the
baby is content sitting on the floor playing with its toys. Suddenly he
notices the spider and suddenly reaches for it, from nowhere you come
out spot the spider and scream. You panic and grab a hold of the shoe
your wearing and you run after the spider trying to shoo it away from
your baby.
Now what do you think will happen the next time the baby is sitting on
the floor and the spider crawls towards them?
The baby will remember what happened the last time there was spider.
This time he won’t try to reach for it instead he will recollect the memory
from the last time and cry.
This is what we call conditioning. It’s a natural occurrence that causes

us to act and feel in a certain way without us even having to think about
the event.
The human mind is so powerful it logs every event subconsciously. It

remembers everything that happens whether consciously or
63
subconsciously, once an emotion is attached to an event, then that’s a

memory that is logged into your subconscious mind permanently.
While the baby is growing up, it’s very likely that he will be afraid of
spiders.
Now consider this alternative scenario, your child has grown up spider
free and is now 6 years old. He is starting his first day of school and
during lunchtime he is on the playground with some new friends he just
met, his friends suddenly see a spider and start playing with it. Your
child’s first reaction will probably be fear.
However, lucky for us children are curious creatures, they have this
natural curiosity within them to want to explore, want to know and learn
more.
So during that curiosity stage, it’s likely that they can be forced out of
their comfort zone to play with the spider, which can then change their
conditioning once and for all.
Seeing their friends playing with the spider will compel the child to also
want to play with the spider. Despite their fear they will feel that
because their friends are playing with it they shouldn’t be missing out
on the fun either.
This will recondition their mind and the once negative emotions that
were attached to spiders will become overpowered by the new positive
one where they are happily playing with a spider at lunchtime with their
friends.
Now isn’t this bizarre?
64
A lot of our conditioning makes us who we are today. To enable us to

change this is going to feel a little uncomfortable, because we will be out
of our comfort zone, out of the norm.
However remember every time you are out of your comfort zone you
are growing.
65
Think BIGGER
DONALD TRUMP: I like thinking big. If you’re

going to be thinking anyway, you might as well
think big.
E veryone should have an ultimate goal, and through the
series of exercise and what you have read from above you now too
should also have your ultimate goal in mind.
It may seem silly to you now that anyone should walk about life with no
goal in mind. However you will be surprised with the number of people
I’ve worked with that are clueless when I ask them about their dreams.
They automatically think that because it seems so far away what’s the
point in thinking about it. I get responses like “we will see how it works
out”, or “we will see.”
Let me tell you something, someone without a goal is like a person

getting into a car with no destination.
Could you imagine if I asked you to get into a car and just drive, without
giving you any destination? In 2 weeks time where do you think you will
be? What about in 1 year’s time?
Most likely nowhere or just continually driving with no purpose right?
The key to stop yourself from wasting all that time is to identify your
66
goal early, and make sure that it is not too small.
You must THINK BIG.
People don’t accidently achieve Big results; all the greatest leaders
around the world knew right from the beginning what they wanted to
be and where they wanted to be.
Results don’t just happen; results are an outcome of a strong vision and
persistent actions.
A lot of the time thinking big becomes too overwhelming and that’s why
people deviate from it. But if we stop limiting beliefs, thinking big will
become second nature. We can make it happen by breaking our growth
plan down to smaller increments so that we are building small sections
at a time. Think BIG Build small.
This allows us to build a solid foundation, allowing you to grow rapidly

and exponentially. Remember building solid foundations is the key to
sustainable growth.
So, throughout the book so far, we have explained what drives

successful people to where they are today, we have wrote down our
goals and we have also recognized that we need a reason behind why
we do what we do. The purpose should be so big now that it emotionally
stimulates us to take massive action; we have also recognized that we
all have an unlimited power resource that is much greater than what we
thought we had.
We should all now have an understanding of the process of visualization
and how that can contribute massively to our success and leave us
charged every morning full of energy to tackle each day and to carry on
67
pursuing our ultimate goal of complete health, wealth and happiness.
We now know that society has set some limiting beliefs into our minds,
through our upbringing, surroundings and other external influences, we
know that these beliefs can be changed once and for all and our new
beliefs should be limitless and aid us on our journey to success.
Napoleon Hill once said, ‘whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it
can achieve.’ Believe in that and have faith in yourself.
Everything we have talked about so far is to do with our inner game,

which is everything that goes on in our subconscious mind and
contributes to over 70% of our results.
Before we finish Part 1, there is one note that I would like to leave you
all with, and this is something that has slowed down the success process
for many people around the world, myself included, and that is the
ability to think big.
Those of you, who have a big dream right now, think bigger, if your
dream doesn’t scare you, you’re not thinking big enough. Don’t allow
yourself to believe that you are limited in any way. Remember your
resources are limitless; don’t allow any limitations get in the way of your
dreams.
Many of you may not know this, but Bruce Lee, one of my all time hero’s
has been one of the most inspirational mentors to me throughout my
teens. He is not someone you would normally associate with personal
development, often people are reminded about his amazing Kung Fu
movies and martial arts.
68
However, his legacy leaves us all a greater gift than the entertainment
he provided us with on the big screen, there are masses of manuscripts
that he left behind filled with philosophical thinking and inspirational
words about being able to reach ones destiny.
Angry after having been burnt by Warner Brothers and frustrated at the
lack of opportunities in Hollywood for an Asian American actor, Bruce
sat down one night and wrote a letter to himself.
‘By 1980, I will be the best known oriental movie star in the united states
and will have secured $10 million dollars… And in return, I will give the
very best acting I could possibly give every single time I am in front of the
camera and I will live in peace and harmony.’ (1970)
In 1973, months after Bruce’s untimely death, the blockbuster movie

Enter the Dragon was released both in USA and China, elevating him to
the level of an international star. He had reached his ultimate goal and
fulfilled his promise to himself before his predicted time.
1970s was a time where Asians were bullied and were looked down
upon, but he persevered through his dream and became what most
people would have thought impossible, he became the first
international Asian actor.
So we all understand that in order to achieve big we must think big and
we must have those goals set, however the question now becomes, how
big do we think?
So do we set our goals to earning $10m or do we set our goals to earning

$100m? My answer is, why cap your dreams? Why put a number on
how much you will earn or what you can achieve?
69
According to human needs psychology everyone needs growth, so when

we cap our dreams, what we don’t realize is that we are denying
ourselves the satisfying that need.
If you remember back to my time when I was in my early 20s, when I

was suffering from depression, I unintentionally fell into this confused
state. I accidentally capped my dreams.
My aim and my dream back then were just to have a reasonable income,
have a reasonable house and car, to have a family, and to settle down.
I found that by the age I was 21 I was already well on my way to reaching
that goal, and ironically, that is the period that I dived into depression.
By the age of 21, I already had a few investment properties, a successful

business that was earning me around half a million dollars a year, and I
had in fact surpassed what my dream initially was.
But I was in the worst depression of my life, which was also the worst
time of my life and I find that this actually happens to many people out
there, where, they have this dream and this perfect scenario and when
they achieve it then they think, is this it?
And when people do feel that way, they get trapped into a lost and
confused state, where they’re just confused about life, about what they
want and where they want to go from there. I know this happens to a
lot of people out there, but for me it meant that for the following 3 years
I stayed stagnant I didn’t do much with my life.
I had no more goals to achieve and I had no more that I needed to do so
I felt that there was nothing left for me in life. Some of you reading this
now may in fact be going through this phase right now, but I’m here to
70
tell you, to step out of this trap, all you need to do is think big!
My depression, my limited goals are all now past events in my life, those
are things that have happened and so there is nothing I regret, they form
a part of my history, my story and those events have helped me become
who I am today.
Often a lot of people will go about life and say, ‘I regret this, or I regret
that.’ But if you think of your past as a gift to yourself, remember, your
past is a present to your future.
However those are the reasons why I feel it is so important to get the
message out now, so that you don’t need to fall into the same pattern,
life is so short, and time is too precious to waste.
We can’t go wasting the few years of our lives on struggling with finding
a dream or aim in life. And if we have wasted the time then let’s make
the most out of our lives now. Lets do something that will make a big
impact that will inspire millions across the world and work towards
positive change.
Because I believe that contribution is the ultimate route to happiness.
And finally Don’t be realistic! Anything is possible.
I work with corporations and people from all around the world and I’ve
found that the one thing that limits any organizations capability is the
word REALISTIC.
Its not realistic for our product to sell in that country, not realistic that
our company can operate on that scale, its not realistic to recruit CEO’s
71
that have the same amount of passion to drive this forward, not realistic
to grow during this current market situation.
Aside from in corporations, the word realistic is also existent in our

personal lives. We need to stop thinking realistic. The word eliminates
belief, blocks focus, and stops results from happening.
Allow me to share a quick story with you all, in 1905, two brothers
known as the Wright brothers told everybody that they were going to
build a machine that would fly them into the sky, across water and over
mountains.
Guess what everyone’s reaction was at the time… “It wouldn’t work”
“don’t be stupid”,“ be realistic”.
If the Wright brothers back then had taken everyone’s advice and had
just been realistic, we wouldn’t have airplanes, and if this word realistic
actually existed today we wouldn’t have things like the Internet. We
wouldn’t have computers or even that touch screen phone that people
can’t seem to put down these days.
One of my messages to share with everyone is don’t be realistic!
I know that many of you who have picked up this book have got what it
takes to be successful, so let us all not be realistic and let’s grow together
and be the innovators of the next generation.
Realistic views and ideals will only limit our achievements and successes,
consider this:
72
At Aged 17 I had a very realistic dream to have my own business, to have

a house, and to have a reasonable car. By the age of 21 I reached my
dream.
Ages 21 - 24 nothing happened, and I wasn’t happy with my life, to the

point that I fell into depression.
Aged 24 I had a dream, another realistic dream that I wanted to make

enough money to be able to have my own orphanage and to be able to
help make a difference.
By the age of 26, YoYo Orphanage and YoYo Centre of Learning were
formed.
Today, I’m not going to fall for that again.
I, Eric Ho’s dream today is to carry on my journey through

entrepreneurship, building more and more successful businesses and
being able to lead each industry that I go into.
Being an innovator of the next generation. My dream is to reach out to

as many people as possible, going from continent to continent going
from country to country, sharing the knowledge and experience that I
have been lucky enough to acquire so far. To add value to other
people’s lives, to enable others to live their dreams and achieve beyond
anything they ever imagined.
I will continue my life and journey in the spirit of health, wealth, and
happiness, maintaining good health throughout to allow me to have the
power to accumulate as much money as possible and to be able to
contribute massively towards sustainable growth in third world
73
countries and to give those who are less fortunate the education and
support that all humans deserve to have.
I will contribute and carry on adding value to other people’s lives, and
making people happy. Because when I make people happy, that is the
ultimate foundation for my happiness. Because in knowing that I am
contributing massively and adding value to other peoples lives it allows
me to stay in perfect happiness and harmony.
Now we are coming to the end of part one, and on a finishing note, I
would like everyone to go back and revisit that piece of paper that you
originally wrote your dreams on at the beginning of the book.
I want you to look at your dreams and make sure that any doubts and
limits that you put on your dreams are now gone, make sure that your
ultimate goals are limitless and if your dreams don’t scare you, you’re
not dreaming big enough.
If you’re going to be dreaming small you might as well not be dreaming

at all. Make your dream so big that it makes all the challenges along the
way seem tiny and irrelevant.
74
THINK BIG Build small
Part 2 Build Small

Chapter 2
| Smart work not hard work |
BILL GATES: I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy

person will find an easy way to do it.
H ave you ever noticed how everyone is just so busy these
days? Often we hear colleagues complaining that there just so busy with
piles of work to do.
And everyone is desperately trying to deal with the tasks at hand,

wouldn’t it be nice if I told you that there was a way to be both
productive at work and achieve your desired goals without being busy
all the time?
The key to this is working smarter not just harder. There is a

misconception about life, and people generally feel that just because
they have worked more hours then they have done more work.
This is false and this ideal should be changed now once and for all. I used
to be one of those people who used to clock hours and hours and feel
74
that I was being productive, there was no doubt that I was working hard
being there all those hours, however what I had actually got done was
not very much at all, and pulling all those hours actually didn’t amount
to as much work as I thought it would.
Now I’m not trying to tell you that you should stop working hard, that’s
not the point of this chapter, I’m just here to tell you that early on you
should distinguish between working hard and working smartly.
Working hard is easy, and we have all heard it before, whether it was
when we were younger, when we were told to work hard at school, or
when we were older, and we were told to work harder at work.
Working hard is easy, there are a lot of people in this world who are
hardworking, but not necessarily all of them are seeing results.
Perhaps you, yourself are one of these people, remember when we

spoke about working hard before, with the time bomb and giving it your
100%? Perhaps that is you! Maybe you do work to that level, however,
you are not seeing the desired results that you want.
The key to working hard is to couple it with working on the things that
matter. This is so important, but a point that is often missed out and
left unexplained when told to work hard.
Being Chinese, what I have found is that the mentality of working hard
is very much instilled into every young Chinese person growing up. From
the day we are able to speak, our parents often have a road planned out
for us, hoping and dreaming that one day we will become the person
that they have planned for us to be.
75
From a very young age I have had the working hard mentality drilled into
me. My parents, leading by example, used to tell me all the time that I
had to work hard in order to succeed.
I was told that success isn’t easy, but with hard work it’s achievable.
What my parents and so many other people had failed to explain to me
was that working hard wasn’t the only thing that would bring success.
Imagine this for a second, a person who works 18-hour shifts in a retail
store or a fast food restaurant behind a till, are they working hard? Yes!
Will they be earning millions? Probably not.
There are a lot of people out there who work their fingers to the bones,
especially in today’s economic climate, just to make ends meet.
However, not very many of them turn out to be super successful, and
not many of them turn into rags to riches stories such as, John Paul
Dejoria, founder of Paul Mitchell Salon Hair products.
John Paul was not one of the lucky ones, with his parents divorcing when
he was 2 years old, leaving them penniless, he started work at the age
of 9 selling Christmas Cards and Newspapers to try and support his
family. As his mother was unable to support the family, him and his
siblings were sent to foster care.
John Paul was labeled by his teachers in high school as the ‘least likely
to succeed’, and found himself twice homeless. However he was able
to pull himself up and went on to found one of the top hair product
brands in the world, with his hair products selling globally in almost
every hair salon in the world.
76
He now has a net worth of over $4.2Billion dollars and has an interest in
a multitude of industries spanning from food and drink, including the
luxury Tequila brand, Patron Spirits to Jewelry and Telecoms.
Why is this?
What I have found is that, yes, people are indeed working very hard.
However, they are not working smartly. This is the thing, a lot of people
say, work hard and you will succeed.
Keep working hard at it and you will start seeing results, this is an old
and broken concept that should be changed once and for all.
Once upon a time this may have been true, but in todays modern society
this concept should be renewed and we should preach the ethics of
working smart and hard.
Don’t we all know people out there who have worked hard all their lives,
working 100-hour weeks, always working overtime but never really
being rewarded for that?
So, I’d like to turn this concept around and tell you, its not the 100 hours
a week of hard work that gives you results, instead I’d like to tell you
that it’s working smartly coupled with working hard that gives you the
correct results that you are looking for.
People say work hard and you will be successful, however, isn’t it true
that there are people who work so hard all there lives and never become
successful? Isn’t it also true that some people don’t seem to work as
hard and are very successful?
77
The key to success is smart work not hard work, now don’t take this the
wrong way, I know a lot of people who believe they are too smart to
work long hours at anything, and they look down on jobs because they
feel that the job is beneath them, so they end up not working much at
all expecting their smartness to carry them through life, and ending up
achieving very little. The formula goes:
Meaning you have to work smart and hard to be successful. Without

one or the other the formula will be incomplete. The smarter you work
plus the more time you put into it, the more successful you will become.
A lot of people say, work hard and you will see the results; I say work
hard on the things that matter. Work hard and work smart and the
results will come.
Working smart can be easy if you know how, overtime I have developed
a system to aid me in working smarter to being more productive in a
day.
My top 4 rules to working smarter are:

Prioritizing, we all have lists and lists and lists of things that we are
supposed to do in any given day, I myself have one and we even employ
this system in my companies, making sure employees and team
members jot down the tasks at hand and work their way through them.
78
Over time I found that my lists were just getting longer and longer and I
was no longer even able to keep up with my list, everyday there would
be a new load of ‘things’ added on to the list and it just kept on growing.
I would get through what I thought was a good deal of it to find that
there was more and more tasks at the bottom, it got tiring and it was
like the work was never ending and it stopped my motivation.
In order to be more productive, I now look at my list each day and

prioritize them in order of importance and tick off at least 10 things that
are must do’s on the day.
In order to help with my time management I’ve also stopped putting

every single task onto my list and I have learnt to take more action, doing
the simple easy tasks that will only take a moment of my time right now.
Use time constraints, set your time out at the beginning of each day and
give yourself a time limit as to how much time you are going to spend
on each task, this way you won’t be spending hours and hours on
perfecting one piece of work.
If you find that the piece of work is not perfect, leave it aside for now
and go onto another piece and come back to it when you have time at
the end of the day. Often we just need a break from something to be
able to see it through a fresh pair of eyes.
Cutting the fat, I spend my days in lots and lots of meetings with lots and
lots of different people, my phone is always ringing off the hook and I
get a lot of marketing calls through to my phone.
I used to try to meet up with everyone face to face to discuss matters
and that would take up most of my days.
79
Overtime I have learnt to cut the fat, taking meetings only when they
are absolutely necessary and doing everything else via our savvy
communication tools that the age of technology has provided us with.
This has allowed me to free up my days in order to work on the
important things that matter and not travelling up and down the country
attending meetings.
With a little bit of practice everyone can work smartly. Everyone should
have their own tips and ways to work more efficiently and be able to
manage their time in a better way. Try it. You will be surprised as to
how much more productive you can be with the same amount and
maybe less hours in a day.
The art of leverage, A lot of the time we look at the work at hand and it
can get very overwhelming, especially when there is a lot on your list. A
lot of people fail to recognize the skills of the people around them.
Whether friends, family or work colleagues.
We must firstly recognize our own strengths; most people get into the
moment and end up doing a lot of work that they are not so good at.
Meaning a lot of time is wasted when a person with the correct skills
could have done the same job in only a third of the time.
Time is precious and if we don’t use it correctly it can hugely impact the
number of years it takes for us to reach our goals. Yes, you heard right,
years. Many people think ok this job is going to take me a couple of days
longer than if someone else worked on it, but I guess its only a few days,
however this is a mindset and if this is the way your mind works in
situations, it is likely that this is what happens in every situation.
Meaning days becomes weeks and weeks become years.
80
Remember, how you do anything is how you do everything.#

Bill gates once said.
A lot of people think that because of the lack of money I am not able to
employ or pay for another’s time and skills. Then when it comes to family
and friends who have these skills, a lot of people feel that they shouldn’t
ask for help, as they feel that it would be a hassle or even down to fear
of rejection. However what they fail to realize is that there is an art to
leverage.
People will happily exchange. So when asking for help or favors or even
volunteers, the angle we must take is primarily what have we got to offer
then and how can we add value to their life.
For example, when I had just started my restaurant, I needed a website,

so obviously I read a lot about websites and how to put it together and
designing my own website and spent a lot of time trying to put
everything together and days weeks and months would go by and
nothing was ready to launch.
I remember in my head at that time was that, right now I didn’t want to
use my money up to pay for a really expensive website, I remember
getting a quote of $2-3,000 for a website. so I wanted to do it all myself.
And I remember it actually took me a little over 2 months to actually put

a website together. It didn’t occur to me until somebody had said to me
wow you spent 2 and a half months on this so far, is your time not worth
more than that?
Because I was so lost in the moment of thinking I could save money and
do it all myself I didn’t just not find the easiest way to do this, I also
lowered the value of my time. Now years later, I didn’t just realize that
81
my time was too precious to waste away on something that I’m not
skilled in but beyond that the art of leverage and how for instance I have
asked graduates to help in volunteering to do marketing work and
putting websites together because it adds value to their portfolios and
not only that, whether I, with my company could write them a good
reference to let them find better jobs, or it could be further than that
and offer them performance based incentive.
82
Chapter 3
| Adding value and contribution |
SHERYL SANDBERG: It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and

contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.
I remember when I first heard someone say add value to other
peoples lives and then the money will come. You must give to receive
and all of that type of stuff and I remember thinking what are these
people talking about, back then I didn’t understand what it was that they
actually meant, and I questioned the theory, I had seen so many people
giving so much, yet they were not wealthy or well off.
If that was true why are there so many people out there giving and not
really being financially rewarded for it?
For instance my own Mother is one of the kindest people that I know,
she is always giving, and what I have noticed is that there are a lot of
people who take advantage of her kind heartedness and ask for more of
what she is already giving.
83
Within this chapter I am going to teach you exactly how to add value to
other peoples lives and how to be rewarded by adding value.
I remember when I started running the restaurants, my father was into

hard management and he taught me to be stricter and tougher on my
team. I remember when I watched him manage the team; he would
always be shouting at them, and always telling someone off. The
reactions he got were never good, no one enjoyed working in the
restaurant.
This is when I learnt about soft and hard management. When I took
over, I decided to disregard what my father had taught me about hard
management, and I decided to take on a softer approach. I thought that
if I am nice to my employees then in turn they should be harder working
and work better for me.
Sadly, this was not the case and I learnt the hard way, what I did find
was that the nicer I was to them the more they asked for and the more
they unintentionally took advantage of me.
So what is it about adding value to other people’s lives and being

rewarded for it? The key in business and working with people is to give
them what they want with the right context in place.
In the same way, that you wouldn’t come up with an amazing product
and give it to everyone for free for the lifetime of the product and expect
to be rewarded for it. But, if you took your product to the market and
gave it a value in exchange, then we will have added value to the product
and to other people’s lives.
By doing this, we will have set a context.
84
This works in the same way when you are employing people, you don’t
just give people what they want, you must also set the context right and
tell them what you need from them and on the basis of them being able
to produce that work, they will get what they want. It’s all about a fair
exchange.
That is setting the context. This is so important in an organization as

your people are your most valuable assets, and that’s why in our
business systems mastery we teach people how to make the most out
of their people and add value to their lives.
I’m sure many of you know of people who are great givers, those who
are forever treating people, always paying for meals, always giving gifts,
always offering to pay and always reaching for their wallet. They help
their friends when they are called for, and try to help out wherever they
can.
This great giver might even be you.
On the flipside of this, you then have people out there who always seem
to take advantage of people. Those who wouldn’t help someone out if
there were no benefit to themselves, those who never offer to pay, who
just take and never give back.
Now this is the thing, givers don’t always benefit from being givers. And
receivers, a lot of the time don’t necessarily get what they want. Why?
Because not every one likes receivers, and not everyone wants to
receive the gifts that givers have to give.
In order to constantly and consistently receive everything you’d like to
receive, you must be a great giver and on the flip side of the coin, givers
must learn to be great receivers.
85
I remember when I was young I used to always see my Mum giving. I

used to see her always pay for people’s meals, and when others offered
to pay, she would push them away and this would carry on and on, every
time she would shake her head and say, ‘I got it this time, next time it
can be your treat.’
What is interesting about this story are the conversations which I used
to hear between my parents. The conversations were always around
who paid the bills and who never paid and never offered to pay, the
conversations went a bit like this, ‘have you noticed so and so didn’t even
offer to pay for the meal today, we always end up paying. Every time we
go out to eat, we pay, I don’t think I’ve even seen what their wallet looks
like.’
And the response would always be something like, ‘yeah they’re so tight
fisted, that’s why they have so much money, because everyone else pays
for them.’
From a young age I found these conversations amusing. On the one

hand there were my parents who had their conversations about how
tight fisted everyone was, in private of course, and on the other hand,
they were always fighting at the dinner table about who was going to
pay the bill.
What I started to understand and see was that people who are natural
born givers are often not very good at being receivers. They feel a need
to give, and they are sometimes afraid to receive back.
Now the difference between a person who can give, and a person who
can add value to someone’s life and be rewarded whether financially or
emotionally are the people who are able to give and receive well.
86
I’d like you to do an exercise with me, I’d like you to all identify
yourself with either being a Giver or Receiver or recall a moment in
your life when you have been a giver or a receiver.
Then I’d like you to write down your feelings of what it was like
when you were giving and receiving.
Try to think of a scenario for giving and one for receiving
For example it could be like this….
I am a giver, when I give I feel important and I feel wanted, when I

receive I feel embarrassed and I feel needy.
In order to be successful we must learn to do both. In fact the more

value you can add to somebody, the more you can give to somebody the
more you can receive.
Peoples perceptions of receiving can often be twisted, in order to

receive we don’t mean to be greedy or to take advantage, we simply
mean to receive the gifts that are presented to you.
I remember when I just started off in the personal development industry

and what I had to offer back then was I guess a lot of experience and
knowledge that I managed to gather over the years.
Initially when I began, I looked at the market rate for what people were
charging for business seminars and I started out by matching people’s
seminar prices. What I discovered was that no one showed up to my
87
seminars, I mean no one knew who I was why would they show up right?
When no one showed up, I tried to find ways to attract more people to
come in, one of the tactics I used was to cut prices. I cut the price by 10
times, and I continued to sell my seminars, when I cut my prices
something started to happen. People were suddenly slightly more
interested and on a lucky day I would have around 20 people attend one
of my sessions. There were people out there who were charging $3000
for a 3-day seminar, and there were people fighting to pay and queuing
up just for a ticket, I was actually only charging $300 and I only managed
to get around 20 people into my room.
This was my first year in this training industry and my ability to teach and
to train, to convey these important messages and to be able to share
that knowledge and allow others to be able to implement it was not very
high.
I remember I used to go up on stage and it would always be about me,

me, me. So I would tell people, what I have done, what I can do, what I
was able to achieve, remember when I was telling you about the talkers?
Well my first seminars went a bit like that, I remember back then every
time I held a seminar it was for small groups of people. I used to be in
awe when I stepped into someone else’s seminar room and they had
hundreds and hundreds of people. I would think to myself, ‘How on
earth did these people get so many people to flock to these places to
listen to them?’
I used to market myself in the same way as the other personal

development speakers out there, implementing all the lessons I had
learnt through them.
88
However overtime, what I learnt was that, it didn’t matter how

differently I marketed myself, my attendees were the best selling
strategy that I had.
Their testaments were what would drive people into my seminar room.
The question I was failing to ask myself was, did people walk out of my
seminar and tell others that my seminars were amazing and that they
must go and that it would change their lives?
I remember we used to have these feedback forms and after every

seminar I would sit and go through them reading every comment on
them, they used to say things like, good presentation, good talk, and
informative.
I was puzzled by why my seminars were still only pulling in 15/20 people
at a time when the feedback seemed to be good, this is when I started
to actually pay and go to other people’s seminars. I attended seminars
where people were about to drive in hundreds and thousands of people
and try to understand what the difference was, and what I very quickly
realized was that the difference between me and the speakers I was
listening to, was that everything they said, everything they taught was
about you.
Not me!
I thought deeply about this question, how much value am I really adding
to my audience? This is when I started to create and design programs
that weren’t for myself, but for my audience. I designed programs to
teach my attendees to think in a totally different way where they could
all walk away with so much value added to their lives. I was constantly
thinking, how can I add value to all your lives?
89
I started to implement these new programs into my seminars and what

I found was fascinating because those feedback forms that I mentioned
before, all the comments on them changed, instead of receiving
testimonials saying, ‘good presentation’, or ‘informative’ I was getting
messages like, ‘thank you Eric you’ve opened up new doors’, ‘Eric you’re
a true inspiration’ and I even started getting video testimonials.
People were queuing up at the end of my seminars to give video

testimonials and saying thing like, ‘these 3 days have changed my life’
and ‘it’s so good’ and ‘you have to go to see Eric speak’.
Very quickly the number of people who were attending my seminars

increased, from 15/20 people, to 50, then to 100 and then increasing to
a few hundred people. I started noticing a pattern in my attendees, from
the ones that came to speak to me after my seminar; I realized that a lot
of them had come from testament by earlier attendees.
Now aside from that being an awesome feeling, I realized that I was
actually adding value to these people’s lives. My seminars very quickly
went from charging $300 to $3000 and some of my seminars went even
beyond that and people were still queuing up and paying for it.
The important thing to remember here is that if you are a big giver, or
you have a lot to give, then you have actually earned the right to receive.
The thing is, there are too many people out there who feel bad to ask
for more or to take more. But if you are delivering work, a message, or
a product that truly adds value to other people’s lives, then you have
earned the right to receive more.
For instance, during our business systems mastery seminar I teach

people strategies to take their existing businesses and to very quickly
90
multiply their business and the keys to setting strong foundations so that
their businesses can run on auto pilot meaning that they can earn more
and work less. When you are teaching strategies that will take people
years and some people can go their whole lifetime without knowing the
secrets behind these strategies, you can save them that and get their
businesses to go into profit straight away, that $1000 that they are
spending on the seminar is nothing!
Trust me if you didn’t have something that was worth enough value,
then people won’t be prepared to give you more than you ask for. And
even if you are able to get people to pay a higher price, or give you more
value than what you are adding to them, at the beginning you might be
getting a laugh out of it, but it is not sustainable and soon people will
realize that they are paying more than they should be.
Remember being a good receiver, is not an act of greed nor an act of

selfishness, it is purely a fair act of exchange.
Now this is the thing, what I really started to see was that the amount
you receive is directly proportional to the amount you are able to give. I
remember shortly after understanding this concept and being fascinated
and constantly increasing the value of myself.
I remember speaking to a friend one day, an old friend who used to go

to school with and we hadn’t hung out for a long time, he asked me what
I was up to how things are and I was telling him everything was great so
I asked him how he was, and he said, ‘yea… its ok…’
I asked him what he was up to these days, and he told me he was

working for a design firm and I said, ‘ok’ and I asked him whether he was
enjoying it. He told me that it was ok, but he was being under paid.
91
I continued asking him questions trying to find out what the situation
was. So I asked how he was being underpaid. I said, ‘there underpaying
you? Like what do you mean? Are they paying you below minimum
wage? Shouldn’t you be taking that up with the authorities?’
And he said, ‘no, no, no, no, no, that’s not what I mean.’ And he started
to explain. He told me that he was on £15,000 a year, but that there
were people who had graduated from the same course as him who were
on £20,000 to £30,000 a year. He carried on and told me that some
people who had graduated after him and got a job were actually being
paid more than he was.
I asked him whether he should be paid £20,000 - £30,000, and he told

me he should be.
So, I asked him why he was still with this company and I said, ‘why don’t
you leave go and find someone who will pay you what your worth.’
What he told me was that it wasn’t easy and that I wouldn’t understand,
now how many times have we heard people say that before?
‘You don’t understand.’
So, I said to my friend Simon, ‘I think its you who doesn’t understand
right now, you just said to me that your worth more than what you are
getting paid right now, so if you are worth more, then you would go out
there and people would fight to pay you that amount.’
He carried on and gave me his usual round of excuses, ‘but finding a job
isn’t very easy right now,’ and I said, ‘no but what about those guys who
are in those jobs, how did they get the job and how did you not get the
job?’
92
‘If your value is worth higher than theirs why would the company
employ them and not you?’
Think about that question for a second, isn’t it true? If you can add value
to someone’s company, wouldn’t it be insane for them not to hire you?
If you are unhappy with what you are earning financially right now then
do something about it! Either do something else, go find another job,
or do another business. However, if you realize that you are not worth
what you thought you should be worth then go out there and educate
yourself.
Stop making excuses! Excuses are for cowards. Go out there, do

something about it. If you can add value to your employers, your
employers will be insane not to pay you more.
In fact you need to think about adding so much value that they can’t
afford to let you go. If you are worth the value then you should be able
to tell them how much you want them to pay you.
Be so valuable in the company because that employer knows that if you

are not happy and want to leave then they are going to have to employ
3-4 people to do what you can do.
Those entrepreneurs out there with businesses, I know its been hard
recently, especially with the recession hitting in the past few years,
however, how much value are you giving your customers and
consumers?
Think about it!
93
Don’t complain about sales, don’t be stressed or get depressed about it.
Instead act upon it now, make sure that your product or service adds so
much value compared to your competitors in the market place.
So much that your customers and consumers don’t even think about it,
it’s a no-brainer they need to come to you.
Remember back in the day when we had separate devices for

everything. We had mobile phones, we had mp3 players, we had
cameras, and we had PDAs and all sorts of other devices.
I remember packing my bag for holidays and school and I had to not only
remember each individual device. I also had to remember to pack each
individual charger and all the cables that went along with it.
Then in 2007 a man called Steve Jobs came along and invented a small
device, which we all now know as the iPhone. The iPhone was compact
and sleek in design and encased everything that anyone ever needed.
It had a camera, it was a phone, it had an amazing MP3 player and

contained apps where people would be able to download things to their
phone to make life easier for themselves.
I remember thinking back then yes that’s all cool and everything,
however, it seemed a bit expensive, and I’m not sure everyone would be
able to afford one, but what actually happened was that the product
was so good and added so much value to everyone’s lives that regardless
of it being the most expensive mobile phone on the market, everyone
eventually needed one. Not just wanted one but needed one.
Learn to receive. Its one thing wanting things in life but actually being
94
able to receive the gifts that are presented to you is another.
I am a big believer that living is for giving, but we also have to be willing
to receive in order to be better contributors.
JIM ROHN: You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value
you bring to the hour.
95
Chapter 4
| Solution focused |
JOHN LENNON: There are no Problems. Only Solutions
I remember when I had just started the H Akademy, when we
were starting to bring the whole team together; we had our creative
department, our accounts department, our writers, our operational
guys, and our R&D team. It was a very exciting time for us, and it was
like my shiny new toy.
It was a new experience for me running a company and sitting in a plush

office, before that my life had consisted of take aways and restaurants
and so, I got a bit excited.
When I used to hold meetings with my team, the meetings would just
go on and on and on. I began to realize that I would be having a meeting
and before we knew it, it would be 5pm and it would be home time, and
during the day we would have got nothing done except talk for 8/9 hours
in a meeting room.
96
During the beginning, I thought we were being very productive because

everyone was giving a lot of input and we would get a lot of great ideas
down on paper. Before long, I realized that it wasn’t just in these
meetings that we would have these very long conversations, there were
times when members of my team would come knocking on my door
telling me that they had these great ideas and sometimes to tell me that
they had a bit of an issue.
As I sat there listening we would discuss things and again the

conversations would go on and on. I personally still thought I was being
very productive. I’d spent all day working on a problem and trying to
solve something with someone or so I thought.
It wasn’t until a friend visited me one day that I discovered that the way
I was working was not very productive at all!
This particular friend had a chain of restaurants, and we were chatting

away when I brought up some of the problems that we were currently
facing in the group.
When I had finished telling him about my problems he asked me a simple

question, ‘who is in charge of that?’
I told him who it was that was in charge of each department and he
turned to me and asked me what I thought back then was a strange
question, he said, ‘why are you having to worry about this, why are you
trying to think of a solution for this? You pay this person right?’
97
I thought about this for a moment thinking it was a trick question and
very slowly nodded, and he said to me, ‘so you pay for your staff to deal
with all the issues and problems that you come across right?’
Suddenly it all clicked. I knew exactly what it was that he meant, and
what it was that I was doing wrong all this time.
I left work that day feeling good about the lesson I had just learnt and I
decided to put what I had learnt into practice. I went into work the next
day and one of my accounts managers came to me and told me about
some problems we were having.
Remembering the conversation I had had with my friend the day before,
I decided that instead of discussing the issue with a long 5-hour debate,
I would just ask for the answers.
So, I simply turned and asked, ‘so what’s the solution for that?’ My
accounts manager was expecting to come in for another 5-hour debate
so she sat their quiet for a second pondering about the question I had
just asked her. Then she fired another problem at me, and another and
another.
Again I asked her again after every problem, ‘so what do you think you
can do to solve that?’
Like magic, something started to happen, instead of throwing me more

problems; she started giving me the solutions and the answers to our
‘problems’.
98
I dug deeper and I asked her about other options that may be available
to us. She started to explain some more, and what would normally turn
into a 5 hour debate and discussion ended in 10 minutes.
Within those 10 minutes, she had told me her problem and she had
solved it herself.
There were other times when I called for a meeting with my entire team,
everyone is sitting around the table and someone raises an issue that
recently occurred.
The blame game starts and everyone is blaming the next person for the
issue that has arisen. Before you know it an hour has gone by and we
are still discussing whose fault it is.
What you find is that what you have just done in that hour is magnify
the problem beyond what the issue originally was and added a lot of
unnecessary drama to your teams life.
The productivity rate coming from all that drama is Zero, all you have
done is prepare everyone for the next problem that someone else is
going to bring onto the table. Why? Because of momentum.
Once something is being discussed, everyone wants an opinion and

before you know it the meeting has turned into 3 hours and nothing has
been resolved.
So the solution is the same as above, it’s about asking the right
questions, if you don’t know where to begin try the questions I have
listed below:
1. What have we learnt from this?
2. How do we think we would do it differently next time?
3. What is the solution?
99
Make this the process every time and get used to it, remember humans
are creatures of habit, as Aristotle once said, ‘We are what we
repeatedly do, Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.’
As soon as you start the process and put it into practice it will come to
you like second nature and you will be able to do this without thinking
about it.
When people tell you what is wrong, question them. Exercise their
mind. Then you will find that you will get your answers a lot quicker
because you are allowing everyone to get from being problem focused
to solution focused. You will also find that the job satisfaction rate of
your employees or fellow colleagues will be a lot higher as they will be
growing each and every time they solve their own issues.
Most people when looking at a situation will automatically register the

negatives. Most people act in this way, take a look at the diagram below,
and imagine for a second that the stick man is you, and the ‘X’ on the
right is your target.
So you are trying to get to the ‘X’ and there is a chair in the way, what a
lot of people will do is walk up to the chair and ponder, ‘what is this chair
doing here, who put this chair here? It’s such a big chair! What’s going
on? Last time I was here there was no chair here.’
100
And by the time you know it a day has passed by and you are still
focusing on why is there still a chair there!
Now I’m sure you all know of someone who is like this, who can just see
the problem in every situation and is forever going on about the
problem.
The people who are very successful will have minds that work
differently. Instead of being problem focused they are solution focused.
So when you become solution focused, your mind changes how it thinks
about the chair, instead of seeing it as a problem, you will acknowledge
that there is an obstacle in your way and your mind will think, ‘what can
I do to get to where I want to be?’
The simple answer is that you will pick it up, move it to one side and
simply walk to your target.
Just by changing your mind from being problem focused to solution

focused. Remember we are in purgatory right now, and what we have
here between us and where we want to be is, a lot of people, society,
which is the purgatory society.
101
They currently don’t have the foundations of what we are teaching right
now so their minds are unable to process information that we are
processing, so these people are going to remind you of the problems,
tell you about the problems, give you more problems.
Between where you are now and where you want to be, society will
always most definitely get in your way.
How to tackle this is to stay solution focused. To be able to turn a

problem into a solution is an important skill to have. To be able to hear
a problem and immediately divert it into a solution by remembering to
ask questions. Most people are unable to see past the negatives and
look at the positives in a situation.
102
It’s funny when I started Forex trading, someone actually came up to me

and told me to be careful, he said to me, ‘Hey Eric I have a friend who
was trading Forex and he lost loads of money, be careful’.
103
104
Once you have connected the dots of the negative side to the
conversation, your mind will automatically connect to other negative
stories you have heard, you will find that your mind will wander and
from nowhere, it will remember that friend who also lost a lot of money
in Forex, and then suddenly you will have been sucked back down by
society once more.
However, instead of entertaining his comments I replied, ‘cool do you

think there are any people in the world who are making money from
Forex?’
My friend was quite taken aback by this, it was a comment that his mind
was not accustomed to and he had to take a moment to think about
what I had just said.
105
106
By taking the word problem and exchanging this for the word challenge
makes our so-called ‘problems’ more manageable, now remember the
story I just told you of my company H Akademy?
Once we made that tweak our meetings were so much shorter and much
more productive.
It’s very easy for people to remain in their comfort zones and never
venture out. Often people get so caught up in life and focus on the
wrong things, when opportunities present themselves in front of us we
miss out because we are so focused on the problems that we supposedly
have at hand, that we fail to see the opportunities as such, and all we
see is the negatives and associate the opportunities with obstacles and
feel that we couldn’t possibly take this on as well right now.
The key is to see everything in a positive light.
In our minds we have a belief that things shouldn’t be so easy and we

have been conditioned to think we need to succeed the conventional
way and if it seems too easy then it’s too good to be true. The generic
belief system out there is that it’s not easy to make money.
Suddenly opportunities arise but you don’t see them because you are
too focused on your problems.
By opening up your mind to solutions you will start to notice a lot more
opportunities appearing right before your very eyes. Whether you like
it or not, we’re going to face challenges, we are going to face challenges
everyday of our lives no matter what life you are living.
107
A lot of people tell me, ‘hey Eric I don’t want to aim too high’, and ‘I don’t
want to think big or dream big because its so hard and so difficult and
there will be so many challenges on the way’. Now the thing with very
successful people is that they understand that you will have challenges
no matter what the dream is. So if you are going to face these challenges
anyway, why not face the ones that will take you to your ultimate
dream?
If you start understanding that every challenge that you overcome, you
become a bigger person then you will start to see the fun in challenges.
Now, how many of you don’t like the thought of growth and improving
yourself and being a better person?
Everyone likes growth, it’s a part of the basic human needs, so if you use
a pleasure relation to challenges rather than a pain relation to it, you can
start to enjoy every challenge that comes into play everyday of your life.
Since I have been able to make that shift in my life, my life has not been
the same. I used to get fed up with life and so upset about things that
happened, it used to get so bad that it kept me depressed everyday, but
since making that shift, my life has completely changed.
Today I face challenges that are bigger than ever before, however I enjoy
every moment and every step of the journey because I know that every
time I face a challenge, I look at it face on and I say to it, is this all you’ve
got? I wrestle it down and know that every time I win a challenge I
become a bigger person and if I see a challenge like that ever again it
would have no effect on me because I had already won the battle once
before, so winning again would be no issue at all.
108
Make your dreams so big that the challenges along the way seem tiny
and irrelevant.
109
Chapter 5
| Growth and Education |
HENRY FORD: Learn all you can from others. The school of experience
takes so long that its graduates are too old to go to work.
A lot of people have problems in their lives and they think
of a lot of possibilities and solutions but then they tell themselves I’ll
start it on Monday, on Sunday, next week.
How many of you know people out there who always say, ‘yeah I’ll do it
I’ll do it I’ll do it’, but never get around to doing it? Remember when we
talked about building momentum before; well now that you have
started don’t let the momentum stop. Keep it going. Take action now!
When people say things like, ‘I will do it, I am going to do something, I’ll
do it when I have time,’ the results of this usually is, I should have done
this, I could have did this or I would have did this,’ but now instead of
saying all of this I want you to simply act now, say to yourself there is no
better time than now.
110
If you don’t take action now, then you don’t deserve to be successful.
What is stopping you from succeeding is not acting now.
Remember, write it down on a sheet of paper, stick it on your wall so
Now what I would like you to do is to create a challenge chart. Grab

a sheet of paper and in the middle of it write the word challenge in
capital letters. Think about the challenges in your life, the things
that are stopping you from where you want to be right now.
Around this write down the challenges that you are currently facing.
Then try and prioritize your challenges in order of importance and
urgency.
Starting from 1 going up to however many challenges you have in

your life right now. Number 1 being the most urgent. Choose to look
at only number 1 today, remember the importance of focus.
Make sure its laser focus on just that one thing and clear your mind
of all the other things that may be going on in your life right now.
So your chart should look something like this:
you’re looking at it every single day, there is no better time than now,
and start noticing the way your mind starts reacting to problems or
challenges. The change is fascinating!
111
Every time you face a challenge it’s important not to panic not to get too
stressed instead remind yourself of your purpose, your goal and why you
actually do what you do and be able to see the picture so big, and know
that every time you conquer a challenge you have grown that much
bigger and you have learnt skills and tools which will be able to help you
through a challenge that is similar.
Be thankful to have those challenges in place because people who live a

stagnant life who aren’t privileged to have these challenges appear in
their lives never have a chance to really grow.
Growth and education are one of the most important things that will
contribute towards your success. However, for many people, growth
can seem a little bit uncomfortable. So what I’d like you to do, is to once
again, recondition your minds and start to understand the pain relation
to growth and start to realize that the uncomfortable feeling whenever
you are slightly out of your comfort zone is a good sign, because all that
means is that you are growing and learning from that experience.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Insanity is when you do the same thing over and
over again and you expect different results.
112
113
114
115
First of all what I need you to understand is that we as human beings

have unlimited power, and that as humans we have the ability to
achieve way beyond human expectations, and this has been proven
time and time again through history.
Now I can tell you that but I know that many of you aren’t really hearing
me out, because in your mind, you feel that you have more important
challenges and obstacles that are stopping you from achieving ultimate
success.
Remember the elastic band that we were talking about previously? We

said that, in order to grow, we need to stretch ourselves out of our
comfort zones and slowly overtime get used to the discomfort.
Now imagine that elastic band again, this time it is a portal that allows
you to receive. The size that your elastic band is now is your comfort
zone. However much you are able to receive is dependent on how big
your comfort zone is.
In order to receive more we need to stretch ourselves, the larger the

comfort zone, the more we will be able to receive. If you stay the same
size in your comfort zone, if you speak to the same people, do the same
things and you don’t do anything out of the norm, you will only achieve
the same results because you have not opened up that portal to let more
results come in.
So now truly understanding that you do have that capability to achieve

that unlimited success we can use a new process which I call guilt trip.
116
Yes you heard right, guilt trip.
What I’d like you to do now, because you know you have unlimited
power and you know that you can achieve absolutely anything, and I
want you to know, that every time you are under performing, to guilt
trip yourself.
Let me share a quick story with you. I remember a time when I was 9
years old, I had just received my report card from school and I remember
running home with a lot of excitement because I got a B in English. For
me getting a B in English was amazing because I used to always get D’s,
and my report card used to look terrible.
I remember taking this report card home and I was jumping up and down
in excitement saying, ‘mum, mum, mum look, look, look, read my report
card.’
She looked at it and said ‘ok.’
I was slightly baffled at her response and thinking she hadn’t seen what
I had wanted her to see, I said, ‘mum, mum, mum, have you seen it I got
a ‘B’!!’
Without batting an eyelid she said to me, ‘ok, try harder next time, try
get an A for me next time.’
I was disappointed with her response and my heart sank, I thought she
would be really proud of me and that she would at least praise me in
some way. Upset by the whole ordeal, I quietly went back to my room.
The most frustrating thing about this story is that I remember just a few
117
days after my cousins came to my house to play.

My cousin is the same age as me, she had come over to play with me
one weekend, and I remember my mum sat down and was asking her
‘hey Joanna, what did you get in your report,’ and Joanna burst into
tears. Joanna said with a sigh, that she had tried so hard and that she
was 2 marks off an A.
This is the thing perspective is everything. In my mind, at that time I had

always been achieving poor results. So if I was to get anything beyond
that result, it would have been enough for me and I would have felt
satisfied.
I wouldn’t have any need or thought to aim any higher, however for my
cousin Joanna, she was used to aiming for high results. So the moment
her grade dropped just slightly, she is totally out of her comfort zone,
she is so unhappy and she would propel herself immediately to
guarantee she gets an A the next time.
All of you out there now, have a look at your results, and if your results
are mediocre, I know what you’re thinking, if I could make just twice or
one and a half times my salary I will be over the moon.
Put this into perspective for a second, we as humans have unlimited

power, think about Forbes rich list, most of them don’t have a higher
education, yet they are still able to achieve big results.
How?
Because they believe that they have unlimited power and they know
that they are able to achieve big results. They understand that as
humans, we are able to achieve things that seem impossible.
118
Now let me tell you, if everybody thought inside their comfort zone and
inside a box where they thought, ‘I only have the capability to achieve 2
times what I have achieved so far and maximum of 5 -10 times and not
any more than that.
Then in this world we will not have people going to the moon and we
wouldn’t be flying on planes. We wouldn’t even have the modern day
technology that we have, as silly as it sounds, like Bluetooth.
I have always been fascinated with Bluetooth; I mean, how on earth can
2 people sit apart from each other with their phones and wirelessly
transfer music and photos through the air? How can a photo travel
through the air into someone else’s phone?
It’s bizarre!
In life, we take a lot of things for granted; we automatically just buy into
things and never give a second thought about how we managed to get
these things. We don’t think bout the process that humans have gone
through to make these things work.
Could you imagine back in the day when there was no such thing as
Bluetooth and your friend came to you and told you that you could send
photos and music through the air, you would think they were crazy and
insane!
Humans have unlimited capabilities to achieve way beyond what you

can see right now, and by knowing that, please do feel guilty every time
you don’t achieve anything big and use that guilt to your advantage by
119
being like my cousin and going back, educating yourself further,

propelling yourself further, to achieve better results time and time
again.
120
Controlled growth
H aving the knowledge that every time we are out of our
comfort zone we are growing is well and good, however we must take
care that during this process we don’t bite off more than we can chew.
When a baby learns to walk she will often stumble a few steps, and when
she discovers that she is able to walk without holding onto anything, she
will try to run, often this doesn’t end well.
Generally she will fall over a couple of times, whilst building up the
muscle in her legs to be able to walk further and run. We as adults have
the same excitement contained within us. When we discover that
something we are doing is causing us to grow, we will get excited and
try to move faster and learn more, but we must take care that we aren’t
throwing ourselves into the deep end.
We must know the importance of controlled growth. Doing it in stages

will lead to a healthier process, imagine you are that rubber band again.
If you take a rubber band and immediately stretch it to its widest point,
mostly likely it will snap. Once its snapped, the damage is done, no
matter how hard you try to fix it, the elastic band will never be the same
again.
But if you slowly stretch it overtime and expand it overtime, then slowly
121
the elastic will warm to the movement of your stretches and will allow
you to stretch it with out much damage or pain.
Humans also learn in the same way, during school I used to be really
afraid of speaking in front of people. I don’t know how I managed this
but I went through the whole of school and college without doing a
single presentation.
I remember every time we were due to do a presentation or reading

session I would always pretend to be ill, and I would always skip school
and tell my Mum I couldn’t go to school because I was ill.
Sorry Mum!
Sometimes the lie got so far that she actually thought I was ill and
dragged me off to the doctors to get some medicine.
As I went through school and college and even during work, I managed
not to get by without having to really speak in front of people. I
remember when I first set up the H Akademy and when we started
holding our first meetings, I would kind of sit on the side and conduct
the meeting from a chair in the corner of the room.
Sometimes I would feel a little more daring and I would stand up for a
bit, and say a few words. Before I had even fully stood up, I would
already feel that my face was going red and I would turn it back down a
notch, sit back down and turn it back into a casual conversation.
Then came the time when my best friend asked me to be the best man
at his wedding, and I was forced to make the best man speech. I
remember one day before the wedding, I actually considered not
122
attending because I didn’t want to make that speech.
I was so scared, but then I considered that it was the biggest day for my
best friend and I had to pull through for him. I just couldn’t get myself
to not attend, so I attended the wedding, I remember my adrenaline and
blood was pumping through my veins, the whole day went by and I was
in a daze for the most part, and before I knew it I was on.
I finished and everyone applauded and I sat back down. At the same
time as being super uncomfortable and being totally out of my comfort
zone, there was a great feeling there, because it felt like I had overcome
something. Something that I always thought I wasn’t able to overcome.
Something in my mind that was not possible for me to do. Since doing
the best mans speech, I have been able to attach a pleasure to speaking,
that great feeling of overcoming something.
I started realizing the power of being outside of your comfort zone and
so I pushed myself to do a speech in Africa, and why Africa honestly
speaking? Because, I didn’t expect many of the people there to
understand what I was saying and, I expected that I would be able to get
away with messing up my speech.
I just wanted that feeling again.
So I went away and stood up in front of a room full of people, that was
to a crowd of 50 people, after that experience I started to stand up more
through meetings, in front of 10 people, 15 people, then slowly that
grew to speaking at exhibitions, to crowds of 50, 100 people, to finally
holding my own events to hundreds of people.
123
Now that whole process of growing in stages allowed me to learn, grow

and be the person I am today, and a lot of the time in my seminars now
I explain to people about my fear of public speaking in the past, and no
one believes me.
I know no one believe me, and a lot of people think its just some
promotional story and I just say it for the sake of saying it, but what this
has done through time is that it has allowed me to understand that a lot
of limitations that we give to ourselves and a lot of things that we feel
are impossible to ourselves are exactly that, excuses and limitations that
we tell to ourselves.
So what I would like everybody to do is to remove all limitations and to

understand that we can achieve anything.
124
Effective communication
W hen I was younger, I was a very impatient person. I had
always been a very impatient person, I guess I take after a lot of my Dad’s
personality traits, and I guess those people who were the slower
communicators out there, people who go around in circles, I never really
had the patience for that.
I was very self-centered and everything was always about me. It was
one of those things where people would want to express their opinions
and views I would feel very impatient and couldn’t wait to tell my story,
or express my views, and I would butt in.
I think many times through my early years I felt like this was actually
good because I felt like I was in control, and a lot of the time I got what
I wanted. I didn’t really care what other people’s reactions were or
whether other people actually liked my point or whether they really
agreed with me.
I was always the person who had to have the first word in and had to
have the last word out, and through this whole period of growing up I
started to realize that I was actually hurting a lot of people.
Emotionally and mentally, whether it be family, or in relationships or

friends, I guess it was one of those things, where, when something has
worked for you and for the most part you get what you want, then you
just stick with what has worked.
125
Why fix what’s not broken right? What I failed to realize was that at the
same time as me feeling that I was always in control and that everything
was going my way, other people did not enjoy communicating with me
and actually a lot of the time were hurt by my words.
I remember reading a book by Richard Branson, it was one of his earlier

books, and in it he mentioned about being a great leader and the
importance of being a great listener. When I read that book in my early
twenties I thought I understood the whole concept of being a great
listener.
However now, is when I developed a more profound understanding of

what it actually means.
First of all it’s important that we realize I as one person cannot do

everything, however we as a group of people can make anything
happen.
So on our road to success, we must know the best and most effective
way to work with other people, however if you don’t know how to
effectively communicate then we will not be able to work with the best
of people out there. Now when I say communicate, its not about how
we say something, communication is about being able to effectively tell
your message so that people understand, but more importantly to firstly
understand other people.
While attending courses on psychology and working with more and

more people it made me realize that effective communication is so
important whether it be in relationships whether it be in running your
business and communicating with your employees or colleagues
126
through to even being out there and making a sales pitch and selling to
a client.
Remember if we want to reach success, we will reach success so much

faster by leveraging and making use of the people around us. But to be
able to make use of the people around us, we need to understand
others.
First of all we need to understand that everything is a sale. In a

relationship whatever you say you are selling your point of view to your
partner. If you are running a business and you are speaking to your
employees, you are selling to them, what’s in it for them. Every time you
ask for a favor or something to be done you must first sell to them what’s
in it for them, but to be able to do that, in sales the first step is to always
build rapport, which means to listen and understand.
So I’d like to quickly break effective communication up into 5 simple

steps:
Step 1 – Ask Questions

Step 2 – Listen
Step 3 – Understand/ acknowledge and connect
Step 4 – Sell/ offer
Step 5 – Listen and learn
These days I feel that I learn a lot of things in a day, a lot more than I
have ever learnt before and I feel that one big contribution towards this
is, not that I have a lot of teachers today or that a lot of people come
running to teach me things or that I attend seminars everyday. The
reason behind this is because I have learnt to effectively communicate
and to be a great listener.
127
To effectively communicate to know how to ask the right questions and

most importantly to be a great listener.
The worst thing to say if you are wanting to improve yourself or grow is
the word I know that already, because a lot of the time if you feel that
you have heard something before and you tell the person yeah I already
know, then it stops the other person communicating any further.
However, since I learnt to be a great listener and not to interrupt other

people when they are explaining an idea or a concept to you then I ask
more questions and what I find was that most of the time was that what
I thought I already understood when the first sentence was said, but
after asking more, I find that wow this is interesting, this is an interesting
perspective and I actually learn a lot more from it.
And it wasn’t until I started practicing the whole procedure of asking

more questions and stimulating other peoples minds, I call this
extracting the art of extracting information from everyone and anyone
because isn’t it true that a lot of the time we have a fixed belief on
something because of a personal experience
However there are so many perspectives in so many situations that a lot

of the time we are blinded by our own thoughts.
128
Focus
OPRAH WINFREY: Passion is Energy. Feel the power that comes from
focusing on what excites you.
I t is important to have laser focus on the things that you want
to achieve. Richard Branson is one of my all time idols and from

researching about his life and reading up about his company portfolio, I
had always found it very impressive, how he was able to build up a group
of companies under the same brand.
I was inspired by his story and his brand. I wanted to be like him and so
I created the H Akademy. Within year 1 I opened a chain of restaurants.
In year 2 I wanted to have a presence in every single industry and so I
ventured out into the tyre and steel recycling business, I started a
charity, H Giving, and I ventured into tourism and hospitality.
None of the projects worked in the way that I wanted them to, I had
invested into a multitude of businesses and failed to build the
foundations of what it was that I was doing. I had failed to really
understand each and every industry that I was going into and just set up
companies and businesses because I wanted to.
From that, I learnt my lesson; I realized that in order to be good at

something, you need to build strong foundations and focus. In order to
129
succeed in something, you need to put all your eggs in one basket for a
while, and to pour your life and soul into it.
During this time that you put your everything into this business, you
create systems and build up a team that is able to help you run the
company.
Only when you have built up this system and a solid team and made your
company a success, should you consider investing into a second and
third project and repeat the process again.
People say don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but this is where you
need to, at least for a while.
People who say don’t put all your eggs in one basket are usually people
who have managed to accumulate a post of money that they are able to
distribute across different investments. This is a game for someone who
has made some money already, but this is not a game for someone who
is starting in business.
If you start 5 businesses at one time, it will be extremely hard to make

them all succeed, however if you put your focus into one and channel all
your energy into that one project you will see it blossom and be able to
achieve the results that you are looking for.
Remember at the beginning, it is ok to put all your eggs in one basket,

diversify and spread your wings once you have built the strong
foundations to make your business run smoothly and efficiently.
Even when you have the skills to multitask and to focus on 2 things at
once, you should choose one in order to maximize on the desired results.
130
Take Nadal for instance, a world-renowned tennis player, when he was

younger he played both football and tennis, he could have pursued a
career in both fields possessing the skills to be good at both sports.
Why did he only choose one? Because he only had time to be excellent
at one. He could have been quite good at both, but he chose to excel at
one and he chose to be good at Tennis.
Today he has won 13 grand slam titles and has been ranked number 1 in
the world, over his career he has won over $60million in prize money.
Remember where focus goes energy flows and results show.
In a previous chapter we discussed, the importance of being solution

focused.
Our brains have a way of naturally reacting to things, and generally this
is how it would react.
Imagine for a second that you are standing in the zoo and a lion has
escaped, by chance the lion is standing in front of you in the not so far
distance. One of the first thoughts that will cross your mind is that,
‘there’s a lion there; it’s going to eat me. It’s going to kill me. I can’t run
faster than it. It’s really big. It’s real.’
That is our brains defense system kicking in and then all 90% of our focus
is shifted onto the problem, which obviously in this case is the lion.
People don’t believe in positive thinking because they don’t know how
it works. Feel that it’s a faith-based sort of thing, put positive thinking
into a magical thing. Understand the mechanics of how the brain really
does work, how it processes information and how it reacts. Core center
131
of the brain contains 2 medial temporal lobe structures known as the

Hippocampus and the amygdala, 2 organs that are at the base of the
brain – when man was first on this earth, when they were walking
among dinosaurs all that they had was these 2 organs on top of his brain,
one controlled emotions and the other controls memory.
The only thing that is important for a human being to survive is that if
something bad happens, ‘boy you better remember it so that it doesn’t
happen again.’
Human brain is put together just for self-preservation. It’s not there to
make you rich and famous its just there to preserve you. Everything that
is stored in your memory are things which have a lot of emotional
reaction to them, that is why a lot of the time we are able to remember
things from our past, from our childhood, from our teenage years.
Our brains are naturally hard wired in this way, because from the
beginning of the evolution of the human race, humans used to have
nothing, we used to be out there in the wild with none of the modern
day luxuries to protect ourselves, and so their aim is to protect
themselves from predators. Although humans have evolved since then,
your brain is still hardwired to protect you, that’s how our brains
naturally work.
In an event like this, it is likely that the human will eventually be eaten
up. However I am telling you to do something that your brain doesn’t
naturally do. It’s to not focus on the problem and to focus on the
solution instead.
A lot of people who say, I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to fail I don’t
want to fail, notice how your focus is actually on fail.
132
A lot of people say, I don’t want to lose, I don’t want to lose, notice here
that their focus is on lose.
How many of you have woken up in the morning and something bad has
happened? Your running late for work and your running out the door,
as soon as you start the car, you immediately hit a traffic jam. The traffic
jam never happens but for some reason it’s happening today.
The traffic light is continually turning red and it’s broken, everything bad
seems to be happening, and you begin to think that today has been a
string of bad luck.
How many of you have ever driven a car and your driving round a tight
area and your thinking don’t want to hit the curb and you hit the curb?
And how many of you have ever driven unconsciously not thinking about
the width of the road, and never even touched the curb before?
A lot of the time when I teach people to be solution focused they think,
ok so, I will look on the bright side and think about the positive, so they
will say I don’t want something I don’t want something.
But what people fail to realize is that the universe doesn’t recognize the
word don’t, or can’t, so instead of focusing on I don’t want to touch the
curb, or I don’t want to be eaten by the lion, you should be thinking, the
road is really wide, and I will get out alive.
Focus is a peculiar thing, have you ever had one of those moments
where you suddenly remember that you have lost your wallet.
133
You know you brought it home with you because you remember putting
it back into your pocket, but since you have been at home you haven’t
been able to find it. Your looking for it everywhere, your telling yourself
that you cant find your wallet, even when it presents itself to you, you
cant see it because your telling yourself its not there.
It’s not till you stop looking for it and stop focusing on not being able to
find it that you actually find it.
Focus on the positive; don’t focus on not wanting the negative.
Have you ever heard of the story of the fisherman in his fishing boat who
went out to sea and drowned?
Well for those who haven’t let me tell you a quick story, there once was
a fisherman who went out in his fishing boat. In the middle of a leisurely
afternoon a storm hit and his boat overturned, he fell into the water and
he struggled to swim ashore.
By chance a sailboat came by and the boy in the sailboat reached out to
rescue the fisherman. The fisherman shook his head and told the boy,
no God will save me.
The boy in his sailboat sailed on by and the fisherman was left alone to
tread the water. Moments later a second sailboat came by and the girl
in the sailboat again reached out to rescue the fisherman. Again the
fisherman shook his head and told the girl, no God will save me.
The girl in her sailboat left the fisherman and sailed off. An hour later a
third boat came by, this time a yacht, the man on the yacht reached out
to rescue the fisherman.
134
Again the fisherman shook his head and told the man, no God will save
me. The man sailed on by and the fisherman was left in the water. The
fisherman eventually tired himself out and drowned in the seas. He
went to heaven and finally met God.
When he saw God he asked, ‘Why didn’t you save me?’ God replied ‘my
child, I sent 3 boats to rescue you, why didn’t you take any of them?’
What we can see demonstrated by this story is that the fisherman was
so focused on ‘God’ saving him that he had failed to see that God had
already sent him 3 boats to save him.
Opportunities are like gifts that have been presented to us. They will
only present themselves so many times before they stop appearing at
all. When you are in a problem, or when you are facing challenges, a lot
of the time you are overwhelmed by it all and your mind thinks there is
only one way.
135
Chapter 6
| Dealing with society |
STEVE JOBS: Here’s to the Crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The
troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see
things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect
for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or
vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because
they change things. They push the human race forward. And while
some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the
people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world – are
the ones who DO!”
M y father has always been a highly motivated man. Always
charged with his goal firmly in his mind. Growing up under these
influences would be what a lot of people deem as a fortunate
circumstance.
During my early years, having such a charged father was not a blessing
to me. Remember I didn’t want to make too much money, and having a
136
Dad who was constantly pushing me to make money was a lot of

pressure.
I remember my friends at school all used to have parents that had

normal jobs, a regular 9-5. They all knew that my parents had their own
business and they thought it was amazing. A lot of the time they would
tell me that they wished their families were like mine, and that their
parents were like mine, so that they knew how to make a lot of money.
I don’t really think it had anything to do with how much money could be
made; I think my friends just liked all the toys that my parents bought
me.
Aside from being Chinese, my parent’s profession was one of the things
that made me different to the majority of the school and because I was
different I always felt the need to try and fit in, to try and be the same
as other people so my Father actually had a hard time teaching me. He
used to tell me all the time, ‘Eric work hard, do well, you need to work
hard, you need to be better than other people.’ But school and society
told me it wasn’t good to be better than other people.
People who were clever got top marks in the class, they were always the
teacher’s pets, and they always used to get laughed at. Nobody used to
want to be friends with them, at least not in my school.
I already had a tough time fitting in, why would I want to alienate myself
even more?
When I thought about it later on in life I realized that there were clever
people who were popular, had tons of friends and were A* students all
at the same time. Isn’t it funny how in my own circle of friends there
were also clever people who had lots of friends, and did well in school?
137
Why did my mind connect in such a way that I filtered out the clever
people among my own group of friends and immediately focused on
being normal, conforming and just being average?
Isn’t it funny that I sectioned out not wanting to be a nerd and being
laughed at? However at the same time I didn’t see that people who
were clever could be popular too?
Society had programmed my brain to think in such a way, that I only

connected the negatives. Society makes you conform, and when you try
to step out of that comfort zone and become a non-conformist society
tries to pull you back in again.
Remember, the majority of people are living in a purgatory state.
So within the realms, we have heaven, which contains our small group
of successful people. Remember these people are our social proofs, who
prove to the rest of the world that there is such thing as success.
Then in purgatory we have a group of people who are our floaters, those
who have a comfortable existence, some so comfortable that they don’t
feel that they need to grow or do anything differently with their lives.
So imagine that in the whole of purgatory there are only 100 people, and
out of those 100 people, 10 people decide to be trendsetters and start
trading stocks and shares.
5 of these people trade incredibly well and shoot up to heaven, while
the other 5 lose their life savings and drop down to hell.
138
What do you think the remaining 90 people would be saying? Will they
be saying, ‘hey it’s a good idea to trade, let’s all start trading stocks and
shares’ or will they be saying to each other, ‘don’t do trading. It’s bad.
You can end up losing everything; it’s not easy to make money. Be
careful.’
Most people will fall within the latter category. Now why is it when 5
people become successful and 5 people don’t become successful do
people only relate to the negative?
Remember before when we talked about focus? We were saying that

our minds are programmed to protect us. The same occurrence
happens here, our minds are trying to protect us, and so in order to do
that efficiently it will subconsciously connect to the negatives of the
scenario.
Our minds log 2 types of information, one is information relating to

positive emotions and events and the other is information that relates
to negative emotions and events. The purpose of our brain is to protect
us. That’s why your brain will naturally react stronger to negative
related events.
Your brain knows that positivity leads happiness, however being happy
leads to the release of endorphins in your blood system, which creates
a natural rush, the word endorphin itself endorses that it gives a natural
high, with the word Endorphins, originating from the words,
endogenous and morphine.
When your body is on this natural high, you often feel invincible and as
if nothing can get in your way. Your brains defensive mechanism is
139
‘weaker’ when you are happy as you don’t log as many negatives and
therefore it is not a natural reaction for your brain to be happy.
Negativity on the other hand lowers the secretion of happy messengers

or endorphins into your body, which can create sadness, stress, fear and
other negative emotions. Fear is naturally a stronger emotion, and fear
can overcome all other emotions, for instance if I was to ask you now to
come with me to give over everything you have, your house, your car,
all your money, your expensive belongings, and then I take you by the
hand and we go to the pawn shop and we pawn everything in exchange
for cash, and we take the suitcase of cash and we walk to the nearest
casino, we are headed for the roulette table, and when we are there, I
tell you, you have 2 choices, you can put all your money on either red or
black.
Remember contained in that suitcase is everything you have, all your life
savings and hard earned money in one suitcase of money. If you win,
you double everything. If you lose, you lose everything. Absolutely
everything.
What would your initial response be? Would you play? Or would you
miss out on this lucrative opportunity and walk away? Think about it for
a second.
I can tell you now, without meeting you all that the majority of you who
are reading this book would not play. Not because you wouldn’t like to
have the extra money, but because your natural fear response has
already told you not to play.
140
Fear has already overcome any emotions or happy feelings you might
have had about winning the money and adrenalin is pumping in your
body causing that fight or flight reaction.
Most of you will choose flight.
This is the thing; we have now established that our minds naturally
connect to negativity better than it connects to positivity. That is exactly
why a lot of people who are in purgatory actually just stay there.
People know that they can get to heaven, in your minds, you have a
small belief that you could potentially reach there, but your fear and self
preservation is telling you that its going to be hard, and what’s so good
about being up there anyway?
There are more people down here. Again the effects of society coupled
with your natural instincts make you feel that staying in purgatory where
its comfortable and safe is better than to risk it all and work hard.
Your minds have naturally filtered out all the activity up in heaven,
because there is a bigger fear of dropping down into hell. The fear of
losing it all is more prominent than the joy of having it all.
Remember the diagram from before; where there were 100 people in
purgatory, and the 5 people who traded stocks and shares who went to
heaven and the other 5 who fell into hell?
Well imagine the same diagram again but with this scenario.
One day, you wake up in the morning and you look up to heaven and
decide that you want to have that life, they have nice cars, nice houses,
141
they have more money than they could ever need and they are all very
successful and happy.
Your excited about your decision and you start telling all your friends
and family, ‘hey guys I’m thinking of going to heaven.’
Through the process of making the decision to go to heaven you yourself

have already struggled with your own internal battle of your own mind,
with your conditioning kicking in, and then you tell everyone else. And
you now have 89 other voices telling you not to do it.
In their minds, they are protecting you; they are being negative for your
own good, because in they too have been conditioned by the same
society that you were conditioned by.
When so many people are telling you the same thing, you start to believe
that its true and your mind will again deviate to the same thinking as
society.
A magnet is created and pulls you back down again into society and you
once again become a conformist and your life goes back to being
comfortable.
Every time you take a few steps up and they see you getting closer they
try to pull you down again.
So, we all now know to dream big, we know to find the purpose behind
your dreams and also to visualize your dreams. But with so many people
142
in society trying to pull us back down, telling us what to do and trying to

make us conform, how do we possibly achieve our goals?
How do we get up to heaven when there are so many voices telling us

that purgatory is already very comfortable, there is no need to be in
heaven?
When I was 22 and I had my own business and after the initial struggle
it was doing very well and I was making a nice bit of money. I didn’t
realize it at the time, but whilst I was making money, my mind was
already making a shift. I remember a particular time when I was speaking
to my friends. I hadn’t seen them in a while and we had arranged to
catch up. We all met up for a few drinks and the conversation started.
Whilst I was siting there, I realized that I had nothing to say to my friends.
The conversations that they were having were the same conversations
that we had been having for the past couple of years. The jokes were the
same, the people were the same, and when I asked them what they had
been up to and how they were, the answers were like they had been
rehearsed. They were exactly the same. ‘Yeah everything is ok.’ ‘Yeah
you know how it is.’
It hadn’t been that long since the last time I had spoken to my friends
and already I was feeling that the topic of conversation between us had
grown apart. Not only was the conversation different between my
friends and I, I also discovered that they actually started talking to me
differently.
A lot of sentences would start and end with, ‘It’s easy for you Eric’ and
‘you’re so lucky, you don’t understand what us normal people need to
go through with jobs and with work’. When I used to hear things like
143
this I used to get upset about it and thought, why are my friends talking
to me like that.
Aside from having a successful business I was still the same person that
I have always been. It was more painful because these are people who
I had grown up with. We had a lot of fun and memories together, and
suddenly I felt that there was a gap forming between us.
I was afraid that my friends and I were growing apart and so I tried very
hard to balance out my work and them. When I went out with them I
would party with them like we used to, knowing full well that I would
suffer the next day and have to go to work.
Then the next day I would wake up, with a bit of a hang over, not quite
ready for work. I would roll into work hung over and tired, my
productivity level would be very low, and the more I carried on like this
the more it was actually affecting my work.
One very wise business partner of mine had endured this with me, we
were in the business together, my priorities should have been our
business, but instead, he would watch me coming into work hung over
and tired everyday.
One day he actually said something to me when I had had a particularly

heavy night out partying and came into work the next day very hung
over.
He sat down with me and saw that I was not really all there and said to
me, ‘Eric you know that for your age your actually doing very well and
your climbing this ladder and you are so close, I know its none of my
business and its not my responsibility to need to step in to say who you
144
should and shouldn’t be. However I feel that you have had a really good
head start in all of this and you have a bright future ahead of you. You
could really make something big out of this and really make a difference
in this world.
I listened not quite sure where he was going with all this, and he carried
on to say, ‘your friends that your partying with every night are having an
adverse affect on your life. I feel that you should maybe hang around
with them less because you need to grow beyond them. You can be
better than what you are now and they are holding you back.’
When I had heard this, I was really angry, although I didn’t say anything,
I was thinking, yes who are you to say who I should and shouldn’t be
friends with.
I felt that he had overstepped the line and he shouldn’t have

commented on my life. Back then I thought how could anyone possibly
say that, those were my friends and I had grown up with them, no matter
how much money I made and how successful became, those were still
my friends and I would never look down on them or think any less of
them.
I put that conversation to the back of my mind, and I carried on with my

partying and trying to strike that balance of partying till the early hours
of the morning and running my business.
In hind site, I should have listened to my business partner. Now recalling

back, I notice that during those 2 years of my life, I actually didn’t grow.
My life stayed stagnant and nothing happened. I didn’t become
anymore successful, I didn’t earn any more money, I didn’t even do
much with my life.
145
Now earlier on in the book you were introduced to the concept of

springboards. During my lifetime so far there have been 4 springboards,
and the story I am about to tell you is the second springboard that
happened.
Remember I was never a person who liked to party, and I didn’t like to
socialize or meet new people. I was one of those who preferred a couple
of pints in a pub with the lads than to go on a full-blown night out. One
of my friends who was totally opposite to me had persuaded me one
night to go out to a networking party to meet new people.
I didn’t really want to go at the time, but he had been talking about it for
a while, and so I reluctantly agreed. I remember pulling up outside of
the club, and there was a row of cars parked outside.
A couple of Ferraris, one white Lamborghini and there was a few

Bentleys there as well and I remember distinctly saying to my friend
‘wow’. He proceeded to tell me that the cars actually belonged to his
friends.
After hearing this, my blood was pumping slightly faster, there was an
increase of adrenalin in my system, fear was creeping in and I was
starting to feel slightly uncomfortable.
All my life within my group of friends I had been the lucky one. I had
been the one with the nice house, the nicer car, and I was the one who
had been able to afford to buy the simple luxuries.
On our way into the club I had a fear of my friend asking what car I drove
so I kind of changed the subject very quickly before the subject was
146
broached. I had bought a brand new BMW that year, but for some
reason I felt smaller than I had ever felt in my life.
I don’t know what it was, whether it was my head playing tricks and
telling me that I should just be that little bit intimidated and feel that
little bit smaller, or whether it was the after effect of seeing the cars, but
as soon as I had met these guys, I felt an energy there.
Everything about them was confident, even their smile was confident
and powerful. Just a smile from one of them made me feel powerless
and less confident about myself. So we did our usual round of
introductions, and we all got talking. I remember being very careful with
everything I said and asked. Some of them were telling me about their
businesses, about their factories and recycling plants, and how they had
recycling plants for steel and they were exporting it to China and various
other places. I was intrigued by all this and listened attentively trying to
pick up as much information as I could.
With a night out of course there were drinks, they were ordering rounds
and rounds of champagne. All of them ordering only the best, the price
tag on a single bottle was more than I would spend in a week on nights
out with my friends.
What I noticed was that it wasn’t only the group that I was hanging
around with that were splashing their cash, it was everyone within that
room.
Everyone there carried an air of confidence and slight arrogance about

them. That night when I got home, I couldn’t sleep, my mind was turning
with thoughts about what had happened that night, I was replaying in
my head the events and conversations that I had had.
147
Although it didn’t really seem like it when I was there, the night was
actually amazing, I hadn’t actually spoke much all night, and I wasn’t sure
what these people thought about me, however it was like I had suddenly
developed an addiction.
Despite feeling a discomfort when I was there, I knew I had to go again,

and I wanted to go again.
Still buzzing from the night’s activities, I began calling all of my friends,
telling them about my night and telling them about the crazy experience
I had just encountered.
For a few days after the party I was still charged and full of energy, then
slowly, day-by-day, that energy began to fade. Slowly but surely I was
resuming my normal life again and I had already put my experience to
the back of my mind.
Until one night, my friend asked me to go out again, to another party, to

meet the same group of friends.
Without having to think about it, I instantly agreed, and the same thing
happened. That heart sinking feeling when I first walked into the room
came back again, that smallness and lack of confidence creeped back in
subconsciously. But this time something different also happened.
A major shift happened in my mind. I remember there was one moment

distinctly where something happened in my head. I was sitting there
with a few of my new friends and they were all talking about their
businesses, and how they were splashing their money and living the high
life. It was I was sitting in on an episode of Gossip Girl or 90210, a bunch
of privileged young adults talking about their ‘problems’.
148
I remember sitting there having a conversation half listening to what

everyone was saying, after a while, I totally zoned out, people were
talking to me but I wasn’t even listening anymore, I was totally in my
own world and I was just imagining what it would be like if I was in their
position, how my life would look if I had that kind of income and
business.
How amazing would it be if my parents could see me like that, how

proud they would be. How amazing would it be for my friends to see
and how cool it would be.
The more I started thinking about how cool and amazing it would be the
more I actually started wanting to be like them. I started thinking that I
did want to make a lot of money, however there was a ‘but’ in my mind.
How on earth was I going to achieve this? This whole experience

sparked a desire inside me, something that I hadn’t experience before.
After that night I went back to my normal life, but I was constantly
thinking, ‘how can I be like them, how can I make that much money’. I
had created a vision in my mind, which had then turned into a burning
desire. I had created my need for money and for expensive luxuries. I
needed to be as good as them, to be able to enjoy the kinds of luxuries
that they enjoyed, so that I didn’t feel out of place or less important.
My thoughts made me start taking action, I started looking at prices of

yachts and prices of super cars, and I remember my friends telling me
how important it was to wear a watch a hand made Swiss watch because
it was a sign of status, so I started looking at things like that as well and
the prices were shocking.
149
However, for the first time in my life I felt the need to make a lot of
money, and I felt the importance of money. My desire and taste for
expensive things went from being a want to a need in a very short space
of time.
I started hanging out with my new friends more and more and got to
know them better and the more I got to know them the more I needed
and wanted these items.
Now here comes to the part of my story which nobody knows at least
nobody knew before I started writing this book! That emotional need
for expensive luxuries caused me to take action. Remember when we
talked about emotions being high and intelligence being low?
Well something like that happened to me. And what did I do? I went
shopping for supercars, and I took all of my savings and I threw it down
for a deposit for buying my very first Bentley Continental GT.
The feeling was amazing, I remember that day, walking into the Bentley
showroom as if I owned the world and getting into the car. The sales
guy showed me around and gave me an induction, introducing me to all
this new technology that I had never even seen in a car before, there
were heated massage seats, and high tech Bluetooth functions.
Then he turned the engine of the car on, I was excited to hear the sound
of the engine. As soon as the paperwork was done, I took my car and
drove it straight into town.
Without looking I could already feel everyone’s eyes on me. It felt good.
I was excited to show off my new car and so I called up my newfound
friends and asked them to go out that evening.
150
I pulled up outside the bar that we were meeting at and waited for a
reaction from my friends. It was actually not that satisfying. To my
friends my new car was just another car and it wasn’t as special as I had
thought it was in my mind.
They were used to these luxuries and my new car was no different.
Throughout the day I had been the envy of every man on the street, but
come nighttime when I was with my friends, my car was just another
Bentley. However, despite the disappointing reaction I got from them,
something about the car gave me a newfound confidence. And I realized
that the way I was speaking to people was already a lot more powerful
and I felt a lot more confident about myself.
This very satisfying feeling lasted for about a month, when something
hit me. I looked at my bank balance, and I had zero savings. My new
spending habits were making me spend more and more money; I was
going to fancier and increasingly expensive restaurants and bars, not to
forget about the Swiss watches that I had to have.
Aside from buying a new Bentley I had also bought myself a Patek
Philippe watch. At first looking at my bank balance wasn’t so scary, I
knew I had spent a bit of money that month what with a new car and a
new watch, but then another month went by and another. I started
noticing my incomings and outgoings weren’t balancing as well as they
should be. This scared me. Despite my restaurant doing exceptionally
well, my outgoings were becoming too much.
I started to go into panic mode. When most people make a bit of money
people get into a comfort zone, when you are in that comfort zone, you
tend to lose a bit of momentum and you go out there and start enjoying
the finer things in life.
151
That is exactly what happened to me. However, what I did wasn’t very
financially smart, because remember, when emotions are high,
intelligence is low.
Being happy and needing to buy expensive things overwhelmed me and

made me make some rash decisions. So whilst I was really happy with
my new lifestyle, dining in fancy restaurants, wearing expensive watches
and driving nice cars, my financial IQ and money management skills at
the time was around zero. This is one thing you must remember when
doing business. Make sure you work out your outgoing costs in relation
to your incoming before spending large amounts of money!
A lot of people tend to forget this and feel that because they have a little
bit of surplus cash they should go and enjoy themselves and spend,
however, they fail to anticipate the day that they will actually need the
money.
My bank balance was at 0 and not only that I was starting to eat into my
credit cards which forced me into a very difficult situation. I had just
bought brand new Bentley Continental GT, I lived in a very nice house
on the water, and I was wearing watches that cost more than the
average car out there.
My spending habits had forced me out of my comfort zone. I realized I

had to do something to rescue the situation. I wasn’t prepared to lose
my newly found luxuries. I was in what we have referred to as a living
hell.
152
Remember emotions lead to motions, and at this time I had a very strong
negative emotion, this of course led me to taking action.
I had to increase my income to sustain my lifestyle, and so I worked

harder than I ever did before. I came up with different marketing
strategies; I worked on customer service and improving product quality.
Once I put my 100% focus and energies on increasing business, results
started to show and I started to be able to scrape past and cover my
overheads, however again I’m going to tell you a bit of my story that
nobody knows and the first time this story will be told will be in this
book, and this book only.
The cost of the Bentley was so high that within 2 months of owning it, I
had taken it and traded it in for a car that was £40,000 cheaper and also
the financing was a lot lower per month meaning that I had a little bit of
room for more spending.
However, after owning a Bentley, I couldn’t possibly get back into a

normal car, how could I when I had just been driving a Bentley around.
So the car that I bought was an Aston Martin.
Although trading the Bentley in for the Aston had allowed me some
breathing space in terms of finance, however, I was still craving luxuries,
and so I still needed to make money. So I put all my focus on making
money. It was at this same time that I started getting into the recycling
business, a lot of people often ask me how I got into the recycling
business or why I got into the recycling business.
I didn’t really know why but I remember that in my new group of friends
someone had a steel business and someone had their own recycling
business and I was thinking wouldn’t it be cool to have my own factory?
153
With that an opportunity landed on my lap, and so I started my own

recycling company. Taking in scrap tyres, shredding them down and
recycling them into by products that could be used for various purposes.
Through meeting my group of friends, I learnt a big lesson, and I learnt

about the power of society and conditioning of the mind. Although it
wasn’t something that I was going to admit at the time, upon reflection,
my friends had actually given me one of the biggest lessons in my life.
No matter what anyone says, everyone is open to change in their life

and everyone has a want for something greater, but we all get a little
stuck at times.
Something stops us from doing what we really need to be doing. We get

stuck with beliefs of what were not supposed to be or do. We get stuck
in emotional patterns, and sometimes it’s our habits that stop us from
moving onto greater things.
Your breakthrough moments will happen at different points in your life,

sometimes they could be as simple as having a conversation with one of
your friends, or hearing something on the news.
When this breakthrough happens you will know it. Something will
usually click inside of you, and make you look at life in another way. A
lot of people ask the question of how will they know they have just made
a breakthrough.
154
I don’t have an answer for that, because the answer is you will know.
You will automatically start to change your life and start to shift your life
to change the quality of your life.
Stress doesn’t come from the facts – it comes from the meaning that
gives us the facts.
What is the single force that controls the quality of your life regardless
of what has happened to us?
The power of choice – we choose what to focus on what things mean
and what to do.
Its not so much the conditions of our life that control our destiny its
what we choose to do with our lives.
How is your life better today because of a decision you have made?
Sometimes a little decision changes your life. Doesn’t have to be the
biggest decisions of your life.
Decisions = destiny
If we want a new life you have to make new choices.
155
If you want to change any of your life you have the choice – there is no
right or wrong.
A decision is when you cut off any other possibility and you take action.
belief  action  results  belief
156
Get a mentor
OPRAH WINFREY: Surround yourself only with people who are going
to life you higher.
A lot of people will tell you that in order to succeed what you
need to do is to emulate those great successful people out there, learn

from them, learn how they do things, how they live their everyday lives
how they work their corporations and mirror them to produce the same
type of results.
Now this is a pit that I fell into early on in my career. I have always been
a big fan of Richard Branson and the work he does, and so I listened to a
lot of his talks and read a lot of his books on how he does business and
on his life. I thought it was impressive and so I wanted to have a group
of companies like his, this is when I decided to set up the H Akademy.
When I set up the H Akademy, I set up 5-6 brands under the same
company just like the Virgin group.
In my head, I imagined it to be like the Virgin Group, where I would have

group of companies in all sorts of different industries and I would be able
to go out there and be like Richard Branson.
But in reality what happened was that all of my businesses stayed quite
stagnant, not really doing much. What I found was that instead of jetting
157
around on my own private jet, I was rushing around trying to run all
these different companies.
Trying to emulate the successes out there is correct, but what we

mustn’t do is jump the gun. We mustn’t copy what the rich and
successful people are doing now, rather the lessons that we want to
learn is what did they do then.
How did they get from where they were to where they are now? The
information, which we want to obtain, is how they went on their journey
to success. How did they make it work from the beginning! This is the
mindset that we want to mirror.
To succeed it is important that you surround yourself with the correct

people.
A lot of people out there feel that they are already number 1 so they
don’t need to find a coach or a mentor. The problem with that is that
people don’t realize that their number 1 position is only temporary.
What a lot of people feel is that they are already number 1 so they can
stop. They fail to realize that in order to stay at the top, they need to
stay ahead of the game and the use of a mentor or a coach is paramount
to their continued success.
Just think about it, why do you think, the worlds greatest, whether it be
singers, sportsmen, actors, whoever them may be, have coaches?
Nadal for instance, the one of the world’s greatest tennis players, why
do you think he has a coach? If he’s the world’s greatest why does he
need a coach? Because a coach or a mentor keeps you on track and
158
makes sure that you carry on performing to the best of your ability and
makes sure that you stay at the top of your game.
It’s so important to firstly have mentors and most importantly to have

the right mentors, people who are able to teach and guide us, who we
can learn and extract from. People who have experience, and may have
even fallen and bounced back up, learn from other people’s mistakes.
Having a mentor will create a shortcut to your success. These people

have been there and already got the bumper sticker to prove it. Learning
from them will only enable you to grow bigger and succeed faster.
There is a saying, learn from your mistakes, but the process of learning
from your own mistakes is often long and takes a toll whether physically
or mentally. Often having to bounce back from a mistake is time
consuming. This is where having the correct mentors come into play.
They can save you time and spare you the pain.
Why I keep stressing the right mentors is because there is actually a skill
to this and not everyone is able to give you the correct advice. A lot of
the time we listen to a lot of advice given by people around us. A lot of
the times the people who we actually turn to for advice are the talkers,
not so much walkers. I’m sure all of you know many people out there
who talk the talk everyday who have never walked the talk.
I’d like to refer to them as the know-it-alls, now the thing about people
like that is that they are very confident communicators and a lot of the
time they engage us, and what they are telling us seems to be good
advice and so we listen.
Consider this scenario for a second, one of my creative directors came
up to me once in the office and asked me how my stocks were trading,
159
he knew I had been trading for a while, but I found it an odd question
and not one that would really come from him.
What I found out was that he had actually began to trade as well. He
launched into his story of how his friend who has been trading for over
20 years was teaching him how to trade.
The story was interesting, and it intrigued me so I asked him about his
friend and whether he was a full time trader and how his results were.
My creative director told me that his friend was actually only trading on
the side and his friend like himself was also a designer and his results
were ok.
Now this is the thing, those of you who know how to trade out there,
know the strategies of trading, if you know how to trade it’s easy, it’s
just a game of compounded growth, your pot just gets bigger and bigger
and bigger, because you are using the same winning strategies.
This made me think about mentors in a different light.
Consider this for a second, so we have something called experience vs.

results. In front of you right now, you have 2 people, a guy who is around
25 years old, a kid and he’s sitting in one of the chairs in his Levis jeans,
his Abercrombie hoodie and converse sneakers. Next to him is sat a 50
year old, in his Armani suit, his shirt and tie with greying hair sleeked
back with black thick rimmed glasses. These 2 people are both into
property.
The 25 year old has been into properties for 3 years now, and the 55
year old has been in the property industry for over 30 years, if you
160
wanted to learn about property and making money in property which

one would you naturally ask?
Most of the time people go by experience but experience doesn’t

necessarily mean anything. How many of you know of a person who is
in property, who has been for many years who isn’t making that much
money?
I’m sure many of you can think of people out there who have been doing
the same thing their entire lives and haven’t had much success with it.
That’s what you call experience.
On the flipside of that coin, many of you may know of someone who has
done something for a few years and have luckily made a fortune out of
doing it.
I’m not sure about all you readers out there, but for me, if I were to
choose a mentor I would choose the one who has produced the results.
Even if they had only been doing it for 2 years, or a year.
Actually for that matter, the shorter the time, the more it would make
me want to ask them. Even if they had only been doing it for 3 months.
If they are super successful already after only 3 months, then they must
be doing something right, so why wouldn’t you want to learn from
them?
Always look at results, before experience!
Find and learn from people who have actually succeeded and produced
results. This is something that I never used to understand and is a trap
that I fell into time and time again. Naturally growing up with a Dad that
was business orientated, he was my go to guy, any new business
161
decisions that I needed advice on; my natural instincts would be to go to

my Dad.
What I didn’t realize was that my Dad wasn’t the best person to ask
about every single business decision I was going to make.
This point is so important, and the moment that really really hit me was
before I got into the steel business and when I was just working in
restaurants.
One of my friends had called me and told me there was an opportunity

to acquire a piece of land out in Indonesia for a very good price of
$100,000 and on the land we could build 3 sets of apartments, in total
the apartment blocks would cost around $200,000 to build, so for
$300,000 I could already acquire the land and have 3 sets of apartments,
he also told me the Indonesian government were helping and he had
contacts in place so we could get everything for a very low price.
He had already got a valuation for the properties around the area, and
according to the surveyor, the apartments would actually sell for around
$900,000 and this whole building and selling process would be done in
6-9 months meaning there was $600,000 to be made within 6-9 months.
I was 26 at the time, and my Dad was still my go to guy, so anyway the
first thing I did when I got this information was call my Dad, I told him
about the opportunity and asked him what I should do.
I’m sure many of you can already imagine what his reaction was, my
fathers words were, ‘don’t be stupid, you’ll just get conned, a lot of
people lose a lot of money doing property development.’
162
My immediate reaction was my Dad thinks it isn’t good so it must be a

con, I picked up the phone and called my friend back and said this isn’t
really for me, thank you and hung up.
As soon as I had put the phone down, something clicked. I thought, wait
there a second, there are a lot of people who are making money through
property out there and, my Dad has never been in a property business
before. There was a long pause happening in my head and I began to
process what had just happened.
Then I realized, if I had a question regarding restaurants, then the person

I should be asking is my Dad, because that’s where his expertise lies,
however the question at hand was to do with an industry that my Dad
was unfamiliar with.
This is when it clicked that I should be looking for the correct people to
ask the correct questions to.
Most people around us, say things with good intention, they tell us
things, and they tell us the risks and where the dangers are to try and
protect us, however the information they give us or the opinions they
give us can only come from either their own past experiences, or past
experiences of those around them.
So if the person belongs in purgatory, then all they can teach you is
advise that will keep you in purgatory.
163
Choosing the right mentors
N ow remember in a previous chapter we talked about
challenges and unlocking the right tools and skills. Well, finding a
mentor is like finding a shortcut to these tools and skills. Those of you
who have ever played computer games like Super Mario Bros will know
that you can have cheats to help you unlock higher levels, well finding
the right mentor is like a cheat.
Finding the right mentors and asking the correct questions will give you
an elevated shortcut through life and make your journey to success that
much shorter.
Napoleon Hill once shared his master mind theory, he talks about having
a round table meeting in his mind, where he asks his ‘mentors’ questions
of what he might do about a certain situation, and he would go around
the table asking each individual ‘mentor’ the same question to get a
different answer depending on who the mentor was.
After reading the book and after my experience with my friend and the
Indonesia opportunity, it suddenly clicked for me one day, and I realized
that asking my Dad everything was not the correct way to gain advice
and knowledge.
The questions I was asking were specific to certain sectors, and my Dad
didn’t have experience in these sectors.
It’s not only parents whom we turn to for advice, a lot of the time; we
also turn to our friends. When we are sitting having a drink or hanging
164
out with friends, someone comes up with an idea, and like the round
table our friends will all chip in with their opinions, telling us it’s a bad
idea and that it won’t work. A lot of the time we will take these thoughts
and ideas on board and disregard our great ideas.
Ask the correct people the correct questions. Get the right mentors and
get the correct advice.
165
Chapter 7
| Positive Energy |
TONY ROBBINS: The higher your energy level, the more efficient your
body, the more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more
you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.
S elf admittedly I was very lazy when I was younger. It wasn’t
the kind of lazy where I couldn’t be bothered to pick a sweater up off

the floor, it was lazy to the point where you could tell I was a lazy person
by just being around me.
When I walked along the streets, you could tell from my physiology, I
walked with a slouch, shuffled my feet and kept my head looking at the
floor, I’d be so lazy that I couldn’t even be bothered to stand on 2 feet. I
would shift my weight from side to side leaning up against anything I
could find as I stood.
When I spoke to people, my tonality was lazy; I would mumble and be

very softly spoken. I couldn’t even be bothered to raise my voice to be
heard. I had the ultimate can’t be bothered attitude. My laziness
defined me and consumed me.
166
Even my handwriting was lazy, I remember my father used to always say

to me, ‘Eric write properly’. He once told me that just by looking at my
handwriting he could tell that I wasn’t a very hard working person.
Now the most bizarre thing about this is and I have no idea why, today I
realized that my writing is so naturally full of strength and energy
without even meaning to put my mind to it. I sometimes write and write
and you know when you sometimes write and your fingers and thumb
goes into a cramped position cause its locked, and then you stop writing
and rip the page off just to find that your writing has indented down 5
layers of paper and they can never be used by anybody again.
Its good news all round for the copy girl at the office though, she has one
less job to do and she’s still getting paid the same.
My parents always tried to drill into me that successful people didn’t act
like that. They always told me to stand up straight and hold my head up
high. They always told me not to slouch and to stop shuffling my feet.
This went on through my teenage years and my Dad in particular would

always tell me that successful people stand tall and proud, with their
shoulders back and their heads held high. Back then; I would ignore him
because I didn’t know what he meant, and quite frankly, I didn’t have a
clue what slouching had to do with being successful!
Throughout my childhood and teenage years I was a very observant

child. I would notice how people presented themselves, how people
walked into a room, people’s auras. The subtle things.
I noticed from a very young age that there was a difference in the way I
was to a lot of other people. When some people would walk into parties,
167
into work, into school they would bring a presence with them a je ne sais
quoi that I couldn’t explain.
Confidence
I t was almost like they had an invisible energy that they
brought with them everywhere they went. It was almost like they had
just stepped out of an episode of Dragon Ball Z just as they transformed
into Super Saiyan.
Something about them made these people more attractive than

everyone else in the room. It was a charisma, an aura that they had
about them that gave them this attraction.
Back then I didn’t know this and I just thought, these people are really
cool and that I wanted to be friends with them. Just like in those movies
you watch, with a bunch of popular kids, the jocks and cheerleaders, well
168
I was never the jock or the cheerleader; I was always the geeky Chinese
kid. Except I wasn’t smart like the ones you see in movies and I didn’t
wear glasses.
I had always noticed a pattern, but I had never figured out what actually
made them the way they were and so for reasons unknown to myself, I
would tell myself, that’s not me, I could never be like that.
In fact I was the total opposite of these seemingly popular and successful
people. So, while I was continuing my observations I started to notice
patterns in these groups of people. Through work and attending
meetings and meeting more and more people, I noticed this type of
energy that sparked a fascination within me.
I started studying these people closely, studying their physiology, their

tonality, and the way they walk and talk because I wanted to unlock the
secret of what made them who they are.
I was like Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady, the only difference was I
wasn’t learning so much how to speak and I wasn’t learning how to act
like a lady. I was trying to learn the skills and encapsulate that Je Ne Sais
Quoi that would differentiate me from the masses.
It wasn’t until later on in my journey, when I joined a Multi Level

Marketing (MLM) business that I finally discovered what this charisma
was.
When I joined the MLM business I was forced into some very
uncomfortable situations; I was forced to talk to people, to network, to
socialize and to sell!
169
For those who aren’t familiar with MLM its where you have multiple
levels of selling. Where person A sells to 2 people and then those 2
people sell to a further 2 people so on and so forth, by the end of it you
end up with a big tree of people selling these amazing products.
The person at the top gets paid by multiple levels of people joining or
buying their product. Before I got into this I had never experienced
sales, and never wanted to sell and I wasn’t even very good at speaking
to others. I was more of a shy person who wasn’t the best
communicator and when I used to get into a large room full of people I
used to stay away in my little corner in my comfort zone.
It was impressive what those people at the top could do, but I never
understood those people who were able to talk to everyone. Often I
found myself wondering what these people actually talked about and
how they did it.
170
I discovered what it was during my stint in MLM when I ventured out

and joined in with the social networking events. So within our multilevel
marketing network we used to hold very big events where all members
would join together, thousands of them and exchange ideas, and learn
from each other.
I remember every time I went to one of those events I would come out
feeling very different. I remember every time coming out of an event
and going back into the normal world, going back to reality, would be
like someone coming off a high from coming home just after they have
been to see their favorite artist at a concert.
People at these networking events were completely opposite to who I

was, but I was put into a situation where I had no choice, but to talk to
people, but to network and socialize. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t make any
money, if I didn’t make money then I was losing money!
Although it wasn’t my life savings that I had put into the business and
whether I sold or not I could still get by, but no one likes to lose money,
no one likes to lose. There is a stigma attached to losing, the loss of
pride, and the loss of face.
Back then, pride and face were important to me, I was a very proud
person, and I liked to save face. So I was forced into an uncomfortable
position, and let me tell you I am glad that I did.
Although at first finding these big networking events a bit intimidating

and a bit uncomfortable forcing me to socialize with people I didn’t
know, I really liked the buzz I got out of being surrounded by these
people.
171
Everyone had one aim, one vision, one common goal, which was to,
make a lot of money, and sell like crazy. In order to do that, everybody
needed to believe in the product, believe in the company, and believe in
helping each other and in the network.
During this venture into the world of Multi Level Marketing, I met a lot
of people who were multi multi millionaires and I noticed a massive
difference in those people compared to the people who were not so
successful, or even struggling.
After meeting hundreds and hundreds of people through my new

‘business’, and after much analysis and studying of these people, I
started to notice what it was that these people were doing differently
from the masses.
I started modeling these people in the way they stood, the way they
spoke, and what I started to realize was when I stood with my shoulders
back and my head held high and started to fake that smile to show that
confidence that wasn’t actually real, at least at the beginning, I started
to realize a big shift in my emotions.
Something started to happen inside of me, within my physiology I

started to notice that I felt more powerful and the peculiar thing was,
the more I did it the more powerful I felt.
Joining the MLM business was one of the best things that happened to
my life. Throughout my time within the organization I learnt a lot about
not only myself but also about other people.
172
Now I’m not here to sell you into the advantages of Multi-Level
Marketing and I’m not here to tell you that you should all go out there
and join one.
I’m purely sharing with you what I found to be the important lessons
that I learnt through this network, which is why after all of my events
you will have the option of joining in with a networking event which
allows people the opportunity to network with other like minded,
positively charged people, to share stories and experiences so that you
are able to learn and grow from others as well as myself.
Remember, this is my own personal experience and what I am telling

you is purely the events that have happened in my life and what you do
with these stories and information is your choice.
Through my MLM experience I grew thousands of percent and I learnt

more about myself than I ever had before. There was one thing in
particular that I would like to share with you. It was during my time in
the this business that I started to put my findings together. The
experiences of the events that I went through were so bizarre and new
to me that I started gathering my thoughts, feelings and experiences
together into a notebook.
What I started to realize is that energy is everything and confidence is
everything and that confidence can be built in anyone, and a non-
confident person can actually become very confident overtime, simply
by faking it.
Yes you read right, by faking it. There is a saying, fake it till you make it.
Now a lot of people misunderstand this, I’m not telling you to go out
there and lie to people and give everyone false information about
yourself.
173
I’m talking about energy and confidence.
This is an actual scenario where I had to fake it. Before joining the
business, I had no confidence; I didn’t know how to speak to people and
I would blush every time I had to stand up in front of a group of people
and speak. But I learnt to keep that energy within me I kept my head
held high and I kept going.
The more energy that I was able to exude the better results I got from
the other person.
Remember this, confidence is everything!
The peculiar thing was that during the beginning, when I first signed up
for this MLM program I didn’t actually have much faith in it. I thought
to myself, yeah this sounds like fun, but I wasn’t really that intrigued or
interested, I wasn’t passionate about it and I definitely wasn’t excited at
the prospects of it.
It just seemed like a good idea that I could make some money on the
side. And lets face it the sales pitch that was presented to me was pretty
good.
However what I found was that as time went by, I started to really
change my mindset.
There was a lot I learnt from a lot of extremely successful people within
the network and one thing was being positive. Being full of energy when
we meet people, to show so much passion when were selling.
174
To show so much passion that the person buying could read the passion
from the energy that you were giving and buy into the concept because
of how exciting you made it sound.
This is also when I started realizing that context was more important
than content. How many of you have ever been to a lecture or a seminar
before and that person is so intellectual and gives you so much
knowledge and information but you still feel like falling asleep?
How many of you have been in a seminar before where the person
speaking was so full of energy you probably didn’t hear much of what
they said but you still came away feeling charged and full of energy.
Now through my time in the catering industry, serving people, and

through my time selling in MLM and through my time in franchising, this
is what I found. Remember this. Context is more important than
content, and context mainly derives from your ability to apply increased
energy and confidence.
Applying so much energy and confidence that you don’t even need to
give much of the facts and figures these people were able to sell to
thousands and thousands of people. And so, I did what I was told, I went
out there, I power talked, I passion talked my way telling people how
crazy and amazing this product was and how being a part of this MLM
network, had made me learn so much, grow so much, achieve so much.
However, the number 1 rule to selling is that you actually have a product
or service that you honestly believe in, and that the product or service
is going to add value to other people’s lives.
175
This is what I refer to in my business seminars as the power of ethical

selling.
The key to sales is always and I mean always, adding value to other
peoples lives, if you try telling your customers or your consumers some
white lies about your products or your service, it will always come back
to bite you.
Customer feedback and referral is the strongest way of selling. If your

customer sold your product or service to another customer, it is 10 times
more powerful than you selling your product or service to your
customers.
Remember the key is to add value to other people’s lives.
While being so passionate and truly believing in the product, I started

mastering the technique of context over content during my sales
pitches, and this allowed me to sell like I had never sold before. Now
this is the thing, at the back of my head, I knew that I was a newbie; and
I had just got into this whole industry and wasn’t entirely familiar with
how everything worked.
I remember there was one night I went home from a very busy event
where we were trying to recruit more people, and I sat in my living room
by myself. I felt that all my energy was suddenly drained and then I felt
very lost, because this was not something that I was used to.
I questioned myself. Was I faking it? Was I lying to people? Was I lying
to myself? And why am I doing what I am doing right now?
176
Because this project forced me to smile all the time, and always act
excited and happy in front of these new people that we were recruiting
to, I really questioned whether I was being fake.
Not very long after, I started feeling the real answer to my questions.
Which was no.
I found that I was actually becoming increasingly happy. The more I

actually practiced smiling and positivity, and high energy throughout the
day, the more I was actually living it in reality and taking it beyond the
networking world and out into my ordinary world.
While this was happening I started realizing that:
Positivity  results  positivity
The more positive I was, the more results began to show. The more
results I had, the more confidence it built, thus being more positive. Now
this was all well and good, however I would like to make a point here,
because what I realized was my positivity got so far that it started to get
a bit out of hand.
It got to the point where one day I found my Mum crying in the kitchen;
I walked in asking, “Mum what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” My Mum tried
to conceal the fact that she was upset, as she didn’t like me seeing her
cry. It wasn’t until my Dad came up to me and said, ‘Eric your Mum is
really worried about you, she thinks your on drugs, your so high and
happy all the time.’
177
It wasn’t until then that I realized that I was back in the real world and
reality sunk in. In the real world not everyone is able to expose
themselves and share their positivity like I was.
I was not ‘normal’, I was happy everyday, and that’s not what happens
in the real world. In essence I was like a superhero in disguise.
Since being on this whole personal development journey, empowering

people around the world holding these seminars, I found that this is
something that happens within our seminar rooms as well, where
everyone learns so much and they grow so much, and there is so much
positivity in the rooms, so much that they never even dreamed existed.
A lot of people get overwhelmed especially when they learn so much in

such a short space of time, and the 2-3 day programs are so jam packed
with information it gets a little overwhelming and this emersion allows
them to realize that success isn’t just some distant far away dream,
determined by your luck, fate or qualifications.
It’s got more to do with your mindset and its something that anyone can
change in an instant. Now that’s the thing, imagine coming out of one
of my seminars, your so pumped up that you feel invincible, and
suddenly you feel like you can be a millionaire in no time, this is because
you have found what you haven’t been doing or what you have done
wrong in the past.
I’ve just shared with you; how the most successful people in the world
think and made you realize that you can think in exactly the same way.
You go out of that room buzzing because you have just found the secret,
the ultimate formula to success and so what happens is you go out there
and you start telling everyone around you. All those, closest and dearest
178
to you, all your family and friends that you feel could benefit from
spilling the secret to.
And then what happens? So you go up to your friend, and you start
talking. I know this because its happened to me before, I get really
excited and I’m bursting to share the secrets I have just learnt, so I start
telling everyone, “look you have been doing it all wrong you shouldn’t
think like this you should think in this way instead. You can reprogram
your subconscious mind and anything is possible, whatever you believe
in you can achieve.”
First of all lets face it, they will probably think you have gone crazy, then
they will probably be thinking you still look the same, your still driving
your beat up car, your still living at home with your parents, so what are
you even talking about!
Why are you telling me what the secret is? They would probably just
laugh in your face.
This is the thing, its rewarding trying to save the world and to be a
Superhero, that feeling of contributing back to society and giving
someone hope is an immense feeling. However, in being a Superhero,
you have to lead by example. You can’t just talk the talk. You have to
be able to walk the talk.
I’m sure many of you have friends out there or know people who like to
talk a lot. They tell you about how good they are, the ‘know-it-alls’, they
tell you about how they can do everything. This is easy and that’s just a
no brainer and the conversations usually revolve around what they can
do, generally there is no can’t.
179
However these people that you know have never done any of the things
they say they can do, they just know how to talk about these things.
Most of these people feel a sense of significance and superiority when
they talk about the things they can do. It makes them feel like they are
helping and it makes them feel like they are contributing and they are
doing good, however, what they have failed to realize is the impact on
their words is not the same as someone who has walked the talk before.
The same applies here. Although your intention is good, and you want
to help, you need to earn the right to preach what you have learnt.
Don’t preach before you reach. If you talk the talk then be warned. You
must walk the talk!
So many of you may be thinking ok I understand, energy and confidence

are important, but where do we start? And what is it that you can do
now that can already contribute towards the shift that you are about to
make?
180
Many people don’t realize this, but your physiology is so important. And
whether consciously or subconsciously it will be the first thing that
someone notices about you.
181
Some of you will be thinking at this point that, that’s just the way you sit
and that’s how you feel most comfortable, but over the next couple of
weeks I want you to practice your power poses. Practice sitting, and
standing in powerful positions and see how that makes a change on your
day-to-day life.
During our days, no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how
motivated and how energized you are, there will come a time when your
feeling tired, and you don’t feel like doing any work, and you just feel
like going home for the day, when that time comes, try doing the power
poses and see how you feel after it.
You will start to notice a shift in your energy and in yourself. After all,
as the saying goes, fake it till you make it. With enough practice, you
will start to become what you are practicing. Remember humans are
creatures of habit, so the more you practice it the more it will become
second nature to you!
Trust me, I’ve been there.
Now it’s all great in knowing you can choose to change your physiology
to increase your confidence and energy levels. However, the key is to
take action and to take action now.
How many of you read that bit about power poses before and just
ignored it? Remember what we said before how you do anything is how
you do everything.
If you can’t get yourself to spare a few minutes practicing these

techniques, then why do you think you deserve to be successful? Now
182
that we have started generating energy we are now in motion, and this
is the first step to success.
What we need to do now, is to have so much energy in motion, that we

start building momentum.
183
Momentum
H ow many of you have ever tried to push start a car in snow
before? When you start it seems like its not going to move, you push till
your huffing and puffing and your all red in the face and all you seem to
be doing is kicking the snow away from underneath yourself.
You carry on and you persevere, and then suddenly the car shifts a little
bit, and the more you push, the more it rocks, the more it starts to move
and build momentum, until suddenly you’ve got it out of the snow and
your able to drive off to work.
Unless of course it’s a BMW.
It’s always hard to get things started, however, the key is to persevere
no matter what.
How many of you have ever made New Years resolutions and said you
will go to the gym 3 times a week and make a habit and a routine out of
it so you can be fitter and healthier in the New Year?
What happens, that first week you go to the gym 3 times, and your really
enthusiastic your really pushing yourself and you reach the end of the
first week.
Although you feel fresher, more awake and full of energy you are feeling
sore from working all those muscles you don’t normally work, so then it
184
gets to the second week, and your still hurting from your first 3 gym
sessions.
You are determined to make it to the gym. You only made your
resolution a week ago, and so you must keep going. So this week, you
start off the week and you make it to the gym maybe twice.
By the third week, your really tired, work is kicking it up a notch and your
really busy, not to mention sore from your vigorous work out. Your
friends are organizing nights out and dinners and lunches and you think
to yourself, I haven’t seen them in a long time so maybe I’ll just skip it
today, so you make it maybe 1 time and then for the next 6 months,
something is always popping up and you don’t actually manage to go
again.
It’s always hardest to start at the beginning, however those of you who
do work out will know that once you start your daily routine and commit
to it you will know that the hardest and most painful is the beginning.
Remember humans are creatures of habit! Once you hit month 1,

month 2 there will be no stopping you because you gain momentum.
Remember that car that you were pushing before, it took so long to get
the momentum started and finally the car starts running, now imagine
this, try running in front of the car and stop the car from moving. Good
luck trying.
And once you have built the momentum and that momentum is so
strong and powerful, there will be no stopping you.
And the interesting thing is this, those of you who have ever been on a
185
swing before will know at the beginning it takes a lot more effort to kick
start the motion, once you get things moving, the swing acts like its on
auto pilot and is able to swing at the same momentum with less effort.
The further on in the momentum the less effort and energy that is
needed from yourself.
A good example is waking up in the mornings. For those of you who

aren’t morning people let me tell you, there is no such thing as, not a
morning person; we decide if we want to be morning people.
Recently we brought on a new guy to the team called Alex, now Alex has
always worked in jobs where he wasn’t required to wake up early in the
mornings, working in his own restaurants and managing them didn’t
require him to be up before the crack of dawn in order to get to work.
During the first couple of days Alex was complaining about the early
mornings and how tired he was, however over time he was actually
becoming a happier person.
He even said to me, ‘Eric, I used to hate early mornings, I could never get
up, when I was going to school I used to be half asleep till about lunch
time, then when I started working, I was allowed to get up at around
lunch time everyday and that was just my routine.
But since I’ve started working and getting up early, I’m starting to like
my early mornings. I’ve been able to do so much more with my days.’
Since working with us, he has become a lot happier even though he has
to get up a lot earlier than he used to. Alex wasn’t born to be a morning
person. None of us are born to be any type of person.
186
We choose what type of person we want to become. However, he

decided to be a morning person because he had a bigger purpose to, and
as a result of this, he has been overall a happier person.
By the way while we are on the topic of energy and momentum how
many of you have those days where you wake up in the morning and
think to yourself, oh my god I cant be bothered. I just want to sleep for
another hour or another 5 minutes. Let me just go back to bed!
Yes, we have all felt that before, however, if I was to tell you now that
tiredness is a choice, energy is a choice. For example, if tomorrow
morning, I told you that you had to wake up immediately at precisely
6am in the morning, no pressing that beloved snooze button, I’ll give you
1 minute to brush your teeth and run to the living room and I’d like you
to dance like Michael Jackson for a full 20 minutes non stop whilst
singing at 100% energy, if you achieve this then you will be given $10
million. How many of you think you will be able to do it?
Pretty much all of us right?
Now then where on earth did that energy come from? Us humans are
fortunate to have unlimited energy, always remember that, how much
energy you have, is a choice.
If our purpose and our drive is strong enough, if our why is clear enough,
why we must wake up early in the morning, why we should commit to
100% energy at all times, if all the reasoning behind that is strong
enough, then its easy for us to take action.
Remember when we said, the bigger the why the easier the how. If your
purpose is strong enough you will always find a way.
187
I’m sure many of you have heard the story of Aron Ralston? Or perhaps
watched the movie 127 hours?
For those of you who haven’t seen or heard of the story, Aron Ralston is
an American outdoorsman, engineer and motivational speaker. His
story is one that demonstrates ultimate strength and courage. Whilst
on one of his many adventures he was trapped between a dislodged
boulder, where he was trapped for 5 days and seven hours.
As Aron was trapped there with no food and water, he was desperate to
be freed. He had no cell phone to call for help and he was in a remote
location where no one would come by for days.
With all the strength and courage that he could muster, Aron came to
an idea, he started to cut through his arm with a blunt multi tool in order
to free himself. The decision that he had to make was an extremely
difficult one.
He was trapped, he had no food and no water, and if he stayed any

longer he would die and so, he only had 2 choices.
To either stay trapped and die a slow painful death, or set himself free
by cutting off his own arm. Aron chose the latter.
He had been climbing for days; he was tired, thirsty and hungry, yet he
was able to muster up the strength to endure the pain to set himself free
to save his own life. Remember if your purpose is strong enough, you
will always find a way.
Aron’s purpose was to save his own life, what stronger reason does a
man need, than saving his own life, to take action?
188
Now what is the plan of action and what can you do today to break those
lazy habits you have? For those who feel you have already use up your
100% energy, where is that energy reserve that we are talking about and
how can you unlock those powers?
I would like you to start off by writing down 3 bad habits or areas which,
you feel can improve on. It could be going to the gym, or waking up
earlier in the mornings or even to stop spending so much.
Now the exercise we are about to do is called the PPR technique, Pain
Pleasure, Relations technique. What we do is take the bad habit that
you have and relate pain to each one of them. Remind yourself what this
habit has cost your in the past. Tell yourself what could be the worst-
case scenario? Really think about it, spend a few minutes brain storming
and reminding yourself of the pain that these habits that have caused
you.
Think of the pleasure that you will get from breaking this bad habit. Once
you break this pattern, this habit, think of how good you will feel, think
about how it can help your life, and how it will make you feel happier.
Keep this thought in your mind for a few minutes until you really feel it.
For example, I would like to quit smoking.
Pain: because my sister is asthmatic and every time I smoke around her,
I know her chest is tightening up making it extremely hard for her to
breathe, almost like suffocating someone with a pillow.
Pleasure: if I stop, my sister no longer needs to feel this way 5 days a

week. She will no longer have that suffocating feeling on a daily basis.
189
She won’t need to stand outside in the freezing cold when I am smoking
in the house. She can breathe in fresh air and just enjoy breathing, and
live a much healthier and happier life.
I would like you to do this with each of the 3 habits at least once a day.
What this process does, is it gives you and acts as a strong constant
reminder for quitting, a big purpose and why to change for the better.
Finding your anchor
I remember when I was going through a particularly rough
patch in my life. I was 22 at the time and I was suffering from severe
depression. I had no vision, I didn’t know what I wanted in life and when
I used to speak to my friends I would sit wallowing and telling them how
unhappy I was with my life.
There was one time in particular that I remember most clearly. I called
up a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. She was from Ireland
and her name is Yen.
I remember feeling particularly down that day and I called her up to find
some comfort, the conversation started off as normal, with the usual it’s
been a long time, how are you and general chit chat about life.
When we got into the flow of things, I started to explain to her how I
was so depressed and how much I hated my life. The conversation went
on a bit and I was still on the subject of my depression.
190
Suddenly she disrupted my flow and said to me, ‘Eric, you should read
the bible.’
I remember at that moment I just wanted to put the phone down. But
instead, I bit the bullet and carried on the conversation. I asked her what
she was talking about, and her reply was, ‘Seriously Eric, you should read
the bible it will help you.’
I was slightly taken aback and slightly upset that this was the advice my
good friend had given me. All I could say was, ‘is this a joke? I’m honestly
not in the mood right now.’ And with that I put the phone down.
I remember sitting for a few minutes and feeling that maybe it was a
little harsh to put the phone down, and so I called back and I said, ‘you
know I’m actually really depressed and apart from telling me to read the
bible is there any other advice you could give me?’
I asked her when she started being so religious, for as long as I had
known her she had never gone to church, or been a follower.
Usually our conversations were good, and she gave me good advice, but
this was something I was not accustomed to.
She said to me, ‘seriously Eric, I’ve been going to Church for just over a
year now, do you remember when I used to have to walk home from
work every night and I used to get really scared?’
I nodded at the phone in silence.
‘Since I’ve been going to church, and reading the bible, I’m not scared
anymore’, and that was it. I started to lose my patience, I could feel the
annoyance in my voice and I asked her, ‘what so he’s just going to come
191
down from heaven and rescue you if something happens on your way
home?’
Annoyed and frustrated I put the phone down again.
The more I listened to her go on about reading the bible the more
frustrated I got. That patronizing tone in her voice like she was looking
down on me just didn’t sit well with my feelings at the time. It took a
few moments for me to digest what had actually gone on.
I realized that I was actually more frustrated about my own current

situation and myself than I was with her. And I thought about what had
just happened and what I had just heard, I had a very good friend, who
just told me that she used to be very scared walking home at night, but
now, she’s not scared anymore.
Instead of being happy for her, that she’s developed a newfound

courage and energy to allow her to feel empowered and safe, I decided
to be frustrated, angry and annoyed and put the phone down.
What I had just done didn’t make much sense in my head, and I felt bad
for putting the phone down, twice. So I picked up the phone once more
and I called her back.
I was curious to know why she felt the way she did and in the most
serious tone I could manage I asked her, ‘why do you feel safer now? Do
you feel he is going to come and save you?’
Her reply was something that I had never myself heard before, she said,
‘Eric when did I say that God was a man that looks like us or walks like
us or talks like us? The lord is something that created the world. It
192
created all of us, everything that exists. Now if we know that something
so powerful exists in this universe then what have we got to be afraid
of?’
Something hit me that was the best explanation I had ever heard and
the only religious thing that had made sense to me. Something clicked
for me at that moment and it allowed my brain to break everything
down and suddenly it was that ah ha moment where everything made
sense and I felt that I understood everything.
Now I was brought up in a Buddhist family, with my parents being

followers of Buddhism, however I had never really been involved and
never really practiced any of the rituals or festivities that they practiced.
No one had ever really explained to me what Buddhism was and from a
young age I was just told what to do and when to do it. So without being
particularly religious I had pretty much been brought up free from
religion. But that moment that my friend explained to me what religion
was to her, it made sense to me.
I was able to connect the dots between Buddhism and Christianity,
between superstition and lucky charms, between positive thinking and
cosmic ordering. It all started to make sense. When we speak of
religion, we are in fact speaking about one big energy, no matter what
label you give it, all that matters is that you believe in it and it gives you
strength.
After hearing Yen’s explanation, a lot of things became clear in my mind,

and I thanked her and put the phone down for the third time that day.
Apart from having an understanding of what religion was and what Yen
was talking about, I didn’t really take any action. A few days later, I
193
received a copy of the bible in the post, and guess what? I picked it up
and I read it. And I read it all.
This was during the period of the beginning of my personal development

journey, while I was doing business and going to networking events and
meeting a lot of successful people out there and from the moment I read
the bible everything started to connect.
I’m not here to tell you what religion to believe in, and I’m not telling
you what to believe in. I’m telling you to believe in whatever ethically
works for you, whatever you can find power from, and draw energy
from, after all everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.
The truth is, we all need energy, the more energy and the more power
we have, the more successful we will become. Many people find their
power and energy through different things.
It’s important to be able to draw this magical energy or power source

from somewhere, for you, your anchor to find this confidence or
comfort or energy maybe from religion or it could possibly be a lucky
charm.
Or some of you may be fortunate enough to be able to draw that power

from within, to understand that as humans we have a special power
within us that can be accessed at anytime, and the more that we
experience this power, the more we are able to access this power on
demand.
194
Power Distortion Field
I had set up my steel export business and we had started trading, we

were collecting scrap tyres and we were shredding them down using the
tyres for TDF which stands for tyre derived fuel.
We sold these rubber pieces on to manufactures of floor underlay and

children’s playgrounds, whilst I was looking for new business
opportunities, I found 2 new buyers for our products, one based out in
Vietnam who wanted the rubber for TDF and the other based in China
who wanted high tensile wire which is a by-product from shredding
down tyres.
The buyer was based in Guangzhou, and during a business trip out there,
I remember my business partner and I arrived at the airport and were
picked up in a big luxury 7 seater, we were taken to the steel compound.
We pulled up at the compound and the driver told us to wait, his boss
was on his way.
We stood at the gates and waited in anticipation, this guy seemed like a
big deal. Suddenly, the most beautiful red Porsche 911 turbo pulls up, I
could hear the engine as it arrived and the boss steps out of his car.
He walks towards us from a distance and I remember the exact thoughts

that were going through my mind as he walked towards us, I was
thinking wow he is amazing. I felt like I needed to get to know this
person and I was feeling some pressure to act in a certain way, there
were a lot of thoughts going through my mind at the time. I wanted to
be like him, I wanted to be him, and I even wished I could look like him.
195
With the initial excitement past me, I looked at him properly, he was a
very short man, maybe just over 5ft, and he was bald and he was on the
plump side, and then I was thinking what on earth was I thinking just a
few seconds back there.
Why did I even think that I wanted to be this person or even that I
wanted to look like this person? Anyway we went on to the meeting and
it went really well. When we finally got back to the hotel room I started
thinking. I remember getting out my notebook and writing down my
thoughts.
This was during the beginning of my personal development journey, and

whilst writing what I realized, was that the thing I felt whilst this guy was
walking towards me was energy. There was so much confidence in his
strut with his head held high and his shoulders back and I guess in a lot
of ways it made him look a lot taller than he was.
I had realized this through the MLM business that I joined and I was
noticing this again now, there was a pattern. The successful lot had a lot
of positive energy about them. The same energy as the guy with the red
911.
I notice that people with high energy around them, had what I call a
‘Power distortion field’.
Everyone has that power and energy within them, it’s just that some
people are more used to using it and some people use it more, and some
people, hibernate their powers until it is called for.
196
That’s why you attend meetings or go to parties, you will always see
some people in the corner they never really say much, but when
something happens or someone causes them grief or an emotion, then
suddenly they have this explosive power and they are able to take on
the world.
If this person was a powerless person then where did this power come
from?
There is a story years ago about this woman in He-Nan province in China.
Her and her little boy unfortunately got into a car accident and the car
flipped over, the Mother had escaped the car and everything was on fire.
Her son’s leg was trapped and he was unable to escape. Everyone was
watching but no one could do anything about it, the flames were just
too big. The mother tried to push the car and she kept on pushing. The
car was obviously very heavy, but like magic, something incredible
happened.
The Mother put her hands under the car and actually flipped it and
dragged her boy out. It was all over the newspaper and all over the
news.
A lot of times we hear stories like this, now how is that possible? How
can a 50-year-old housewife just pick up a car that weighs a ton and just
flip it over?
In my seminars we call this ‘inner power’, everybody has unlimited inner

power within them, it’s about knowing how to unlock that power and
actually make use of it in our everyday lives.
197
Now what I teach a lot in my seminars is the power distortion field and
how to find that power. Being able to find the power is easy, it’s about
being able to then magnifying and use it so that it’s explosive. So that it
comes out beyond yourself and creates this distortion field around you.
It’s about having the ability to shift your mind mentally from being
negative to being very positive. Building that confidence and at the
same time using your physiology, your stance, using what we call a
power pose to be able to create what we call a power distortion field.
So when people see us when we are in this state they can feel the power
around us.
When you show power you get a reaction from people, whether it’s just
a facial expression or a verbal expression or a shift in their physiology.
198
And what that tends to do is recharge us so that we can produce even

more power, that’s why when you see people in an argument or a
debate there is always one person who takes the power first, the other
person will start to get smaller and smaller and the other person starts
to get bigger and bigger.
That is also why a lot of people who are afraid to speak out, who are
afraid to be hear get smaller and smaller. Meanwhile those out there
who are bullies gain more and more power and get more and more
powerful and bigger and bigger.
We can use this to our advantage in areas where we need to show a bit
more confidence, because by creating this PD field, other people are
receptive of this and they will react to it, whether they talk to you in a
different way or whether they give more respect. And that in turn gives
you more power and you become more powerful.
At the beginning of every transaction or situation we call it a PD field

however very soon it will transpire to a natural power field. And that’s
why people say if you say it enough you start becoming that person. Or
if you act like that person you start becoming that person, when you
start mirroring people you start to become that person.
199
Everybody learns off their parents and that’s why a lot of the time
growing up people say stuff like your exactly like your father or your
mother, it’s because kids learn to mirror and then they start becoming
that person.
What I am saying is to take the person or traits that you have been
mirroring and change them so that you have control.
What I would like you to do right now is to stand in front of a full length
mirror, and many of you will be thinking it sounds funny and this is stupid
and what is this going to do?
Trust me I have done this with thousands of people around the world
and it has enabled those people who don’t naturally show as much
confidence to be more confident.
And those of you who are already really confident to be even more
confident.
First what we need to establish is what actually generates energy,

emotion is a very powerful thing to build and create energy. Emotion is
effectively energy in motion. So what I’d like you to do right now is to
stand up, and for 10 seconds is to go crazy, as much movement as
200
possible, make sure you don’t do this in public, if you are reading this on
the underground or anything, wait until you get home before
performing this exercise.
I’d like you to go not on 100% but on 1000%. I’d like you to just go crazy,
just move every particle and atom in your body, and then I’d like you to
do a power pose, just as a quick reminder, refer to the power poses
below.
201
202
Right now you should feel your heart beating harder and your blood
pumping faster, I’d like you to magnify that, so you have this shield
around you and what I’d like you to do now is power walk forward with
a lot of confidence and determination in your eyes, in your stance and
everything about it.
Now how does that feel? Does that feel positive, or does that feel
negative? Do you feel happy or do you feel sad? Do you feel closed and
shy or do you feel confident and powerful?
This is a technique that can build your confidence, and trust me as stupid
as it sounds, do it before every meeting you go into, where you want to
give off that confident impression, so that people can feel that energy
without even needing to say a word. I still do it every time; all you need
to do is go to a corner of a room or to the bathroom.
Remember how long it took you to shift into that state and remember
that state, because every time you do this, start noticing your results
whether it’s a job interview, or a sales meeting, or whether it’s going on
stage to perform, it makes a difference.
This technique doesn’t have to be used just for important meetings; it

can be used for any meeting. I meet so many people out there who say,
‘I know, I know, I know, who say, ‘I’m too tired right now’, or, ‘I’m saving
my energy for later.’ Or they say, ‘it’s not that important it doesn’t really
matter’, but every impression makes a difference.
203
We have an unlimited power reserve, so use it! That’s the beauty of

being human.
Imagine if you haven’t slept for 3 days and you haven’t eaten, your
feeling tired and sleepy, if I slapped $1 million onto the table right now
and said give me 1000% energy do you think you will be able to do it?
Yes you would. Practice doing this.
We are all creatures of habit. Everything eventually becomes habitual,

if today you’ve powered yourself up once and you feel tired, tomorrow
try doing it twice, and the next day, try doing it three times. If you do it
week in week out then you will find that you have endless energy and
you will be able to do this repeatedly without getting tired.
We’re all fortunate as human beings to be given unlimited power

reserve within us. Keep practicing it, keep using it, keep building on it,
and create this massive bubble of energy that surrounds you wherever
you walk. So people want to know you people want to feel you, people
want to engage with you and allow this energy to contribute massively
towards the success in everything you do and also transpire this energy
further by being able to transfer this energy to give other people the
strength and the power and the confidence to over come whatever
challenges or whatever situations that they may be facing within their
lives.
Unleash your power.
204
Chapter 8
| Never give up |
ROCKY BALBOA: The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very
mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat
you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You,
me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard
ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
I’m sure all of you have heard of Walt Disney and all its magical kingdoms
and characters, happily ever after’s and knights in shining armor.
Most of us have in our lifetimes watched at least one Disney movie and
have probably seen or even bought into the Disney franchise at some
point in time.
When we think of the name Walt Disney we associate it with Mickey

Mouse and theme parks and rollercoasters, and for many there are
happy memories attached, however we often neglect the story of the
man who brought this all to life.
Walt Disney’s story is one of perseverance and determination, through

his lifetime he never gave up on his dreams despite having to go through
hardship to get there.
205
Disney started out as a cartoonist for a newspaper; whilst drawing

comics for a local newspaper he found his love for animation and went
on to become an animator.
Disney had a big dream, and soon after leaving the newspaper, he set
up his own company, which filed for bankruptcy shortly after its birth
due to the lack of financial management skills that Disney had. He was
unable to balance the books and pay his animators their high wages.
Although having had to file for bankruptcy, Disney persevered with his
dreams; he worked hard and went on to set up a studio in Hollywood
where he would go on to produce the most well known cartoon
character of all time. Mickey Mouse.
Having set up his first Hollywood studio, Disney hired a staff of

animators and artists. Initially the studio ran very well, being
approached by Universal Studios to produce a set of cartoons, thus
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was born.
The cartoon became a huge success. Disney had a studio to look after
and approached Universal for an increased fee for the cartoons, they
told him that not only were they not going to pay him more, but they
were going to stop him from any further productions of the cartoon. At
the time Universal Studios also threatened to poach his animators and
artists if he didn’t lower his fees.
Disney refused. Universal ultimately set up a studio and offered his staff
a higher fee and contract to work in-house for the. His staff left and
joined Universal, continuing the production of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Disney tried to fight for the rights of the cartoon that his studio had
produced, however, the cartoon was produced for Universal Studios
whom owned all the rights to the Rabbit. Disney had lost the battle, but
206
he persevered and fought for what he believed to be his. 78 years later,

Disney finally won his battle and was able to regain the rights to the
cartoon.
Due to Oswald’s popularity the loss of the character caused a big set
back in the operations of Disney’s studio. He hired a new team and
without a shadow of a doubt in his mind, he, believed he would be able
to create a cartoon that was more successful, and even more popular
than Oswald.
This led onto the creation of Mickey Mouse. At first Mickey Mouse was
used in silent animations which no one wanted, when Walt breathed
soul into Mickey by providing him with a voice Mickey became an
overnight success.
After the success of Mickey, Disney went onto create a myriad of other
characters and to pursue his dreams. He had always dreamed of
producing a long animation film. The first out of his many successes was
to be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Despite concerns from both his wife and his brother, Disney was
determined this would succeed; however he soon ran out of funding for
the movie.
With the scraps of the movie put together as a rough cut in hand, Disney
approached the Bank of America for a loan and was able to secure
funding to finish off his dream. With half a million dollars of debt behind
him, Disney completed and released the movie.
It became the most successful motion picture of its time. He went onto
shoot more animations, planning further movies such as Alice in
207
Wonderland and Peter Pan. However, luck was not on Walt’s side, the
world was catapulted into turmoil due to the onset of World War 2.
Before the war became full blown, Disney produced and released
Dumbo, which underperformed. He was subsequently contracted to
produce animations for the military, which did not generate any income.
The impact of the war meant that Mickey’s popularity would fade, The
end of the war finally came, however with Disney’s most popular
character on the decline, his studios would be in a financial struggle.
By the end of the 1940’s Disney managed to revive his studio and its
finances became stable.
Despite wars, bankruptcy and long winded legal battles, Disney pursued
his dreams. He fought with perseverance and determination that has
made his life a legacy, a household name.
Disney had dared to dream and he had a will to succeed. He never gave
up and took each battle, each challenge as they came.
Today, the Disney franchise is worth a whopping $103 Billion.
Through life we will all face challenges, often we will see these as
cumbersome and difficult to get over. Over our lives we may even
experience things that we feel are impossible to get over, we will get
stressed, and anxious and feel that we should give up.
The message I’d like for you to all understand is that failure is a choice.
The only person in your life who can choose whether to fail or not, is
you.
208
A lot of people will tell you that they failed at certain things in life, back
in school it may have been that they ‘failed’ in an exam, at work it might
have been that they ‘failed’ to get the job or promotion.
What these people don’t realize is that they were the ones who decided
that they wanted to fail. One failed exam doesn’t determine the rest of
your life. One failed job interview or job promotion doesn’t mean the
end of the world.
If you choose to give up on future exams or job interviews and

promotions, that is when you are really giving up. This is the difference
between successful people and unsuccessful people.
What successful people understand is that there is no failing, there is

only giving up, and if you never give up, you will never fail. Remember
that!
I know and understand what many of you may be thinking I don’t

understand your situation. I hear that so many times. The truth is, you
are correct. I don’t understand your situation or what you are going
through.
However, I do understand this, I understand that, Aron Ralson, who was

trapped between a boulder for 5 days and 7 hours by himself in a
canyon, under serious emotional and physical torment, with no food and
no water was able to successfully free himself by making one of the
toughest decisions of his life, to let himself die a painful death or to live
life with only 1 arm for the rest of his life. He chose the latter and now
inspires the world with his story.
209
Remember the story at the start of the book that we told of Thomas
Edison? He was born into a large poor family, and he suffered from
deafness from a young age, but he did not let this stop him. He didn’t
finish school and everyone though he would grow up to be a failure,
however despite the odds he went on to invent one of the necessities
we have in life. A commercially viable incandescent fluorescent light
bulb. The process he adopted on his road to his invention was a long
one, spending hours and hours in a lab working endlessly on his
invention.
He went through over 10,000 failures before he found the right

formulation, despite all this, he carried on. And today, he lives on as one
of the greatest inventors to have walked the earth.
His memory and inventions immortalized in our history books inspiring

children all around the world to learn and read his story.
I personally know a lady by the name of Paulyvia Green, our Operations

Manager at H Giving, she may not be rich or famous, but her story is just
as inspiring and just as important. An orphan born in into the poverty
stricken slums of South Africa, she was gang raped at the age of 15.
Having no family to call her own, she went to seek help from a godfather
who was then murdered as a result.
Destitute, distraught, alone and often feeling suicidal, she lost the will
to live on. She reached another blow to her life when she discovered
that she was with child as a result of her rape, not even knowing who
the father of the baby was, she bravely decided to live on.
210
South Africa was supposed to be her home, but the place was full of pain
and loneliness. She wanted a better life, a safer life and so she fled to
Kenya to try and escape the place that was supposed to be her home.
In Kenya she finally gave birth to a baby boy, whom was to act as a
constant reminder of her pain and ordeal that she had to endure. But
she was brave and she raised her baby boy, and loved her baby boy with
every atom in her body.
Being an orphan and a victim in her own country, Paulyvia had never
experienced the warmth of a home or the feeling of love. Whilst in
Kenya, she met some orphans, she was able to make a connection with
them, she felt empathy and love for these orphans. This is when she
finally found her purpose.
Her purpose was to help save and educate these beautiful orphans,
giving them a future and a home, providing them with love and warmth,
the things that she was never able to have.
Paulyvia fled to a foreign country, which spoke a different language,
where she was often alienated, bullied and humiliated, however her
immense love and connection for these kids allowed her to never give
up. Despite the hardship she suffered the humility and the looks and
stares, she carried on doing whatever she could.
She tried with all her might to find money and food to help these
children. With that focus in mind, in 2010 she reached out to H Giving,
and now she is now our Operations Manager looking after and educating
over 345 Orphans. A true inspiration to us all.
What people don’t realize is that a lot of the time, the biggest challenge
that your facing, the one that makes you feel that you really cannot go
on, that brings all your emotions to the surface, your fear of humiliation,
211
rejection, losing, is the exact challenge that will act as your ultimate
springboard.
Because from ultimate challenge, comes ultimate victory.
Before success comes into anyone’s life, you will be sure to meet
temporary defeat, when defeat settles in, generally the most logical
thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of people do, and
that is why it is only the minority of people that are crazy enough will
succeed.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistency.
One of my favorite stories on persistency is one that is referenced in

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Within his pages he tells a story
of a gentleman by the name of R.U. Darby. When Darby was interviewed
by Napoleon he was already a millionaire, but the story that he tells is
one that is very different, it’s a story of how he quit, when he was just 3
feet from the gold that he was seeking.
Darby’s uncle had gone to Colorado during the gold rush days and
eventually came across a gold mine. In need of mining machinery to dig
up more gold, his uncle returned home to secure financing for the
machinery.
Whilst there he also enlisted Darby’s help, he was able to secure the
finances and the pair returned to Colorado to work the mine.
The initial remnants of gold that were discovered seemed promising

indicating that the mine they had worked so hard at was to be one of
the richest gold mines in Colorado, with just a few more remnants like
212
the first that they discovered, they would be able to clear their names
of debt and become very wealthy men.
They were hopeful and they continued to drill. Then the unbelievable
happened, the vein of gold that they had successfully tapped into
disappeared. This set back didn’t deter them, after the initial successes
they had experienced, they were confident that more success was in
their paths and they continued to dig.
Day after day they dug with no luck and day after day they got into more
and more debt, finally they both decided to quit and returned home.
They sold the machinery and the mine off to a junkman. The junkman
wasn’t convinced that there was no gold left in the mine, he was smart
enough to hire some engineers to come in and examine the mine before
dismantling the machinery and selling it off.
Low and behold, the engineers found the vein of gold that Darby and his
uncle had so desperately tried to find, just 3 feet from where they
stopped digging.
The junkman of course continued the dig; he hit the gold and sold it on
making himself millions in the process.
Now the question you are probably all thinking right now is how did
Darby become a millionaire if he didn’t continue his dig? Darby
attributed his success to this event that had occurred early on in his life.
The lesson he learnt was a heavy one, but a good one. He learned that
213
he mustn’t ever give up and that whatever it is he should persevere and

keep on going.
Remember Never Ever Give Up!
THOMAS EDISON: Many of life’s failures are people who did not
realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
214
Chapter 9
| Happiness |
JOHN F. KENNEDY: As we express our gratitude, we must never forget

that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
I remember when my father used to tell me stories of when
he was younger; he would tell me how his family had no money and
were poor. Although he had experienced the love of his family in sharing
food and warmth, he also saw the pain that the lack of money had
caused and so he had an ambition to make a lot of money.
His main focus in life had always been on money, to be able to provide
a life for his kids that his parents were not able to provide for him.
I remember through my upbringing my father would work all the time.

Growing up I would go into school and hear my friends telling me about
their amazing weekends with their dads and where they had gone with
their parents, and I used to think why can’t my father just take a few
weeks off and just spend some time with us, with the family, and why is
he always so busy. So, from a very young age I decided somewhere in
my subconscious mind that I didn’t want to make too much money. I
just wanted a happy family.
215
Society and our understanding have always told us that happiness is the
result of hard work. So for most of us, we have believed that if we work
hard we will reach success and be happy.
But this isn’t necessarily true. Shawn Achor, a Harvard lecturer, Author,
and speaker once talked about the happiness advantage, through his
years of research he found that people who were happy had a better
chance of succeeding and achieving their goals.
There are so many people out there who work to succeed. Once they hit
their goals they will tell themselves that they can now do better, and
move their goal posts to a new height. The bar will be risen and a new
target will be set, so people will be working harder again to reach the
new target, and this carries on through the better part of most people’s
lives.
The reason for this is because we all need growth, that’s why a lot of the
time when we work very hard and we get what we wanted we change
our goals and then we keep going resulting in a vicious cycle.
Now if happiness is the result of success then doesn’t that mean we live
our whole lives in the pursuit of happiness but never really get there?
What I’d like to do is to take this age-old formula and flip it around.
Happiness should set the foundation to success. When we are happy
and positive, our minds work a lot better, we are more willing to work
to succeed, therefore we will achieve better results.
I’m sure many of you will have noticed, when you go into work and your
not vey happy or having the best day ever, your productivity level will
generally be lower as opposed to when you feel positively challenged.
216
So, how do we ignite this so-called happiness advantage? And how can
we effectively use this thing called the happiness advantage?
What is happiness and where does happiness come from? There were a
few years of my life when I was in search for happiness. I was lost as to
what my happiness actually consisted of, whether it was being around
friends and family, or whether making money contributed to my
happiness.
Now I can boldly and proudly say, that everyday I wake up I feel like I am
the happiest man alive. And what I’d like to share in this final section is
that happiness doesn’t just come from spending time with family and
friends or from money alone. Happiness comes from a dream. A dream
so big that it satisfies all of your basic human needs, the need for
stability, variety, growth, love and connection, significance and
contribution.
Happiness is merely a state of mind with health and wealth being its
biggest contributors. Happiness can be built, using the 3 parts that I have
sectioned out below.
Appreciation
I remember back at a time when I was working around the
clock just to earn a living just like normal people working to pay off my
bills, I had no real ambition, and no drive, I was just working for the sake
of working and for the paycheck at the end of the month so that I would
217
be able to pay my way through life. While I was able to save up for the
odd luxury in life, after a while life got very boring.
I started to think about the purpose of life, and why I even did what I
did. What was the point of everything? Because thoughts are
magnified, as time went by, this thought got stronger and stronger.
Without even realizing I spiraled into depression, and it got so bad that
it got to a point where I would actually wake up in the morning get into
my car and then think why doesn’t’ he just take me away?
Back then I was working in my Dad’s very busy restaurant and I

remember standing at the till calling out one bill after the other
repetitively printing out bill after bill and taking and counting money.
I was the so-called manager of the restaurant. At least that’s what it said
on my business card, this had been my job for the past 3 years of my life,
the same things would happen night after night, the same customers
would come in, and I would be standing at the same till counting money
and printing receipts and bills.
There would be the occasional highlight when one customer would think
it was a good idea to leave without paying and we would have to chase
them down the street calling for them to pay the bill just to result in a
comment like, ‘go back to your own country’.
After the first year of being there, my mind started to drift because I
didn’t really know why I was actually there. I was paid a very good salary
and my father had assisted me in buying a house and a very nice car and
I remember whenever I caught up with any of my friends over a drink I
would always ask them how they were and they would always say yeah
I’m ok but obviously not as good as you, you have this you have that your
so lucky and you have a father who has helped you so much.
218
And generally conversations like that would lead me into silence, as I

didn’t know how I should respond. Did they want me to say yeah I’m
just really lucky and I guess I feel sorry for you? Or should it be, don’t
worry about it you’ll be rich sometime soon? I believe in you.
For some reason neither reply seemed like the right approach. After the
first year of being chained to the till, I started to spend a lot less time in
the restaurant because I wanted to enjoy life and I wanted to find
happiness. So I took up everything, from tennis lessons to piano lessons,
guitar lessons, singing lessons, I even joined the rifle club and I did all of
these things simultaneously.
I had bought the best guitars there was to buy; I had bought a whole
drum kit with a recording studio to go with it. I had bought a home
cinema; I built a fishpond in my garden. I bought the best of everything,
bringing home bags and bags of equipment everyday. I did all of this,
because I was trying to find something that could make my life more
exciting and happy.
At this time, a lot of my friends that I grew up with were studying hard
at university. While I already started my property portfolio, drove a
brand new BMW and was just spending like there was no tomorrow.
Very quickly conversations became very different from the
conversations that we had before, and this crazy spending went on for
3 years, it was after the first year that I fell into depression, the more
depressed I felt the more money I spent to try and buy myself happiness.
I didn’t understand what money was, or what money was for. And I
certainly didn’t understand why people wanted to make so much of it
because in my mind money wasn’t giving me happiness.
219
Nobody really knows of this part of my life, I guess I used to try and tell
my Dad, but I don’t think he really understood because his upbringing
had taught him that money was important and he used to always tell
me of how lucky I was to have what I had and that I should be grateful
for it.
There were 2 friends who I guess I tried to tell, however whether they
fully understood at the time I’m not sure. This whole situation
depressed me to the point that I asked to be taken away.
It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, but again, it’s a part of
me and its contributed to who I am today.
When I asked to be taken away, I had really meant it, whether it was a
lorry, or a bus, or a car, because I lacked the courage to do anything like
that myself. And because I didn’t want my friends and family to think
that I was a coward, or for my family to have to live with the guilt that
they weren’t able to see that there was anything wrong.
So what was it that allowed me to find happiness and how was it that
allowed me to make such a major shift from being so deep in depression
to feeling like the happiest person alive today?
My turning point happened in South Africa, I clearly remember this one
scene that changed the perspective of everything in my mind and gave
me a new light to my life.
There was a particular moment that I remember more clearly than the
rest. We went to some shantytowns when we were out there, and I saw
a mother watching her children playing in the mud. The children were
really happy, screaming and shouting without a care in the world. The
220
children were kicking around this raggedy old rag doll; they were passing
it to each other like a football with big smiles on their faces.
The most memorable smile of the whole trip was the smile on the
mother’s face. It was the biggest and most beautiful smile I’d ever seen
and I remember it to this day.
This made me think of our world here, how we have houses to shelter
us, we have food to give us nutrients, we have clean drinking water to
keep us hydrated, most of us have an education, and a good healthcare
system , yet we still complain about the things that we don’t have. I was
spending so much money everyday and I used to actually go around
saying I hated my life, and I was so ungrateful for everything that I did
have.
These people had nothing. Yet they were still able to smile and be so
happy, this taught me a big lesson about being grateful for what you
have.
Appreciate the things you already have. Appreciate, your family, your
friends, and the things around you. This is the first key to success. You
need to appreciate what you already have in order to think about
wanting anything else.
By being grateful for what you have, by appreciating what you have, will
enable you to gain a positive feeling which, creates happiness. Whilst
being happy can create a bigger positive drive. With a bigger drive, you
can achieve bigger, better and increased positive results. The great thing
is when we achieve positive results we have another thing to be grateful
for, meaning that the circle gets stronger and stronger, leading to
increased happiness and better results.
221
To help you on your way to feeling full of energy, charged, and positive
everyday, what I’d like you all to do is to commit to writing a gratitude
diary. Now how this works is, every day before you go to bed, write
down 5 things that you are grateful for, or 5 things that you are proud
of that have happened, or 5 things that just make you happy.
I’d like you to follow this everyday and I’d like you to start noticing the
way you do things, the shift in your emotions and mind set.
222
Perspective
O ur mind can be trained and we can learn things that change
the way our mind reacts to certain situations or events. If there are
certain areas within your life that you are unhappy with that is a choice
you have decided to make, I know to a lot of people this may sound like
a load of BS, I thought exactly the same thing. However when I started
to understand what choosing to be happy meant, I’ve never looked back
and since then I have never had an unhappy day.
In every situation and every event there’s always more than one
perspective. You know when people always say there are always 2 sides
to the story? Well there is also, always 2 perspectives to every story.
For instance, when you receive a parking ticket on your car, some people
would feel like they don’t deserve it and for I guess most people you
would probably be angry and think why are parking tickets even
invented? Am I right?
Notice that the normal reaction is a negative one.

Now if I told you to make a choice right now, to receive a parking ticket
and be thankful for it. You’re probably all thinking, how can I be grateful
for a parking ticket right?
Its all about the perspective, if you see the parking ticket as a lesson
learnt, you made a mistake and it is only fair that you pay for your lesson,
then you will feel a lot better about it.
223
Acknowledge that you made a mistake; you are now paying for it and be
thankful that you caught it in time to only have to pay half the price.
Doesn’t that scenario already feel very different to the first?
Imagine this, you are at work, and you receive some bad news from your
biggest client of the year. You had a really good meeting and
presentation just the other day, and today they have called you saying
they no longer wish to proceed with the deal.
Again the normal person would be furious, and frustrated you’ve just
spent so much time planning and plotting and putting together your
presentation, you’ve spent more time on this client than any other, and
now he’s going to pull out.
How would you normally react to something like this?
My brain is programmed to think of the situation very positively. So

instead of being angry at the client for wasting my time, and frustrated
at the situation, I will be trying to come up with ways to rescue the
situation.
Remember be solution focused!
If the deal still doesn’t work out after you have been solution focused
then just be thankful that you have had a challenging day. You have
overcome the challenges and you have grown from the experience.
A way that I have found it easiest to understand every situation and to

find the positive in everything is to put yourself in other peoples shoes.
Simply by standing in another persons perspective and understanding
224
why they say and do what they do, you will find that the initial intention
is never bad.
If you find the root behind everybody’s action, whether it be what
happened through someone’s childhood or perhaps they have had a
similar experience which has gone sour before, you will understand that,
everybody does something for a reason, and most of the time, there is
good reasoning behind every action.
When you begin to understand the roots behind everyone’s actions,

then you can start to have increasingly positive days as you will know
and understand what it is that people are doing, and you will be able to
enjoy the interaction and communication with others.
Understanding what other people are doing and thinking will allow you
to feel compassion and empathy and allow you to develop and even
deeper connection with people. The foundation to all good
communication is connection.
Everyday, most of us will have to deal with people at some point.
Whether it’s through work, or just being out and about. We cannot
escape it. Through life there will be people who you feel you have an
instant connection with and there will be people who you don’t
particularly like., However they say it’s more stressful to be unhappy
than to be happy. So why can’t we just love everyone and just get on
with it and find the happiness advantage in every situation?
Now the key to dealing with people is effective communication and

being able to connect to all sorts of different people, being able to
understand different perspectives, and being able to understand the
root causes behind someone’s actions and reactions.
225
This is so important during your pursuit of happiness and that’s why we

teach a whole section on effective communication in our 5-day
superhero intensive and we have shared these skills and strategies for
effective communication around the world.
Model of the world
T he final point I’d like to make on happiness is on the model
of the world.
What is your model of the world? And what do I mean by model of the
world? Throughout our lives, and depending on the way we have been
brought up, or the people we interact with on a regular basis, what we
watch on TV, what we hear on the radio, what we see on the Internet,
we have a preconception on how certain people should be in different
situations and circumstances.
Everybody’s mind is programmed with their own model of the world and
everybody’s model of the world can be very different depending on the
factors that we mentioned before.
For instance, some people would say, that men have to be very career
driven, and some people say that to be happy you need to have a lot of
money, some people say women should know how to cook, and some
would say people who drive a Mercedes Benz have made it.
226
Now all of these things, are just different peoples perceptions – their
own models of the world, everybody believes and lives by a set of rules,
even those who don’t believe that they do. We all have a model of the
world in our minds that we live by, and when we are unhappy about
something, it is because the situation at hand does not match your
model of the world.
When we are unhappy about anything, I always ask why people are
unhappy, because happiness is a choice. So if we had to choose between
happy and unhappy, why would you choose unhappy?
Research shows that to be unhappy you are actually expending more

energy, you age a lot quicker and do you remember the Je Ne Se Quoi
we were talking about earlier that made people look more attractive?
Well when you choose to be unhappy, you lose that aura and you
become less attractive.
Remember the reason you are unhappy at any point in time, is because
your current situation does not match that of your model of the world.
Meaning how your life is right now or how certain situations are within
your life, do not fit what you feel it should be like.
When you are feeling unhappy, you have 2 choices, you can choose to
accept what is happening and alter your model of the world or you can
choose to leave the situation.
A lot of people complain about their work. What is the point in

complaining? No matter how much you complain, it doesn’t make your
situation any better and nothing good will come of it. If you’re doing
something that you’re not enjoying, then leave. Do something else, if
227
you can’t leave and you have to stick with it for whatever reason, then
change the way you think and feel about the situation. Change the way
your life should be around work, whether it’s that you feel you should
be paid more or that you feel that you deserve a promotion.
Remember when we talked about value? You should not even have to
think about how much you feel you should be paid. If you feel you
should be paid more, then go out and get paid more! Don’t sit and moan
about your pay if you’re not going to do anything about it. If you’re not
going to take action, then for one you don’t deserve to be paid any
more! And secondly, if you don’t take action about how much you will
be paid then learn to be thankful for what you already have.
Whatever the situation is right now remember you have 2 choices:
1. Leave
2. Change your model of the world.
3.
Don’t give yourself excuses telling yourself that you have to stick at your
job because you really need the money, or you don’t have enough
experience to find another job.
This is all your perception! It’s your choice!
Once you realize that through every situation where you feel unhappy
you have 2 choices, All you out there who are spending all your time
worrying, feeling depressed and being self destructive can stop now.
228
Make that choice. Commit to it. Follow through. Enjoy the process of
growing through challenges, have a big vision, carry it with a strong
purpose, appreciate what you have and live in ultimate happiness.
229
Chapter 10
| Health |
N ot so long ago, I met a guy named Conner on a course that
I went on. Connor was somewhat older than me, and during this course
there was a lot of physical activity, I was amazed by his physique, his
health and fitness.
Over the days of this course aside from being in awe of Conner’s physical
fitness for his age, I started to talk to him, he told me a lot of stories
about how many marathons he runs every year, and that he always tries
to beat his personal best.
We all felt that Connor was a little strange during the course, when the
group would go and buy sandwiches and fast food at lunch time, Connor
would retreat to the kitchen and chop up vegetables.
I was intrigued so I struck up a conversation with him; it was then that I

realized why Connor did what he did.
We as humans are made up of water, atoms and particles and we belong

with nature. Nature is where we are able to draw energy from, so when
230
we eat vegetables and things that come from nature we are able to draw
more energy than if we were to eat processed foods.
Now I’m not here to tell you that you should all eat more vegetables or
how important your 5 a day is to you. What I am telling you is how
important your health is to you.
Nature carries power and energy and when we intake this power and
energy we are able to harvest the energy for ourselves.
Our health is so important to us but it is usually the one thing that people
neglect. On your journey to happiness people often get too busy to
worry about their health, indulging in things that they know is bad for
them.
When they have over indulged or been on an unhealthy binge for a

period of time they will start feeling tired, sick and probably not very
good, what we all fail to realize is that our bodies speak to us.
I know for all of you it sounds very strange, but this is something that I
actually learnt from Connor. Your body will tell you when you have had
enough of something, but often people don’t listen and they carry on
with how they are.
A lot of the time we have colds, we have flus or minor ailments like
headaches and stomach aches, we have pains in certain areas of the
body and most of the time we ignore these things, taking pain killers to
deal with the pain or going to see the doctor for a quick fix.
Instead of taking on modern medicine and taking a temporary measure
to get rid of the pain or ache, we should think of it as our bodies talking
to us. When we have a sore throat or a nosebleed, we should think of it
231
as our body trying to tell us something, whether it’s something we have

done or ate or lack of exercise, we should consider listening to our
bodies.
When we are feeling pain in certain areas of our body, why not really
think, what have we been doing? What have we been eating? Consider
changing your habits to a healthier alternative, because maybe, just
maybe our bodies are really talking to us.
While, climbing this ladder of success and through this whole pursuit of
happiness and playing this money game, I’ve noticed that a lot of people,
focus on certain areas of their life, especially those who are focused on
making money or their career.
There are a lot of people with bad eating habits, or even smoking habits,
and what I’ve seen over the years is that there are so many people going
into their late 30’s early 40’s who already having certain organs failing,
heart problems, liver problems the list is endless. And sometimes it
really does make you think. You work so hard, working through your
20’s, right the way through to your 30’s because of this dream that you
have envisioned for yourself. You have a dream to be able to live a
certain lifestyle and be a certain someone.
Isn’t it sad to know that there are people who have worked so hard their
whole lives, only to get ill in there 30’s and 40’s? And to have a shortened
life span just because they were too ‘busy’ to take care of themselves?
232
DALAI LAMA: Man surprised me most about

humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in
order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his
health. And then he is so anxious about the
future that he does not enjoy the present; the
result being that he does not live in the present
or the future; he lives as if he is never going to
die, and then dies having never really lived.
40’s and 50’s are classed by some as being old these days, but really, it’s
just half a life time, remember whatever you think and whatever you
believe, will be true.
So if you are thinking, that 50’s is getting on and it’s old already, then
when you reach your 50’s you will be getting on and you will be old. If
you have the understanding that 50 is merely half your life time and you
have a vision to go on, then you will. Don’t sell yourself short.
What you focus on expands.
Some people expect different failures in their body when they reach
their 50’s and 60’s, remember if you expect it, it will happen.
Remember, what you focus on, expands! I’d like us all to please
remember while pursuing our dreams to focus on three areas, health
wealth and happiness.
233
And remember to appreciate everything you have, be thankful for even

having the privilege to have breath in your lungs, but don’t settle. Dream
big, and if you’re dreaming big already, dream bigger. Have a clear
vision, a clear purpose and make that purpose so strong it becomes the
reason why you get up in the mornings. Keep working. Keep growing.
Keep learning. Don’t stop believing and never, ever give up.
234
| Epilogue |
N ow that you have finally come to the end of the book, I’m
sure many of you are now feeling charged and ready to take over the
world. With your strong beliefs, burning desires, and emotions to drive
it forward and to make the impossible, possible.
I know that many of you will be really excited to get out there to spread
the message, to spread the so called secrets of what now seem like such
simple concepts that now make so much sense.
I know that many of you are wanting to go out there and start saving the
world, start changing the belief of those loved ones, your friends your
family, the society that you face, the people that are around you
everyday and before you think any further, I’d like you to just stop for a
second.
The tools, knowledge and strategies that you have been learning within
this book have been designed to enlighten you and to give you a
different perspective in order to understand the mechanics behind
achieving infinite success for you to be able to find the inner power,
however, being a superhero is not easy.
235
Think of it this way, your now like a little kid with a new fascination a
new toy. Those of you who have children out there will know what kids
are like when they learn new things.
They can’t wait to show off whatever it is that they have learnt to their
friends.
Now imagine that you have a 5-year-old child. Your 5-year-old kid has
just shown his interest in karate. So you take him to his first karate lesson
and he learns to throw his first few punches and kicks. He’s all excited
and he comes home buzzing from his lesson and he can’t wait to show
you his new moves.
Then the following day he goes to school and he starts telling all the kids
in his class about his lesson, and he starts showing them a few moves,
everyone is really impressed until the class bully comes over and knocks
him out. Your kid is lying on the floor, and he’s crying, his ego is bruised
and he is slightly hurt.
He comes home from school that day and tells you that he doesn’t want
to learn Karate anymore.
A lot of the time, when we learn new things we get really excited and
when were excited, we like to spread the message. To be able to share
this message with everybody you must make sure you are an expert at
what you do before you start preaching.
Real hero’s don’t just talk the talk they are able to walk the talk and until
you are a black belt at what you do, don’t try to preach, because as we
now know, society will only pull you back down.
Don’t underestimate the power of social conditioning.
236
Remember most people are in purgatory and if you hint at another way,
or a better way, they might go crazy.
Everybody has a need for contribution, some more than others. Before
you decide to contribute, make sure you have satisfied your own needs
for stability and growth.
Do good, add value, give, contribute and the money will come.
237
Acknowledgements
There are many people who have directly and indirectly contributed to
this book.
In order to thank them all individually it would take another chapter

altogether, so I would like to say a big thank you for all of you who have
contributed in any way to the making of this book and for making this
possible.
My dearest friends and family, who continue to support and inspire me

in my work, and whose presence in my life I dearly cherish. Thank you.
And to my wonderful parents – you were the absolute best.
To my team at the H Akademy, who have put their heart and souls into
keeping all the companies within the group running smoothly and
efficiently. You guys have been doing an amazing job. Without you I
wouldn’t be able to go out to contribute, inspire, and do things like write
this book for all you wonderful people.
A Big Thank You to Paulyvia Green and my Team at H Giving, for inspiring
the strength and courage in me, for confirming to me that my faith in
humanity was correct all along. Watching my team out there experience
so much emotional pain and suffering and still be able to contribute
beyond themselves and give back to society towards a greater cause has
given me the biggest inspiration of all.
238
Many thanks to Ching Yu Tan and Chirag Lukha, my team who have
helped me to brain storm the ideas written throughout this book,
sharing their knowledge, theories and insight that they have built over
the years with me.
Thank you for the countless nights of brainstorming and discussions that
have contributed to the content contained within this book, that has
helped positively change and influence peoples lives.
239
Bibliography
Amy Cuddy . (2012 ). Your body language shapes who you are .
Available:
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_
who_you_are.html. Last accessed 01 December 2013.
Shawn Achor . (2010 ). The Happiness Advantage . United States: Virgin

Books .
Tony Robbins . (2001). Unlimited Power . United Kingdom: Simon &

Schuster.
Napoleon Hill . (1937). Think and Grow Rich: The Ralston Society
Meriden, Conn.,.
Dr Steven Peters . (2012). The Chimp Paradox . United Kingdom:

Vermilion.
Walter Issacson . (2011). Steve Jobs .
Rhonda Byrne. The secret
T harv Eker. Secrets of a millionaire mind
Anthony Robbins. Awaken the giant within
Richard Branson. Losing my Virginity
240
Richard Branson. Screw business as usual
Terri Sjodin. New sales speak
Chris Gardner. Persuit of Happiness
Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad Poor Dad
Peter Lynch. One up on wall street
Michael Lewis. The Big short
Daniel Khaneman. Thinking Fast and Slow
Alice Shroeder . The snowball and the business of life.
Benjamin Graham . The intelligent investor
Bible – King James Version
241

Think Big Build Small - Eric Ho

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Think Big Build Small - Eric Ho

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SCHOLARSHIP TO ATTEND

SUPER POWER LIVE

CONGRATULATIONS on taking your ﬁrst step by

In response to your commitment, the author is

At this 3-Day program, you will reach your true

To register your admission tickets, please go to

The Oﬃcial Organiser:

The Worlds #1 Inspirational

Eric Ho is the founder and proud owner of H Akademy; a group of

Eric is not only an acute businessman, he is also a life coach and

He has been lucky enough to acquire a wealth of knowledge, skills and

Eric is a ﬁrm believer in helping those less fortunate than himself.

Copyright © Eric Ho 2014

Eric Ho has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

H Akademy Ltd Reg No. 9891697

Copies are available at special rates for bulk orders.

For more information on H Akademy productions and or the Author

The information in this book has been compiled by way of general

Please consult your GP before changing, stopping or starting any

So far as the author is aware the information given is correct and up to

PART 1 THINK BIG

PART 2 BUILD SMALL

THOMAS EDISON: I never quit until I get what

T homas Edison was born in Michigan, Ohio; he was the

youngest out of 7 children in his family. As a young boy Edison’s mind

After a turbulent start to his education Edison’s parents eventually

At around the age of 9, Edison contracted a bought of scarlet fever which

Perseverance, an air of determination and a never give up attitude

Perseverance and determination are so important, and are the key

Whether it has been through a painful or personal experience, or just

My high inquisitiveness teamed with my fascination of people has

Throughout working with thousands of people world wide, I have

Some of you may think, if someone possessed the secrets to life, to

What we fail to understand is that possession and maintenance of this

Those of us brave enough to share the secret such as myself, there is a

My desire for this book is to create an even shorter shortcut, to share

Learning is how we keep growing.

I, myself never thought I would really amount to anything and I didn’t

I was never particularly academic or a good learner. I wasn’t particularly

At first doing a bit of everything, I didn’t have a stable job or paycheck. I

I was living paycheck-to-paycheck earning just enough to cover my bills

My father watched me through my struggle to find a steady job, and a

My problem was the managers role in my father’s restaurant was all I

During a particularly bad depression spiral, a good friend of mine

Seeing conditions such as those struck something in me. Seeing children

I realized that without these necessities, many of the children would

It brought a lot of emotions to the surface that I never even knew

This is when I realized that contribution was my ultimate way to

Everyone is constantly making tweaks and amendments in their

Everybody is at a different point in their personal journey. Those further

Everything documented in this book is a part of what I have learnt

From our families, we also learn our emotions, we learn to be happy, we

This ‘belief system’ acts as a defense mechanism, distinguishing for us

Generally speaking, most people will reach their point of enlightenment

I [ENTER FULL NAME] believe that I will realistically I will be able to

DANTE: Remember tonight… as it is the

L ife is often described as living on earth, this is often a

misconception, and there are actually 3 realms in life, Heaven, Purgatory

Your personal state depends on your view and outlook in life.

mortar, my Dad remembers living in a tin house during his whole

When that turned out to be a failure, he tried his hand at being an

He became the local handyman in the village, fixing small electrical

So my Grandfather turned his hand to another venture, making plastic