THE SECRET SAUCE

OF SUCCESS

How to Find Your Purpose, Feel Empowered and Create a Life That You Love

David Bederman

THE SECRET SAUCE OF SUCCESS: How to Find Your Purpose, Feel Empowered And Create a Life That You Love

Copyright © 2013 David Bederman. 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, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Author.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering medical, legal, accounting, or other services and therefore this work cannot replace or substitute for the services of trained professionals in any field, including, but not limited to, financial, medical, psychological, or legal matters. In particular, you should regularly consult a doctor in all matters relating to physical or mental health, particularly concerning any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention. We and our licensors or suppliers make no representations or warranties concerning any treatment, action, or application of medication or preparation by any person following the information offered or provided within. Neither we nor our partners, or any of their affiliates, will be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary or other damages that may result, including but not limited to economic loss, injury, illness or death. You alone are responsible and accountable for your decisions, actions and results in life, and by your use of the work, you agree not to attempt to hold us liable for any such decisions, actions or results, at any time, under any circumstance.

1. Self-help / Personal Growth / Positive Psychology / Spirituality

ISBN: 978-0-9825165-1-5

About the Author

David Bederman is a confidence coach based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. If he’s not coaching, speaking or running one of his groups for aspiring entrepreneurs, he’s probably at the gym, mountain biking or writing for his blog Davidbederman.com.

While David came from a loving home with two amazing parents, from an early age he felt that he didn’t really “fit in”. Unclear about his true identity, he struggled to find answers to many of life’s biggest questions. Lacking guidance, he battled with low self-esteem, depression and anxiety for many years. This led to a great deal of social isolation, failed relationships and many missed opportunities, until he was finally able to create a better way to live. Now, David is a loving husband and father of four little children, ages four through nine.

The Secret Sauce of Success is a recipe for personal growth and transformation. It originated through David’s struggle to overcome his insecurities, fears, social isolation and depression. Along the way, he created tools and techniques to help others who struggled with similar issues. This book is a collection of exactly the things he used to create a different life for himself. The Secret Sauce of Success | ii

Now, you are about to embark on your own journey of personal transformation, while David shares his inner- world to help you along your way.

David loves to connect personally with his readers and he reads and responds to emails. Write him with your questions or comments at: [email protected].

This is a recipes for success – take what you learn and then pass it on.

To your success! Enjoy.

iii | David Bederman

The Recipe

Introduction...... 1 Chapter 1: Where You Are and Where You’re Going ...... 7 Chapter 2: The Journey ...... 13 Chapter 3 – Part I: The Secret in the Sauce ...... 21 Part II: The Twelve Ingredients of Success ...... 27 #1 Who Am I? ...... 28 #2 Why Am I Here? ...... 32 #3 Set Goals And Visualize ...... 38 #4 Learn To Fail, Or Fail To Learn ...... 44 #5 The Power Of Positive ...... 49 #6 Being Grateful ...... 53 #7 Perfectly Imperfect ...... 57 #8 Building Self Esteem ...... 62 #9 The Secret Of Love ...... 81 #10 The Best Drugs Are Free ...... 90 #11 Making It All Your Fault ...... 96

The Secret Sauce of Success | iv

#12 Meditation ...... 101 Conclusion ...... 106 Final Thoughts ...... 113

1 | David Bederman

Introduction

We are living in challenging times. Behind the photoshopped-perfect billboard faces, magazine models and the manicured lives we see on TV, we, the Millennials, are not satisfied with our lives.

We aren’t feeling fulfilled; we’re not as happy as we want to be, we’re still waiting to start “living the dream” and it’s safe to say that most of us haven’t yet found our life’s true purpose.

And with every day that our world progresses, society seems to put more value on productivity than it does on people, while more and more of our friends, family and neighbors are now either out of work, overworked or forced to do work they just don’t enjoy. Our dis- educational system continues to teach the mechanics of business and economics, but not how to create meaningful, fulfilling or extraordinary lives.

The sad conclusion from all of this is that more of us are suffering from depression and anxiety related illnesses today than ever before in history.

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Too many of our generation have lost faith in ourselves and because of it, too many of us have given up on living our dreams.

An Air of Change

Yet, in spite of these challenges, the times are changing. People are growing tired of being trapped in lifestyles that don’t fulfill them, and they’re looking for ways to change.

Technology has helped many millions of us to connect with each other and, today, we can now share our collective life-wisdom in ways that were never before possible. Once upon a time, what was “possible” was just the limit of what our parents could imagine. Today, we only need to reach out to our social networks and the blogosphere to find real-life superheroes who have defied the boundaries of “possibility” and created successful, fulfilling and truly extraordinary lives for themselves.

Today, the inspiration and wisdom for how to succeed and create a truly fulfilling life is, literally, everywhere.

The New Currency

Success is the new currency. The dream of living a fulfilling and extraordinary life centered around your passions and 3 | David Bederman values - an inspiring life that brings with it a sense of aliveness, happiness, joy and personal freedom - is the goal that today many people value above any other.

For the first time, the tools and the knowledge of how to realize that dream are available to anyone who wants to find them. New research into Positive Psychology and the Modern Self-Esteem movement has spawned a revolution in personal achievement, helping millions of people reach incredible new heights in the quality of their own lives.

Today, success is no longer a dream reserved for the select few. For us, the Millennials, success is our new birthright and we need only stand up and claim it.

Why Write This Book?

For a lot of my life, I suffered. I struggled to find the deeper meaning of it all and to understand why I am here. I felt sad, had no connection to my true purpose and I fell often fell into depression. Most of all, I envied the happy, energetic and successful people I knew, but I had no clue that it was possible to achieve that kind of “success” in my own life.

Then, after years of travelling aimlessly to different parts of the world looking for answers, I discovered the

The Secret Sauce of Success | 4 principles that I'm going to show you in this book, and my life turned in a totally new direction.

I learned how to overcome my life-long sadness, constant depression and anxiety and I discovered my real purpose in the world. Along the way, I even built a successful business, got married and even started a family.

Now while all this definitely did not happen overnight, over the course of a few years, my life literally turned around completely. If I had not experienced these changes myself, I probably wouldn’t have believed it was possible.

What You Need to Succeed

The one thing that I’ve realized through my personal success journey is that anyone can achieve similar results – you can create real success in your life, if you want to. You don’t need magic or special qualifications to do it; you already have the raw materials inside you! All you need is a genuine desire to succeed. Success, however you define it for yourself, is real, it is possible and I’d even say it’s much closer than you might think. In The Secret Sauce of Success, I’ll show you exactly what it’s made of. 5 | David Bederman

Why You Want to Read This Book

So first, tell me, have you wondered about your life’s true purpose? Did you ever want to know how to feel happier, more energetic or more alive?

If you’ve ever struggled to build self-esteem, or attract true love or prosperity into your life, then you’ll want to keep reading, because this book was written for you.

In the pages that follow, I’ll show you the exact principles that have helped me achieve these powerful results in my own life, and have enabled me to help hundreds of other people on three different continents to achieve dramatic success in their own lives as well.

What’s In the Sauce?

In this book, you’ll learn how to feel happier, how to move beyond anxiety, fear and depression, how to boost your energy-level and how to bring more aliveness, purpose and passion into your life.

From the most cutting-edge scientific research on personal success-mastery and achievement, to empowering studies from top Harvard researchers and New York Times bestselling authors, it’s all here.

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Plus, I’m even going to show you some powerful success- wisdom that’s over three thousand years old, that can help you achieve financial success, attract love, and all the things that you most want out of life.

So with that, let’s dive in to The Secret Sauce of Success.

David Bederman Tel Aviv, Israel July 24, 2014

7 | David Bederman

Chapter 1: Where You are and Where You’re Going

When I was growing up, “staying in school” was the key to living a successful life. After all, a serious commitment to school guaranteed you getting into a good college, which guaranteed you getting a good job, which guaranteed you to make a nice living, which was as good a guarantee of living a nice life that any of us could have hoped for.

Whether it meant studying to become a doctor, a lawyer or some other type of professional, staying in school and working towards a “professional degree” was definitely the proscribed path to success.

But a lot has changed since then and, today, tens of thousands of people are graduating every year with college degrees tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and many can’t even find jobs in their field. Not surprising, a recent study found that more than 65% of American and Canadian employees interviewed felt “stuck” or unsatisfied with their jobs and, the statistics tell us, that one out of six Americans suffer from some form of anxiety or depression.

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So while a college education may be a valuable part of the career path, as the above statistic show, it’s no panacea for creating and living a fulfilling and successful life.

A Silver Lining

The good news is that people now realize that success in life means more than just having a job and paying the bills, even if it’s a very good job! Our new reality has caused a renaissance in personal growth and empowerment and has shown us that success is not about what we have or have achieved on the outside, but that real success in life is created on the inside. It’s created a revolution where people are now returning inward, exploring their passions and learning to create meaningful, exciting and extraordinary lives for themselves around work that inspires them and they’re changing the world by doing it.

Take internet marketing superstar, Jeff Walker for example. A few years ago Jeff started his business around something he was passionate about – helping people market products online. His company has helped others sell over $400 million in products and, as Jeff says, it’s entrepreneurs that are going to change the world.

Bumps in the Road

But while so much information and inspiration to help you achieve real success in your life is readily available today, 9 | David Bederman sadly, many people still don’t end up fulfilling their goals or creating their dream lives.

One of the biggest challenges is that there is literally so much “success” information available today, many people get overwhelmed just trying to sort through it all and separate what works from what doesn’t.

And even if you find a system that works, many of us have been raised with unhealthy and debilitating beliefs. Deep inside, many of us believe that “we don’t deserve to be happy” or “we aren’t capable of success” and often we sabotage our own success before it even happens!

Yet, one of the most challenging obstacles on the road to creating real success in your life is finding the support you need to start making those big life changes possible. As the famous saying goes, “you can’t get yourself out of prison”; you need help from the outside to do that –so too on the path to success. But finding the right teachers, community and the friends you need to help you succeed can be difficult. Without that support, most peoples just stay stuck.

Winning and Losing

In this new success landscape, those who embrace the idea that everyone is capable of creating extraordinary

The Secret Sauce of Success | 10 lives for themselves are the ones who will truly succeed. Those who believe that real success in life comes through making powerful changes in what we think and what we do are the ones who will reap the greatest rewards.

They are the ones who believe that real change is possible and they are the ones who will take action. Those people, who are determined to do whatever it takes to create real success in their lives, are the winners in this New World model.

But people who believe they are powerless to change their situation – that success is something you are born into or inherit – they are the ones who lose in this new reality. Those who believe that their success depends on somebody else, who spend their lives saddened and discouraged by unfulfilled dreams and promises are the ones who miss out the most. I know, because that used to be me.

Searching for a Solution

Growing up, I never really believed that I could succeed or live an extraordinary and fulfilling life. I figured that the happiness, freedom and fulfillment I saw others enjoying was a privilege that I hadn’t been blessed to receive. I felt completely lost in my middle-class suburban upbringing 11 | David Bederman and all I wanted was to find some higher purpose in life, beyond just living-to-work and working-to-live.

Deep inside though, I knew that there was something incredibly meaningful about life, but on the surface, it was like there was some big conspiracy, and no one was talking about it. For as long as I can remember, I was miserable, sad and constantly depressed and, early on, I got caught in a wave of drug abuse, alcohol and unhealthy relationships.

As I approached my twenties, my life was spiraling downhill, totally out of control and nobody, it seemed, could save me.

But the pain of my hopelessness actually forced me to keep searching and, in a strange way, it’s what kept me alive.

I spent almost ten years travelling aimlessly to different parts of the world in search of answers. On the outside I was living the good life and smiling, but on the inside I was really suffering and completely lost.

At one point, things got really bad and I knew I couldn’t continue my aimless searching anymore. I was halfway around the world travelling through the shifting sands of the Middle-East. Something inside told me to head north, towards the biblical land of the prophets and it’s while I

The Secret Sauce of Success | 12 was in Jerusalem that I discovered the ancient success- wisdom of Kabbalah, and had my first real breakthrough.

13 | David Bederman

Chapter 2: The Journey

I grew up in the suburban metropolis of Mississauga, Canada during the 1980’s; a cultural wasteland of quaint but overly copy-pasted monotonous tract housing, strip malls and parking lots. It was a city that lacked any real identity and growing up there contributed in a big way to my restless searching for meaning and identity.

But I was lucky; I had two loving parents who sacrificed a lot for me, but that being said, they were miserable. They fought constantly and our house was often a war zone of guilt-trips, hurtful words and slamming doors. I grew up feeling that people can’t be trusted, especially those closest to me. Life on the outside conflicted so deeply with what I needed on the inside and I started searching for external comforts early on in my life.

I developed a craving for everything that was off-limits, and my teen years were awash in drinking, drugs, loud music and constant parties. This helped numb the pain of my restless search for meaning for a while, but soon after I quit high-school and went off to follow the Grateful Dead.

I had no clue what to do with my life. I went from city to city, job to job and from relationship to relationship. I was

The Secret Sauce of Success | 14 searching for a sense of identity and purpose, or even just a feeling that my life had finally kicked in.

I knew I was talented but didn’t what to do with it.

I knew I was smart, but I was in too much pain to apply it to my own situation.

Over the years I tried therapy, but it never did much to alleviate my suffering. It was like I had a huge rock of sadness and self-loathing wedged in the middle of my stomach and the older I got, the heavier it became.

I was desperate for answers to life’s questions and I was sure that other people were dying inside too, just like me. On the outside though it was as if there was some conspiracy, and nobody seemed to be talking about it.

I felt like something was really wrong with the world. It felt as if a few people had figured out the secret of happiness and success in life, but the rest of us were just plain suffering without a clue.

For years after, I drowned myself in aimless travel, backpacking to different parts of the world, looking for answers. My pride was in the stamped pages of my passport, but I was only falling deeper and deeper into my own neurotic patterns. 15 | David Bederman

By my mid-twenties, I was a complete mess until one day, I broke down completely.

*

It was 6am. I woke up in my rented, Red Sea hut overlooking the Saudi Arabian coast, feeling sick. I had set out around the world to teach SCUBA diving and, on a break, I had done a week-long camel safari in the Egyptian desert. Somehow I caught a bug out there and from the day I got back to my beachside hut, I was already so sick to my stomach, all I could do was lay there in bed, hallucinating for days. I popped my emergency dose of antibiotics and hoped for the best.

On paper, I was living the dream; travelling the globe working as a SCUBA instructor and musician, meeting new people and partying it up. This seemed like “the life”, but as I lay there in bed, I started to realize that I had really been on the run.

My entire life I’ve been on a quest to find the meaning of life; to understand who I am and to figure out why I am here. Initially, the thrill of planning global adventures, travelling to new places and the mystique of meeting new people gave me the feeling of identity and purpose I was looking for. Only problem was, that feeling would never last.

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I lived on a sailboat in the North Pacific, followed the Grateful Dead around North America, rode cross-country by motorcycle and explored the Canadian West-Coast in my Volkswagen van. But through all the thousands of miles of travels, the buzz of adventure was always quick to wear off and the pain of my troubled soul would quickly return. Every time that happened I would run off again in search of another adventure, hoping once again to distract myself from the pain.

For ten years I had been caught in that cycle, jumping around to different parts of the globe, trying to outrun my unanswered questions. By now, I was really good at running, but I was also desperate for some answers. I had come to the Middle East and the Egyptian Pyramids in search of something ancient and, while I didn’t know it then, I was getting close to a breakthrough.

Being sick had given me way too much time to think and for me that always spelled trouble; the familiar tension of “who am I?!” and “why am I here?” gnawing me to death, from the inside out.

I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life and here, halfway around the world, the more I thought about it, the deeper I sank into depression. 17 | David Bederman

And like a rock kicked off the edge of a pier, I felt myself falling towards a great unknown. I was losing touch with the world around me and with the person I had become.

Who was I really? A SCUBA instructor? A musician? A world traveler? What did it mean to be David Bederman anyway? Would my life have made any impact on the world, after I was gone?

I felt like an actor, getting lost in every character I played but cut off from experiencing my own true self. After a few days like this, my mind was really spinning out of control.

And after years of travelling; after thousands of days of drifting; tens of thousands of hours - the road trips, on motorcycles, busses and in cars – five million minutes – the camping and canoe trips, cliff jumping, scuba diving , sailing and mountain climbing, three hundred million seconds – the music concerts, communes, gatherings and raves, I felt lifeless and dead.

I couldn’t go anymore; aimlessly wandering, running from my questions, shifting, like a chameleon from identity to identity. I was out of ideas, out of energy and it felt like I was out of time.

In that moment, in that little hut looking over the Gulf of Aqaba, my whole world came crashing down. Everything about who I thought I was evaporated and I just lay there,

The Secret Sauce of Success | 18 blankly staring up at the few rays of sun that had squeezed through my thatched roof and lit up my otherwise dark and stuffy hut.

*

What followed was the most intense period of self- exploration and discovery that I ever experienced. From the deep pain of a lost identity, the constant cloud of sadness and, for me, what was really rock-bottom, I heard a calling to travel north.

I set off, a few hundred miles north of the Sinai Peninsula, towards Israel, the biblical land of the prophets.

At the time I didn’t know it, but ten years of aimless globetrotting, searching and suffering had led me to begin a more than ten-year journey into the ancient, success- wisdom of Kabbalah.

Quest for Success

During those years, I became obsessed with understanding success. I wanted to understand every possible angle of it – what created success and what prevented it – and beyond the ancient wisdom I was learning, I studied all the contemporary wisdom I could find. 19 | David Bederman

I read every self-help book and success biography I could get my hands on, attended a ton of courses and seminars and even got the chance to befriend and study several millionaires (and billionaires) up close. I became fascinated with the discoveries of positive psychology and the awesome revelations uncovered by the modern self- esteem movement. And when I started applying what I had been learning, my life began to change.

I found answers to some of life’s biggest questions, learned the key to understanding my true purpose in life and overcame years of sadness and depression.

It got to the point too where friends started asking how I had become so happy and full of life; they wanted to know where I was getting all my new energy from.

Soon, I was sharing what I had learning with others and helping them to get similar results in their own lives too.

Since then, I’ve helped hundreds of people to start living their dreams and create extraordinary lives for themselves. From getting out of the nine-to-five world and pursuing a passion as an entrepreneur, to finding true love and starting a family, finding a meaningful spiritual life path or following the dream of living in an exotic locale, success in life has meant something different for each of them.

But for me, sharing the discoveries I’ve made and having the privilege of helping others has been my greatest success to date.

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Fusing ancient success-wisdom with contemporary success techniques and modern scientific discoveries, I created a cohesive approach to help you create success in your own life…

It’s called, The Secret Sauce of Success.

21 | David Bederman

Chapter 3 – Part I: The Secret in the Sauce

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life, as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”

Booker T. Washington

Have you ever struggled to “find yourself” or to understand your purpose in the world? Maybe you’ve searched for lasting happiness, but ended up with only momentary pleasures instead? Has your life ever seemed dull, sad or inexplicably empty?

Or maybe you’ve just felt that your life could be a whole lot more awesome than it is right now…

One of the greatest barriers to living a successful and fulfilling life is working to fulfill someone else’s definition of success. Each of our needs, motivations and desires are unique and finding real success in your life means getting

The Secret Sauce of Success | 22 in touch with those things that matter most to you, and not to anyone else.

The things that inspire you most about life, the things that drive you are part of the unique message that you have to bring into the world. Success in your life depends on getting in touch with that unique message, and sharing it with the world.

The Secret Sauce: A Framework

The Secret Sauce of Success is a framework for getting in touch with your unique message and for revealing your personal path to living a successful and fulfilling life. It consists of twelve special ingredients, each illuminating a unique and essential part of your personal success journey.

But before we get into the ingredients in The Sauce, I want to first tell you something special about them.

The Three Types

During my more than twenty years of searching for the keys to personal success-mastery and researching the most successful people in history, I discovered that there were, in fact, three different levels of success. And, if you look at the life of any truly successful person up close, you’ll notice that they’re creating success on all three 23 | David Bederman levels - Personal Success, World or Community Success and Big Picture Success.

Personal Success is about your individual experience of life, your sense of joy, satisfaction and the level of fulfillment you get from it.

Many think that Personal Success has to do with how much money you have, but the truth is, you can be financially successful without having much Personal Success at all!

Money is only a very small part of the picture and, in fact, with Personal Success, Happiness is the ultimate currency.

According to author and Harvard Professor Tal Ben Shahar, happiness is the ultimate currency of our lives because it’s the end result of everything we aspire to achieve.

Don’t believe him?

Try the Why Test; break everything you want to do in life down to its root cause, like this:

Why should you go to school? To get an education.

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Why bother with an education? So I can get a good job. Why do you need a good job? So I can make a good living. What’s the point of earning a good living? So I can afford to raise a family, buy a nice house, eat, go on vacation and drive a nice car. Why would you want to raise a family, buy a nice house, go on vacation and drive a nice car…? … So I will be happy!

Happiness really is the bottom line of everything we hope to achieve in life. The problem though is that research has shown that things can’t make us happy. Scientists have even proven that we are actually programmed at a certain “base-level” of happiness. After the little ups and downs of life, the surprises, excitements and big-time let-downs, we all bounce right back to that same base level.

Unless you learn how to become happier from the inside, nothing on the outside will have any lasting effect on how happy you feel. This is why happiness is a major part of achieving Personal Success. 25 | David Bederman

World Success or Community Success is about the impact your life has on your community and the world around you. Life doesn’t exist in a vacuum and, inevitably, our actions do affect others.

The big questions we all end up asking at some point is Did I matter? How did my life affect the world and the people around me? Did I make an impact?

Ultimately, true, lasting success in life affects more than just your own life; it improves the lives of those around you too. And while success does start on the inside, getting in touch with what inspires you most about life and sharing that with the world is probably the most important factor in creating and cultivating success in your life.

Big Picture Success is about seeing your life from a “grand scheme of things” perspective. It puts the puzzle pieces of life into place and puts your life into a greater context of existence itself, aka “The Big Picture”. It’s all those “who am I?”, “why am I here?” and “what does it all mean?” questions rolled-up into one.

Those questions have woven their way through into everything I think, feel and do and finding meaningful

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answers to them can play a big part in the ultimate success you experience in your life

The 12 Ingredients of Success

Each of the Twelve Ingredients in The Secret Sauce of Success is designed to complement the Three Levels of Success in different ways. You’ll find, as you read through The Twelve Ingredients in The Secret Sauce that some ingredients will more directly address Personal Success, while others will focus more on World or Big-Picture success.

Going forward, keep the Three Types of success in your mind and notice which part of the puzzle each of the Twelve Ingredients fills in for you. 27 | David Bederman

Part II: The Twelve Ingredients of Success

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#1 Who Am I?

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

veryone seems to be struggling with this question today, and if you’re like me, it’s probably even Ebeen gnawing away at you for many years now. Out of all of the self-help, psychology and meditation books I’ve read, nothing has satisfied my thirst for a meaningful answer to this age-old question. Finally, after many years of travelling, I found myself in the Old City of Jerusalem, where I was introduced to some ancient wisdom that breaks it down like this…

Have you ever known exactly where you are, but felt lost at the same time? Did you ever go travelling with the only goal of hoping to find yourself? Have you ever been really stressed out and gone out to party, hoping to lose yourself 29 | David Bederman in the music? Or, maybe you had a friend who was in so much pain that they even talked about killing themselves?

While we talk this way all the time, when you think about it, the language we’re using doesn’t really make very much sense. “I’m finding myself…?” – Who’s looking for whom? Or “I’m going to treat myself!” – Who exactly is going to pay for lunch? “Lose myself…?” – How on earth will you ever get home?!

It looks like, from this way that we talk, that there are really two separate parts that make up who we are. For example, “I am enjoying myself…” sounds like there’s a “me” – i.e. the “I am…” part – and there’s a self – i.e. the “…enjoying myself” part. What’s amazing about this is that our natural way of talking actually captures something that ancient wisdom has been teaching for thousands of years…the body vs. the soul.

Body and Soul

So, many of us talk about having a body and having a soul. But ancient wisdom teaches that, in fact, you are a soul and that you have a body. More than just having a soul, the soul is who you really are. (More on the soul in Ingredient #2.)

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It’s kind of like being an actor. Imagine Leonardo DiCaprio getting his part as Dominic Cobb in Inception. He knows that he himself is not Cobb, but his job is to bring that character to life for us, his audience. Success for DiCaprio, the actor, means investing his entire being – all of his talent and passion – into playing that part. We, the audience, we’ll get lost in his performance, but DiCaprio is sure to pay attention to the director, and not lose himself too much in the part that he’s playing. Somehow, he’s got to figure out how to be in his character playing the part, and outside his character, watching the director, both at the same time.

And it’s the same for you and me. You – the soul – are also given a part to play in the world; it’s your character, which is deeply connected to your ego and your feelings of “self”. Success in life begins with first understanding what part you are here to play; it means first discovering and understanding your character. Your passions and talents are the tools you are given to face the unique set of challenges awaiting you on the stage called life. How exactly you put them all together and what you make of them is entirely up to you. Inevitably though, it’s the choices you make that create the person you become. Success in life does not depend on the part you’re given to play, it depends on how you choose to play it.

Just like metal, wires and gasoline can change the lives of millions of people if you put them together to make a car, 31 | David Bederman the same 3 things can also do tremendous damage to life, if they are assembled into a bomb. So too, you have the potential to assemble your talents and abilities and become great! At the same time though, we all can relate to the feeling of losing faith in ourselves, and wishing we were someone else.

Success comes from investing in and realizing the full potential of your character; realizing that you have a unique story to tell and that the world is depending on you to tell it; this is your mission.

Life is all about what you make of what you have and the reward is the awesome experience of who you become in the process. I could write an entire book just on this subject, but for now what’s important is to remember that you’re a soul, and there’s much more to you than just the character you play. Not getting too lost in your character’s ego and learning to stay focused on the greater purpose of your life’s mission is the foundation of unlocking your true potential and the key to starting to live a life that you love.

The Secret Sauce of Success | 32

#2 Why Am I Here?

"Who you are is God's gift to you; who you become is your gift to God"

Hans Urs von Balthasar

he second part of creating success in my life was coming to an understanding of this age-old T question and, the truth is, once you figure this out, success can almost be guaranteed.

In Ingredient #1, we learned that we are souls. Ok. I got soul – I mean I am soul – that’s cool. But then what exactly is the soul? I mean what is soul made of? (If you say Marvin Gaye, you are 100% right on by the way!) Now there are a lot of answers out there for this, but what resonates the most with me is one of the more ancient ideas that also comes from the Kabbalah.

It says that the soul is none other than a piece of the Divine, a part of God. Now at first that can be a little hard 33 | David Bederman to swallow. I mean, God is perfect right? So what’s a perfect part of The Infinite doing inside imperfect, finite little me, not to mention in a dirty, painful and imperfect world like this? At first, this really doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

But let’s say that God wanted to express the possibility of becoming more perfect. Could it happen? I mean God can do whatever She likes, right? So what would becoming more perfect look like, exactly?

Well, ancient wisdom says it would look exactly like this!

A world filled with challenges and adventure; a world with an unlimited potential for success and an equally unlimited potential for failure. A world filled with endless possibilities to experience the joy of growing, the exhilaration of struggling and overcoming obstacles, and the rush of discovering our limitless potential.

All the world is indeed a stage – it’s the perfect place for imperfect characters to embark upon an endless journey of personal growth and discovery. Life is all about the journey, not the destination and that’s exactly why we’re here. We thrive on adventure, on growing and on overcoming greater and greater challenges. That’s who you and I are, the embodiment of an Endless Journey to become more and more perfect and there’s no limit to what you can create with your life and to who you can

The Secret Sauce of Success | 34 become! When you look at it that way, we’re not really human beings at all….we’re more like human “becomings”!

It’s only when we forget that fact – when we start to see life as being about trying to reach some destination or some finite goal – that we end up feeling unfulfilled or even empty. The more we embrace life as a journey, the more we will grow and the more we will discover, and the more fulfilled our lives will become along the way.

Getting Practical on Purpose

So now, here’s a question I often get after I speak to audiences about Ingredient #2.

“Now that I know life is a journey and we are designed to keep growing, how do I translate that into something practical? How does this help me to understand or find my purpose in life?”

My answer to this amazing question is that the key of Ingredient #2 is to help get you thinking about the things you love most in life. What will fill you with the greatest feeling of success and satisfaction by doing? 35 | David Bederman

If you’re having trouble answering this question, here’s a very powerful exercise I teach that delivers amazing clarity on how to identify your purpose.

1. First, list all the things you’re good at doing:

For example, if I were doing the exercise, I might list: public speaking, coaching, putting my ideas into motion (entrepreneurship), creative writing, problem solving, technical things, music, photography, and teaching

2. Next, list the things you enjoy doing:

Again, for me this might look like: travelling, problem solving, self-discovery/personal growth, playing music, teaching, cooking, sailing, scuba diving, time with my family, mountain biking, reading/learning

3. Then, list the things that are most meaningful to you:

My list would be: continuing education, coaching, community building, helping others, parenting, entrepreneurship,

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4. Identify the overlap:

The place where these three sections overlap is a good idea of what will be most fulfilling for you to do in life and it’s a pretty strong indicator for discovering your purpose.

While I’m very good at technical things and photography, and I enjoy sailing and travelling, none of these things fulfills me enough to invest my entire being into doing all the time.

It’s only after I applied the overlapping ideas like: coaching / problem solving / entrepreneurship / personal development and education that I discovered how coaching and helping people discover their own greatness and potential is what I enjoy the most and am most passionate about doing!

Now, obviously there can be much more depth involved in doing this exercise (for example, building a family and being a supportive husband and father are also very meaningful aspects of my purpose). The more time you put into it, the more clarity this exercise will give you.

Coming up with honest answers can take some time and often it’s better to keep your list with you and fill it in over a period of days or weeks, as new ideas come to you. The lists can certainly be much longer than the example I’ve 37 | David Bederman given here. In the end though, many people have said that this process produced some amazing results for them and it was a huge help for me to get started doing what I love most.

Whatever you do with it, enjoy the process, and I’d love to hear about the results you come up with!

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#3 Set Goals and Visualize

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

n the 1960’s a teacher by the name of Marva Collins showed the world something remarkable. She took I students who grew up in the hopelessness of the crime and drug-filled inner city, kids whose brothers and sisters were selling drugs and running with gangs, and told them a different story.

From the first day, Marva Collins told her young students, “We are going to start doing a lot of believing in ourselves.” That message became a mantra that she would repeat to them daily. She taught the students that: “it’s up to you to succeed” and to stop blaming others for the difficulties in their lives. Marva Collins gave those students hope. She believed in them and pushed them 39 | David Bederman very hard to believe that they were all capable of succeeding in life, even if the world around them told them they could not.

Then, miracles started to happen.

By 4th grade, students considered un-teachable by others were reading Shakespeare and Emerson; these 4th grade students were even doing high school math! Every one of Marva Collins “un-teachable” students continued on to college, and many became doctors, lawyers, but even more of them became teachers.

What Marva Collins knew and what scientists have since proven, is that our beliefs about ourselves create our reality – this is the single most important idea you need to remember on your road to success!

The challenge of course is that so many of us have been taught from childhood that we aren’t good enough or that we don’t deserve greatness. Psychologists have confirmed that these kind of self-defeating beliefs can and do sabotage any hopes for success.

Acclaimed psychologist and author Nathaniel Brandon writes that “Self-concept is destiny”; literally that what we think of ourselves, creates and becomes our reality.

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Research has proven that having your goals clearly in mind along with the solid belief that you can achieve them is the single most powerful determinate of success

The Four-Minute Mile

Did you ever hear about the four minute mile? Well, until the 1950’s there was a belief among athletes and scientists that the human speed limit for running a mile was four minutes. All studies and trials had proven that, up until that point, breaking the four-minute barrier was scientifically impossible.

But then something remarkable happened.

A young runner named Roger Banister decided that it could be done, and that he would be the one to break the record. After years of training, in 1954 Roger Banister ran the mile at Oxford in 3.59 sec. Most amazing though is that, until 1954, nobody believed it was possible, yet only six weeks after that incredible achievement, an Australian runner ran the mile in only 3.58sec. Then same year, 37 other runners went on to run the mile in under 4min as well.

In 1955, over 300 runners continued to break the record and by the next year, they stopped counting. 41 | David Bederman

Science has proven what authors, from Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins, and Billionaires, from Richard Branson to Bill Gates – and hundreds of others – have all confirmed that success begins in your mind! It’s an unbelievable idea and it goes so much against the ideas that most of us were raised with, but it’s absolutely true and is the most important rule of success!

The “Law of Attraction”

What we’ve just discussed is the foundation of what many have come to call The Secret, or the Law of Attraction, but its source actually spans thousands of years and is rooted in ancient books like the Zohar. In essence, it all boils down to one simple but extremely powerful idea:

1. Know clearly what you want to achieve, and 2. Believe that you can achieve it!

After that, all the details of how have a habit of falling easily into place.

Believe it or Not

Believe it or not, the biggest challenge I’ve had with many of the people I’ve worked with hasn’t even been getting them to believe in this idea. Oh no, that part is actually easy. The biggest challenge I’ve encountered is that

The Secret Sauce of Success | 42 people hold back from allowing themselves to dream of achieving anything! It really is pretty shocking, but so many of us hold ourselves back from allowing ourselves to set goals for what we want most out of life. You’d be shocked at how many people are simply afraid to let themselves want to achieve anything.

Maybe you’ve learned to fear failure, or maybe you were told growing up that you weren’t worthy of success, but unless you can bring yourself to write your biggest dreams down on paper, and visualize them clearly in your mind, you may as well stop reading now, ‘cause this is the key ingredient. (Don’t really stop now…if you are struggling with this idea, you won’t be by the end of the book ;)

Anita Roddick knew exactly where she was going with her environmentally conscious line of beauty care products, when she started The Body Shop in her backyard; Steve Jobs knew exactly how he wanted to challenge the status quo of computing and electronics, right from the start, and Bill Gates knew exactly that there would be a PC on every desk, and that his software would be the running inside it, way back in 1975 when he and Paul Allen started Microsoft.

Ancient wisdom teaches that the source of our true potential lies in our thoughts, and our ability to access that potential rests solely on our ability to set clear goals for ourselves, and to dream. 43 | David Bederman

So come on now, tell me, who do you really want to become? Now write it down and picture yourself doing it all the time!

What’s stopping you?

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#4 Learn To Fail, Or Fail To Learn

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose one’s self.”

Kierkegaard

his is a big one. So far, we’ve talked about ideas – things to think about and activate in your mind. TNow it’s time to get into some heavy lifting. For some of you, this will be easier than for others, but the benefits are huge. Either way, what you need to remember is that we’re all built differently, so do this Ingredient in whatever measure feels right to you; start small and add more to taste… 45 | David Bederman

Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Success isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you create. “Creation” comes through action so, simply put, if you want to build success into your life, you need to do things. Successful people are busy people – they are always doing things.

Ingredient #4 is about doing, but getting out of your comfort zone to do it. Scientists call this “coping”, but it really boils down to just getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. The reason this is so important is because we are all creative at heart. According to ancient wisdom, creativity is our essence; we’re creative beings! (Actually, we’re creative becomings…. Each one of us has something unique to bring into the world – to bring into creation. As long as you’re alive, you’re designed to be creating, whether it’s producing the next big invention, building a family, gardening, starting a business or solving the world’s problems. Whatever your vision of success looks like, it’s going to mean doing something beyond what you’re doing right now. That’s likely going to happen outside of your comfort zone, and it’s probably going to make you feel a bit uncomfortable.

But uncomfortable is good and it’s good to get comfortable with it.

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Here’s the thing. Psychologists have discovered that people who work hard at trying new things actually experience an improvement in their self-image; they feel better about themselves. Basically, when you try new things – when you begin to walk that uncertain road towards success and living your dreams – you begin to see yourself as someone who takes risks, someone who’s not afraid to go out on a limb and experience something new or unfamiliar. And yes, believe it or not, this has been proven to raise your self-esteem.

Remember Ingredient #3, where we said that your thoughts actually affect what becomes your reality? Well, acting outside of your comfort zone changes your thoughts about yourself, and that increases your ability to achieve your goals. And that has success written all over it!

Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Success

More amazing than improving our self-image, getting used to acting outside of your comfort zone also helps you to recover faster from failure. Studies proved that the more risks we allow ourselves to take and the more comfortable we become with being uncomfortable, the faster we bounce back from pain and the discomfort of failures. When you’re not afraid to try and you’re not 47 | David Bederman afraid to fail, you try and do more things. This is the self- perpetuating cycle of success!

But when you avoid taking risks, you buffer yourself into living solely within your comfort zone. That puts you into a downward spiral that actually robs you of your self- esteem and even affects your happiness level. This is the self-perpetuating cycle away from success.

Growing through Breaking Down

First thing, don’t worry; Ingredient #4 is not all or nothing. Finding the amount of “outside-your-comfort-zone” activities that’s right for you is the key here. You will find, over time that you are able to move farther and farther outside of your “safe zone” and your comfort in trying new things will increase. Starting slow and finding the right amount of challenge for you is the most important guarantee of success here.

We have to understand that all growth in the world happens through breakdown, and you are no different. Building the body’s muscles actually happens through first tearing the tiny muscle fibers through exercise. When the muscle tissue heals, it heals bigger and it heals stronger.

All around you, nature is reinforcing this message. A tree grows after its seed rots and decomposes in the ground. A

The Secret Sauce of Success | 48 snake grows when it learns to shed its old and restrictive skin. Bread is made after the wheat is ground down and pulverized. It’s mixed with water and begins to rise, but we beat it down again, and again. Only after all this breaking down does the dough grow and get baked into bread. But alas, the energy we get from food is available to our bodies only after we’ve “destroyed” it and broken it down yet again, this time in the acids of our stomachs.

Success follows the same rules. The “nourishment” of success becomes available to you only once you’ve broken through and broken down the safety-walls of comfort in your own life. The more comfortable you get being uncomfortable, with trying new things and moving outside your comfort zone, the more at home you will feel walking out in the fresh, clean air of success.

So tell me, what one, tiny new thing are you going to try today?

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#5 The Power of Positive

“Things may not always happen for the best, but successful people make the best out of the things that happen.”

Tal Ben Shachar

’m not going to lie to you; I’ve had a habit of focusing on the bad side of things for most of my life. Miserable I and unhappy with where my life was going, I saw, and often attracted negativity and unhappiness wherever I went. So many people live inside a cloud of negativity, but so few people realize how much being negative threatens their chances of success. One shocking discovery I made was that having a negative attitude can even shorten your life!

First, in research involving trauma victims, one group was asked to write about the positive things that came out of

The Secret Sauce of Success | 50 their experience. This simple journaling exercise forced them to focus on finding something positive, and because of it, that “positive” group was more likely to recover from their trauma. Even more interesting, they also proved to be less likely to visit the doctor in the future. When the same experiment was repeated on cancer patients, the positive seekers, or “merit finders”, were also more likely to recover from their cancer and were even healthier than the other group who didn’t do the positive journaling, when interviewed a year later.

Negativity Kills

But probably the most shocking and famous example of this phenomenon is a study from 1932 known as “The Nun Study”. In this study, 178 nuns were interviewed at the very beginning of their careers and, based on their responses, they were categorized into 4 groups, from “positive” down to “negative”.

What the study found was that by age 85, fully 90% of the “positive” group was still alive vs. only 34% of the “negative” group. But by age 95, 54% of the “positive” group them were still alive, while only 11% of the “negative” group were still kicking.

Those are pretty shocking statistics, but they show us how much learning to focus on the positive can have a dramatic 51 | David Bederman impact on your life. Not only can you live longer, but you’ll be much more likely to achieve and live a successful life by doing it.

Being Positive is Old News

In 1921, American Magazine interviewed Thomas Edison:

"After we had conducted thousands of experiments … one of my associates… expressed discouragement … over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned … for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way."

Edison knew that the secret to success was learning to see every situation in a positive light. While aware of the negatives, he knew that teaching yourself to see the positive was a key ingredient to making every step, a step closer to success.

Even the famous Wright brothers knew the secret. Often, after one of their prototype aircraft would crash or fail, Wilbur Wright would get frustrated and upset. His brother Orville would encourage him, and many attribute their ultimate success to Orville Wright’s positive attitude.

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Putting The Power of Positive to work for you in your life, in a world so overcome with negative messages, news reports and images, is one of the most important skills you can begin to master on your road to success. It doesn’t mean ignoring the challenges that arrive, but instead learning to see everything as an opportunity to grow and to learn.

I’ll admit that Ingredient #5 has been one of the most challenging for me to put into practice, but the more I’ve learned to use the Power of Positive, the more it’s proven to be one of the most rewarding ingredients in my recipe.

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#6 Being Grateful

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

Cicero

ave you ever met a wealthy person, but with all their riches they still seemed like something was H missing from their lives? Or maybe you know someone who is overflowing with life and with happiness, and yet they have very little material wealth? This secret of success and fulfillment is summed up beautifully by an ancient parable. It says:

“Who is rich? The one who is happy with their lot”

So what’s the secret to real riches in life? One word: gratitude.

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Yes, gratitude. A definite key to success, but it doesn’t always come naturally. In fact, one of our key survival instincts is actually to adapt and take good things for granted. We don’t naturally notice the good, but we always notice the bad. That’s why we jump! at a slammed door, awaken to a baby’s cry, or notice the creaking footsteps of an intruder, approaching in the night, but may not notice the great things that happen around us all the time. This instinct is in our blood, and it’s what can keep us alive in the face of real danger.

But as you and I know all too well, our society has taken an almost obscene focus on the negative, inundating us constantly with stories and images of disaster, crime, and suffering. The truth is that this media obsession with the negative actually robs us of an enjoyable life and limits our potential to achieve our goals.

Check this out – in one example from 2003, researchers from the University of California and University of Miami asked groups of students to write a short journal every day before going to bed. One group wrote about things they were grateful for, another wrote about negative things, the third about random things – neither good nor bad, and the fourth group was a control.

Over a 6-month period, they discovered that the group who expressed gratitude every night were more likely to be happy, were more optimistic and were more likely to 55 | David Bederman achieve their goals; they were healthier and were less likely to visit the doctor, compared to those that focused on the negative hassles in their lives.

These are the qualities we are looking for – happiness, optimism, health and the ability to achieve goals. These are the qualities of successful people! Those who do big things, those who change the world and who love their lives, do so because they are able to dream big dreams, set big goals, and because they are optimistic about achieving them. All of these qualities are built on gratitude.

If we want to achieve and build a remarkable and enjoyable life, we need first to learn to cultivate gratitude. In a world that so often tends towards seeing the glass half-empty, it’s the people that know the secret of being grateful who are less depressed, less envious, less anxious and are overall happier people. And it’s because they know to see the glass as half-full.

Expressing gratitude for the good things in your life, every day, can be the single most-powerful tool in building your potential for success.

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Gratitude Practice

Why not try keeping a gratitude journal and writing about 5 things you are grateful for every night before you go to sleep and then read from it every day when you wake up. Ultimately, success is not about what you do, it’s about who you become. Becoming a grateful person will do more for your goals of success than you could ever imagine!

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#7 Perfectly Imperfect

hen I was a kid, I wanted to be perfect. I thought that the harder I tried, the more Wperfect I’d be and the more success I would achieve in life. I don’t remember exactly from where or how I built this philosophy, but by the age of 6, it was already hurting me. I remember it clearly…

It was the first grade and the pressure was on. Everyone in class was asked to draw an elephant; I just sat there. I remember feeling the tension well-up inside me and my mind starting to spin….I knew how to draw a dog or a stick figure, but I had no clue how to draw an elephant…I didn’t even know where to begin! It wasn’t long before tears started pouring out of my tiny little eyes. It was 1st grade; I couldn’t take the heat.

It’s kind of a funny story, but the scary part is just how clearly I remember feeling sad and scared about not

The Secret Sauce of Success | 58 knowing how to draw that stupid thing. It was my first memory of trying to be a perfectionist, and the perfectionist mindset followed me for many years.

The perfectionist’s all-or-nothing approach to life drives people compulsively to try and become the best, but it’s often the road to sadness, anxiety and even depression instead. Children understand that walking comes through falling, yet so many of us adults see taking risks in life as a threat to the perfect images of ourselves that we try to project.

Back in Ingredient #2, we mentioned the ancient idea that life is about being on a continuous journey of growth and of discovery. But perfectionism fills people with the opposite thinking, that life is about getting to a destination – to the “top” – and it abandons the very journey that we’re all here to discover.

As Positive Psychology professor Tal Ben-Shahar says, successful people either “learn to fail, or fail to learn”, and, as the most accomplished people in our history understood, the greatest success is always built upon the greatest failures. 59 | David Bederman

Successful Failures

Abraham Lincoln was defeated many times in business and even had to file for bankruptcy. He experienced a nervous breakdown at age 27, got defeated in his attempts to run for congress, the senate and in his bid for the vice-presidency. Only because of his commitment to growth and his persistence to build upon failure did he achieve the presidency at age 51.

J.K Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter was turned down by twelve different publishers before she got her break.

The legendary Walt Disney was turned down for bank loans 302 times before getting financing for Disney World.

Stephen Spielberg was denied admission to the University of Southern California Film School, twice. Didn’t stop him.

Tim Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Work Week, was rejected by 26 publishers before he got a book deal.

Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers – the list goes on and on… It proves that the road to success is paved with failures – not an unrealistic drive for perfection!

Perfectionism is the incapacitating fear of failure that keeps us from even trying something. Perfectionism has

The Secret Sauce of Success | 60 been linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem, hurt relationships, anxiety, depression and more!

The Answer is … Excellence!

Research from Stanford looked at kids who were “rewarded” for their intelligence, vs. those that were rewarded for their efforts. The results? Both groups did well on project assignments, so long as there was no stress involved. But as soon as stress or the possibility of failure was introduced into the experiment, the “intelligence” kids broke down, got anxious and performed poorly, while the “effort” kids became energized and committed to overcoming the challenge.

So what is the answer? If so many of us grow up struggling with perfectionism in our lives, how do we turn it around?

Because our society places so much value on perfect, photoshopped figures – because Hollywood glorifies fantasies in place of the realities of life, we need to adopt a healthier model to strive towards. So what’s the answer?

We need to shift our focus from perfection to excellence.

Yup. The answer to perfectionism is to pursue excellence. Where perfectionism tries to live life as a straight line, 61 | David Bederman going from point A to point B, excellence sees life as a journey, including all of its ups and its downs.

Excellence is about striving to do your best and to become your best, anticipating and growing through the many challenges and failures that arise.

As Tom Watson, the founder of IBM said, “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate”, and the beauty of pursuing excellence is that it can handle all the failure you can throw at it!

So what are you waiting for? Learn to fail, or fail to learn!

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#8 Building Self Esteem

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.”

Henry Ford

k. Get ready – this is the most important part. If you could only read one chapter in the whole O book, this would be it. In fact, I’ll even go a step further and tell you that everything I’ve said up until now, and everything I’ll say afterwards all hinges on this all- important idea; Ingredient #8 is so important that true success is virtually impossible without it. Yet if you master this subject, you’ll be able to achieve anything you could ever dream of. So I hope you’re ready, because Ingredient #8 is my absolute favorite, and it completely changed my life.

So often in our lives it happens that people who love us the most, or those who guide us actually end up hurting our self-esteem, instead of building it. You know what I’m 63 | David Bederman talking about right? The parents who, only trying to do their best, end up raising kids who feel worthless or insecure? Or the teacher who unintentionally squashes the confidence of her star student, instead of inspiring her to follow her passion and achieve greatness?

You and I, and so many of those around us, probably got the message at some point in our lives that we weren’t worthy or capable of success; that we didn’t deserve happiness, or even, that we were flawed or unlovable. Most of us don’t realize it, because these beliefs get planted in our minds during early childhood, but unless we get in touch with those wrong beliefs and fix them, they can and often do end up affecting us for our entire lives.

Examples of Beliefs

Take for example when parents fight. Psychologists say that children who witness their parents fighting actually believe that they were the cause of the fight. The same is true with divorce; if the children are very young, they often believe that they were the cause of the divorce and can grow up feeling flawed, unworthy or even unlovable.

In one case that author Nathaniel Branden, the father of the modern Self-Esteem Movement writes about, a girl’s mother had abandoned the family and run off with another man when the girl was four years old. As sad as that must have been, the real tragedy was discovered

The Secret Sauce of Success | 64 many years later. The girl’s life had become a mess of one failed relationship after another and every seemingly perfect shot she had at true love would somehow mysteriously fall apart!

The girl, now a grown woman, finally decided to take control of her situation and learned to unpack her experience. What she discovered was that, as a little girl, she had interpreted her mother’s abandoning of the family to mean that she, only a young child, was unlovable. It’s unbelievable, but that little girl actually grew up believing that she was flawed as a person and just could not be loved! For her, it was the natural conclusion of her situation, I mean, why else would her mommy have left her!? This negative belief about herself followed her and affected her entire life.

While it seems crazy, each and every one of us also develops a series of beliefs about ourselves as kids that shape our entire lives. While not always as dramatic as this story, our own childhood dramas make up how we think and feel about ourselves when we grow up.

Now, no parent or person is without flaw – we are all human and we’re born to make mistakes. But somewhere along the line, you and I need to take control of our situations – we need to learn how to recover from any mistaken beliefs about ourselves that we carry around and get back on top of our game! 65 | David Bederman

That game is the game of self-esteem, and it holds the key to everything in your life!

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The Science of Self-Esteem

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.”

Henry Ford

First-off, it sounds crazy, but research has proven that our self-concept – the way we see and feel about ourselves – affects our level of happiness, it affects our relationships and it influences who and what we become in life. In fact, author Nathaniel Branden, the father of the modern self- esteem movement says that:

“Self-concept is Destiny”

Basically this means that whatever you think about yourself determines who and what you will become. What’s so powerful about this is that he, and many others, are saying that the only difference between a person who reaches success and one who doesn’t is what they think about themselves. It’s a powerful idea, and it’s true!

Even crazier though – studies have found that low self- esteem is even the cause of many mental health 67 | David Bederman problems! They found that it’s also the main cause of delinquency in kids, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, low school performance and a slew of other problems that are rampant in our society today.

While building self-esteem can take some time, every one of us was born with the tools to do it. Most often, low self- esteem is the one thing standing in the way of your dreams and, if you learn to strengthen it, nothing can stop you from creating a life that you love!

Success Stories

In case you are having trouble getting used to this idea – that success is created by what you believe about yourself – remember the list of famous “failures” from Ingredient #7. None of them had an easy path to success, but their confidence in their ability to succeed allowed them to withstand the discomfort of temporary failure and reach their inevitable success.

That list proves that the road to success is paved with persistence – and persistence becomes possible when you believe in yourself and your ability to succeed at whatever you dream of achieving in life.

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An Ancient Perspective

Before we get deeper into really understanding self- esteem up close, let’s zoom out for a sec and look at it from a “big picture” perspective. This is a seriously powerful idea that I think you’ll love, so stick with me here for a minute… ok? Here we go.

So the ancient success-wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that we are all interconnected with each other. (Very cool. Nice to meet you!) It says that our individual “selves”, you and me, are all part of a one, great, universal and infinite “Self” – like a great Oneness that includes every-one and every- thing in existence, even though we don’t necessarily feel it. And, since you and I are included within this great Oneness, it also means that you and I are some of that Oneness too…’ya dig?

But now this doesn’t mean that you or I are that Oneness. No, you and I are definitely not that Oneness. But it does mean that you and I are some of the Oneness…

So now do you see where this is going? This means that you are some-one. You’re a someOne – some of The One!

And that’s what’s so cool about this idea. See, the whole point – the reason you are so important in the world and the reason you should feel important – is because you really are some-One; you’re a part of the all- 69 | David Bederman encompassing, infinite, universal Oneness that connects us all – you’re some of It (and so am I, and so is she…). That’s what makes you someOne!

(And if that’s not a recipe for higher self-esteem and empowerment, then I don’t know what is…)

Now do you see why I love this idea? It’s unbelievably powerful! This ancient success-concept shows you that the source of your importance and your greatness as a person is rooted in your connection to the Universal Oneness that connects us all.

In other words, beyond just helping you to experience higher self-esteem in your life, this idea is a link to experiencing infinite self-esteem and power!

But It’s Not Enough

Now it’s not enough just to be someOne. No. You actually need to learn how to act and feel like someOne.

The problem, of course, is that most people I meet don’t behave like they’re someOne at all. In fact it’s the exact opposite! Most people I meet act like they’re some-nones; they act like they’re nobody, like they’re insignificant to the world, like they don’t even matter at all.

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And if you believe that you’re no-one, you’ll end up acting and feeling like you’re no-one too!

But here’s the problem… what happens when you feel like you’re no-one, but deep inside, a part of you knows that you’re really someOne?

That conflict – that inner battle between what you think about yourself and what you really are capable of – is what leads to the anxiety, depression, mental illness and other problems I mentioned above. I know, because I lived that way for most of my life, and let me tell you, most of the time it wasn’t any fun!

Learning this ancient idea gave me a powerful new perspective on life – it helped me experience my life with more significance and meaning than I ever had before.

But now that I’ve shared this “bigger picture” idea with you, let’s zoom back in and look at what self-esteem is made of, down here on earth.

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The Three Types of Self-Esteem

Like I said before, to really live a successful life, the one thing you need above all else is high self-esteem. But research has shown that there are actually three different kinds of self-esteem:

1. Dependent Self-Esteem 2. Independent Self-Esteem and 3. Unconditional Self-Esteem

To fully succeed in life, we need to understand and develop all three. The only catch here is that each one has to be built on top of the other; you can’t have high Unconditional Self-Esteem until you’ve built high Dependent and then Independent Self-Esteem first.

So let’s dive in and see what they’re all made of.

#1 – Dependent Self-Esteem

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

Remember that line from the classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? It’s a typical example of the Dependent Self-Esteem message at its core; seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes. From the time we are small, we learn to see ourselves according to how others see us. As kids, we are completely dependent on our parents for

The Secret Sauce of Success | 72 survival and it’s no surprise that our sense of self grows out from that deeply rooted dependency.

Dependent Self-Esteem means that your self-image is generated from how others see you; it’s the most common type of self-esteem that’s written about and it’s the one we see the most of in the world around us.

As kids, we learn to see ourselves according to how our parents (and others) treat us. If they communicate to us that we are valuable and capable – by giving us love, responsibilities and even discipline – it demonstrates to us that they believe in our ability to make a difference – that we are important – and we grow to see ourselves that way and believe that we are.

On the other hand, kids who are treated like they’re incapable, with constant disrespect, no responsibilities, abuse or with indifference, sadly, they come to think poorly of themselves and they grow up with low or underdeveloped levels of Dependent Self-Esteem.

As we grow, a healthy level of Dependent Self-Esteem is what prepares us to develop our Independent Self-Esteem, but if our Dependent Self-Esteem levels were not properly built as kids, we can get stuck there as adults – and many of us do. 73 | David Bederman

When we grow up with underdeveloped or low Dependent Self-Esteem, we can get caught in an endless cycle of looking for validation; we can get lost in always trying to feel good about ourselves based to what others think.

Always Seeking Validation

A good example of this is the endless race many people are in to get high-profile positions, or gain social status so they can be the envy of their friends. Or the constant desire for approval from our friends about the clothes that we’re wearing, the music we listen to or for the activities we choose to engage in.

While it definitely does feel good – and it’s normal – to seek some validation from others for who we are or for what we do in life, being overly focused and building your lives around getting validation as an adult can really limit your achievements and chances for success in life.

Having low Dependent Self-Esteem as an adult can seriously hurt your ability to function in the world, especially if your source of validation and approval suddenly disappears, like when relationships break up or when financial conditions change.

Yes, this can happen, even if you’re all grown up. In fact, it’s very, very common and yes, dealing with low

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Dependent Self-Esteem as an adult is exactly what happened to me!

Sad, but True

I didn’t know it, but I had been dealing with low Dependent Self-Esteem for most of my life. I had prided myself on being able to do more and get more done than my friends, but I didn’t realize that it was all in order to get their admiration and approval. I felt so low and unsure about myself, I organized my life around outperforming others, just so I could hear their applause. That was the only way I could confirm that, indeed, “I was OK.”

I remember at one point I had gotten a job in a very popular organization and I was the envy of all my friends (wonder what motivated me to try out for such a job in the first place…) Eventually though, when things started to fall apart and I ended up leaving the organization, I stayed inside the house for weeks, feeling like I had lost my identity.

What I didn’t know was that my self-esteem – and my entire sense of self – was completely dependent on the job I was doing and to how I appeared to the rest of the world. Because my Dependent Self-Esteem was so low, when I lost the job, I lost my greatest source of validation – the one thing that gave me meaning, or so I thought 75 | David Bederman anyway. I ended up feeling totally worthless as person because of it and I couldn’t function for weeks!

Thankfully though, that inevitable fall from grace turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise as it led me to understand more about my situation and to build up a much more solid foundation. (Even so, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how painful that time in my life was…)

While it’s natural and healthy for all of us to crave a little validation here and there, achieving success in our lives means growing beyond the need for constant outside validation.

Largely focusing your self-image around how others see you limits your ability for true self-expression and hampers the development of high self-esteem. To really thrive, reach your goals and to live out your dreams, you need to go upscale and begin building Independent Self- Esteem.

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#2 – Independent Self-Esteem

What is Independent Self-Esteem? Well, for starters, Independent Self-Esteem revolves around a sense of self- worth that is determined by you. It’s focused on what you care about in life and what’s most meaningful to you. In contrast to Dependent Self-Esteem, Independent Self- Esteem is not at all concerned with what others think is best, fun or cool. It’s a self-esteem that’s literally independent of everyone and everything, outside of you.

High school heroes

What’s surprising about this is that the “prettiest girls” and the most “popular guys” from school often have the highest levels of Dependent Self-Esteem, but on the flipside they have a much harder time building Independent Self-Esteem later on in life.

Because they got so much attention and popularity growing up – maybe because of their good-looks, athletic achievements or sorority or fraternity status – many of these high-school and college “heroes” get stuck with seeking-out and needing this kind of constant validation later on in life. They often end up building their lives around prestigious positions and social status, which guarantee them a constant supply of the validation they became used to craving. 77 | David Bederman

Ironically, the less-attractive and unpopular kids often have much healthier levels of Independent Self-Esteem as they grow older and end up leading much healthier and more fulfilled lives as adults. Since they never got too caught up with what others thought of them in the first place, they never had to deal with the challenges of craving constant validation and approval either.

Independent Self-Esteem means that you compare yourself to yourself, and not to others. Where a Dependent Self-Esteem voice might ask: “What did they think of my performance tonight?”, or “Oh Yeah! I was the best player out of all of them tonight!” the Independent Self-Esteem voice will ask: “Am I better now than I was before?” or, “Are my skills improving compared to how they were a year ago?”

Learning to cultivate Independent Self-Esteem means that you will be freer to explore and create your life according to your inner-most values and the things that are most meaningful to you. You will be freer to dream and to set meaningful goals for yourself and, ultimately, your life will be richer and more fulfilling as you learn to discover and express more of your natural self, in all that you do, free from the limitations of seeking constant validation and acceptance from others.

With Independent Self-Esteem, validation and acceptance come from within. That’s the type of inner-freedom that

The Secret Sauce of Success | 78 real success in life is built on and Independent Self-Esteem is truly the engine that makes it happen!

#3 – Unconditional Self-Esteem

OK, no question. This is the stuff real gurus are made of, but for even the most aspiring achievers, this level of self- esteem is still a long way off.

Unconditional Self-Esteem is the “no-nonsense” internal understanding that your existence has infinite intrinsic value in and of itself. Unconditional Self-Esteem is by far the most meaningful, pleasurable and powerful state of awareness to achieve, but don’t forget, it has to be built upon healthy levels of Dependent and Independent Self- Esteem first…there are no shortcuts here!

However, many say that even with high levels of Dependent and Independent Self-Esteem, Unconditional Self-Esteem can only be achieved much later in life, after we have grown, matured and come to really understand ourselves.

Even so, Unconditional Self-Esteem doesn’t depend on how well we do or how much praise we get from those around us; it doesn’t come from comparing ourselves to anyone, including ourselves. It’s a feeling of confidence, acceptance and empowerment rooted in the very essence of simply being. 79 | David Bederman

Simply put, the tremendous power of building Unconditional Self-Esteem is rooted in a powerful awareness that you are some of the infinite Oneness that creates and unites us all. It’s the power drawn from a direct connection to your purpose in the world, but it doesn’t depend in any way on your “performance”.

Unconditional Self-Esteem is about living more in the present, appreciating how things are now and getting beyond fantasies of how things could or should be in the future. It’s about becoming less ego-sensitive to the actions of others, and being more compassionate and empathetic to those around us.

Having high levels of Dependent Self-Esteem and Independent Self-Esteem are important for really creating an extraordinary life and, most often, Unconditional Self- Esteem is the by-product of that journey, later on in life.

Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology says that Unconditional Self-Esteem (he calls it the “self- actualized person”) is rarely seen before age 50, if at all.

Beginning the Journey

Looking back on all of this, the main thing to take away is simply to start having a greater awareness of how we’re feeling and what’s motivating us in life.

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The ebb-and-flow of feeling a high-level of Independent Self-Esteem one day and the desire for a little validation from our friends the next, is a normal part of the ups and downs of life. Even people with highly-developed Independent Self-Esteem still enjoy receiving validation and applause, but it isn’t what motivates them in life and it’s not what drives their desires.

While many people can and do achieve success in life with only high Dependent Self-Esteem, focusing on building your Independent and ultimately Unconditional Self- Esteem is what leads to the most fulfilling and complete experiences of success in life.

The more you succeed at building up these three levels of self-esteem, the closer you’ll get to turning your dreams of success into a living reality! 81 | David Bederman

#9 The Secret of Love

"The Greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him, his own"

Benjamin Disraeli

f we all “get” the need to have love in our lives, why do sixty-seven percent of marriages end in divorce? I mean if love is such a universal value, why are so many I unhappy of those who do stay married and why do so many others go through life without ever finding the love they dream of?

What I’m about to share with you now is a secret that has helped me go from a lifetime of failed relationships to being happily married, with four beautiful children. It’s something you won’t find in any books, yet it’s been taught for thousands of years. This is the ancient, universal secret of love from the Kabbalah.

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But first a little disclaimer: Yes, this is a secret, but you can still share it with all your friends. In fact, even if you tell this to the whole world, it’s still going to stay a secret. How’s that?

It’s because true secrets are those that cannot be told – they can only be experienced. Look at chocolate. Chocolate is an absolute secret. Even if I tell you where to find it, what it looks like and even how to make it by yourself, until you taste it, until you experience the magic of chocolate for yourself, chocolate, to you, is going to be a secret.

The same is true with love. While many people are waiting for Mr. or Ms. “Right” to show up in their lives, the secret of love really starts with first making yourself into the right person, one who is ready to give it, receive it and ultimately to experience it. Until you do that, love is going to stay a secret, but here’s how to get there…

Love as a Paradox

First, before we dive into creating and finding love, you need to know what love is. The mystics teach that love is a paradox: on the one hand you and I are two complete and unique people, but together the two of us create a kind of oneness that’s much greater than ourselves. 83 | David Bederman

In love, neither person “gives up” their individual identities – we are both still just as unique and individual as we were before, yet at the same time, love unites us into something much, much greater. Paradoxically, in love, you and I are both separate individuals, and completely one at the same time. In love, the math is simple, it’s: 1 + 1 = 1.

A great example of this idea is the Yin Yang: two complete and separate colors, but when they come together, they create a complete circle – a unity that is even greater than their individual selves. Black and White don’t lose their individuality in love – they don’t merge to become Grey. Instead, they keep their unique identities and form an even greater unity in the process.

OK, so now that we know what love is, let’s learn how to create it.

Secret #1: Making Space

When we’re young, we’re selfish and mostly unable to think outside of ourselves. For example, when I was in kindergarten, I remember staying home sick and thinking that kindergarten just didn’t happen that day. As we grow up, our awareness expands to include others, which forms the basis for relationships.

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The first step in cultivating love is making space within yourself for another person to exist. If a person is selfish – if he is “full” of himself – then there just isn’t room for another person to exist. Without space for an “other”, there is no space for love.

This is why so many very successful people in our society today are single; they have gotten so good at disciplining and building themselves and their businesses, but they have become completely “self-centered” in the process.

Love, on the other hand, is about being “other-centered”, and the first step to creating love is to make a space in yourself for someone else to exist. It also means giving them space; space to be themselves, space to express themselves and to nurture their own friendships outside of your relationship. It also means making space for them, in your time, in your thoughts and in your heart.

Love is about admitting that I’m incomplete without you and it’s about creating the space within me for you – and the way you see the world – to exist. Love is sharing life with another, but it starts with creating that space for another within ourselves. Once you start that process, you’ll find that love has a way of filling up that space, fast. 85 | David Bederman

Secret #2: Respecting Otherness

After we’ve made space for another in our lives, the next step in creating love is respecting that otherness. One of the most common mistakes I see people make in relationships is trying to conform their partner to their way of thinking: “Just do it my way!” or “You’re wrong – this is the right way!” But love isn’t about conformity, it’s about otherness and Secret #2 is about respecting and acknowledging that your partner is unique and exists, separate from you.

Respecting otherness means not projecting your dreams onto someone else or trying to make them into who you would like them to be. Parents can run into this with their kids. They might have big dreams for the kid to become a doctor, or a lawyer. But the kid hates books, hates math and loves to draw – she wants to be an artist! Secret #2 is about acknowledging the other person’s individuality – their differences from you – and learning to help them develop their talents and to become who they naturally want to be.

Beyond just making a space for otherness, love means valuing and respecting the differences your partner brings to the relationship. As you come to respect and to nurture what’s important to them – their dreams and their worldview – you become more and more in tune with the truth and beauty of what love really can be.

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Secret #3: Giving Yourself

You’ve had a rough day; you got fired for something that wasn’t your fault, your car got towed and, to top it all off, you even dropped your phone in the toilet! What you need right now is to connect with someone you love, maybe your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse or a close friend and vent it out in front of someone who cares about you.

But what is it exactly that you’re looking for from them? Do you want them to give you solutions to your problems? “6 Surefire ways to AVOID being fired?” Or some good advice: “How to save your car from getting towed?” Maybe: “3 Secrets to saving a drowning phone?” No. Not a chance! You aren’t looking for solutions. You are looking for their attentions, their sympathy and some understanding. In short, you want them to be there for you.

Just like when a kid gets a scraped knee, he wants hugs and kisses, not a lesson in dressing and cleaning a wound, Secret #3 is about giving the gift of you – the gift of presence. Presence is all about learning to ”condense” yourself, to go outside of yourself, to concentrate, give your undivided attention and to be there for someone else.

Some parents make the mistake of trying to give their kids everything, but when it comes to spending quality time 87 | David Bederman together, they are never around. But being fully present for someone – for your partner, your kids, or even a friend – learning to put yourself aside and just concentrating, listening and fully being there for another person is really the greatest gift you can give. Giving presence says “You matter. You’re important to me. I care.”

Giving of yourself, the gift of presence, is so important in raising healthy kids, but it’s just as important for any successful relationship that’s going to be built on real love. Yes, it takes patience. Yes, it can be hard to listen to their problems without trying to solve them, but yes, the reward of love is totally worth it.

Secret #4: Letting Others Give to You

This might seem like a no-brainer, right? Letting others give to you sounds like the easiest thing in the world! But what if you don’t need what they’re giving? What if you’re very busy, but your girlfriend, husband or best friend has something they really want to share? Or what if you have your guard up and what’s comfortable for you is not needing anybody? Secret #4 is about letting others give to you, even if you might not need what they’re giving or if you’re afraid of being vulnerable and afraid of letting them in.

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An easy example of this was when my three-year old son discovered a colorful ball of lint in his pants pocket. It had probably gathered there from weeks of washing and drying, but when he discovered it, his face was lit with excitement; it was like he had found gold! But then an incredible thing happened; he ran over to me and, with so much love in his eyes, handed me his prize as a gift. It took me a second, but allowing myself to receive his gift was actually the greatest gift I could give him. Even though I had no use or need for more lint in my life, opening myself up to his gift and allowing it to be valuable was the highest expression of love in that moment.

The harder example though, is the experience many of us have of being guarded. You may have been hurt before and you may have even built up high walls to protect yourself from being vulnerable, in hopes of saving yourself future pain.

What we don’t realize is that keeping ourselves “safe” is also keeping us from being in love. Secret #4 is about letting those walls down and allowing ourselves to be known. Love is about intimacy, which means In-To-Me- See. No one can give themselves to you if you don’t allow yourself to be seen or to be known. Just like Secret #3 is about giving yourself to another, Secret #4 only works when you allow them to know who you really are, so they can give themselves to you. 89 | David Bederman

The magic of love is an experience that you can never have by yourself, but the risk of keeping yourself too protected means the risk of living a loveless life. Like everything we’ve learned together so far, success is built outside of your comfort zone, where you are open to the possibility of failure. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable does mean that you might also get hurt someday, but it also means you are ready to attract and cultivate true love in your life.

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#10 The Best Drugs Are Free

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.

Cicero

o, we’ve talked and seen a lot of proof about how the mind can affect the body: how being grateful Sand seeing the positive can make you healthier and evencan make you live longer. That’s great. But what if I told you that it worked the other way around too? What if the body could affect the mind as powerfully as the mind has been proven to affect the body? Well, get ready to meet the three most powerful wonder-drugs that will super-charge your success efforts, if you take enough of them: Exercise, Sleep and Touch.

See, Rene Descartes, the “father” of modern philosophy and of the scientific revolution thought that the mind and 91 | David Bederman the body were two completely different things, and he taught that they needed to be studied separately. Psychology became focused on learning about the mind while medicine focused on studying the body. In the last 25 years though, scientists and doctors have both realized the deep connections between the two fields and the need to begin merging their studies together.

The more studies were conducted, the more they proved how much we need to learn to see the mind and body as two halves of a greater whole. Just as medicine realized that the mind can affect the body, psychology started to realize that the body also affects the mind.

Exercise

A great example of this is research that was done in 2000, where 156 clinically depressed people were divided up into 3 groups. Each was given either: a) exercise, b) anti- depression medication, or c) medication and exercise together. What they found was amazing.

After 4 months, all 3 groups improved more than 60% and were no longer considered clinically “depressed”. More amazing though was that all 3 groups improved by the same amount (though the exercise took a week or so longer to take effect). This means that, in the end, exercise was just as powerful as the medicine to treat depression!

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But the most amazing part? 10 months after the experiment ended and the groups stopped taking the medication and exercising, 38% of the group taking medication had returned to being clinically depressed, compared to only 9% of the exercise-only group!

The takeaway from this though is not that exercise is as powerful as an anti-depressant; the takeaway is that not exercising is the same as taking a depressant! We weren’t made to sit around nearly as much as we have become used to doing. We were built to be active! When we do sit around too much – when we give up that much-needed exercise – we give up our wellbeing and often end up sacrificing our chances of success.

Exercise has been proven to: increase self-esteem, lower anxiety and even to help in the treatment of mental disorders. The short of it is, if you want to succeed, you need to take this exercise drug! No question about it.

And forget about the research, I’m living proof. For years I avoided exercising. I’ve spent most of the day in front of a computer, and maybe once or twice a month I’d get out and work up a sweat. I felt tired and I wasn’t really beaming with energy.

But for over a year now I’ve started biking again, 3 or 4 times a week. Since then, my energy level and concentration have shot waaaay up. I feel a ton happier 93 | David Bederman and my creativity is through the roof. No joke. Since I started exercising regularly, I feel like a totally different person…and I’m totally addicted to the drug! (The exercise drug, that is…)

You should check with your doctor first, but even light exercise for 20 minutes, 3 times a week will make a huge difference in your life – and it’s an absolute must if you’re serious about success.

Sleep On It

Before good ‘ole Edison invented light, the average American slept 10 hours a day. Today, the average sleep time is down to 7 hours, but only 25% of 18-29 year olds get that amount every night. The right amount of sleep leads to huge increases in energy levels, and most people need between 7 to 10 hour per night. Too little sleep leads to weight gain, reduced motor skills, and is a major cause of stress and anxiety. Even more though, tests showed a significant improvement in brain functioning after getting enough sleep, including improved short and long-term memory functioning.

Night-owl or Early-bird?

Another thing to check out is your internal rhythm, because research found that many of us don’t even have a 24-hour cycle. If you like to work late at night, chances

The Secret Sauce of Success | 94 are your internal clock’s cycle is longer than 24 hours. If that’s you, you probably enjoy staying up late, but have a harder time getting up in the morning. If you work best early in the morning, it probably means your internal cycle is a bit shorter than 24 hours, which makes it easy for you to get up in the morning, but you get very tired at night.

Whichever type you are, it’s important to find your natural internal rhythm and pay attention to it. Either way, to get high on success, you’ll want to make sure you’re taking between 8-10 hours of the sleep drug, every day.

Touchy-Feely

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you might be touch- deprived. Touch contributes to our physical health, helps us overcome injuries, helps kids grow, helps mental health and can even improve your sex life. On the other side, being touch-deprived can increase anxiety and lead to a slew of other problems too.

In one study on premature babies, one group was given 45 minutes of massage per day while the other group was not. They discovered that the bodyweight of the babies who got the massaging actually increased 47% more than the non-massaged babies. After a 10-month follow-up, 95 | David Bederman they found that the massaged babies also had significantly better brain functioning too!

While kids need enough touching for their minds and bodies to develop properly, we big kids need enough touch in our lives to stay healthy and thrive as well. Partners in romantic relationships can work together on this and should! But even if you’re not in a relationship right now, regular massage, reiki or reflexology treatments, plus getting a lot of hugs from family and friends, can actually play a serious part in keeping you focused, healthy and primed for success.

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#11 Making It All Your Fault

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

John C. Maxwell

K. It’s not really. You didn’t do anything and you’re not in trouble...this time. But one of the O biggest de-railers of success is the failure to take responsibility. If you want to succeed in life, you need to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life, and that means that everything is your fault…but in a good way.

This is totally contrary to how most of us have been brought up. Society has taught us that most often, things are somebody else’s responsibility and that nothing is really our fault. Take “the customer is always right” 97 | David Bederman mentality. We all learn from a young age that, if we’re paying for it, then we’re right, and we don’t have to take responsibility if something goes wrong, even if it really is our fault.

Or how about the many civil rights that are bestowed upon us as citizens of the Western world? How often do we hear about the responsibilities that go along with those rights?

Hardly ever.

It’s usually somebody else’s responsibility to uphold those rights – like the police or the government. My right to safety and security means that the police are responsible to arrest the criminals and keep the streets safe. And if crime does increase, well, it’s the police who are responsible to fix it.

We’ve been taught that the problems of society are the elected officials’ responsibility to deal with. I mean that’s why we elected them in the first place, isn’t it? To take responsibility for the working of society. Now, putting a government in charge of the responsibilities of society is obviously a good thing, but the point here is that the more we get used to making others accountable for the outcomes in our lives, the more we are being trained to blame.

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I’m not saying you should start filling every pothole you find in the road, or start taking the responsibilities back from government. What I am saying is that you need to take 100% responsibility for yourself and for what happens in your life, even if it wasn’t your “fault”.

Successful people are people who take responsibility for everything that happens to them; if life sends them lemons, they don’t waste time finding who to blame, they figure out how to make – and to sell – lemonade.

Life will always hand out lemons, but if you remember the ideas in Ingredient #2, then you know that this is the whole point. Who you become in life does not depend on what cards you are dealt; who you become depends on how you play your hand.

Who’s Responsible for My Happiness?

Look for a second at happiness. Happiness is a key component to success and, for me, when I feel like crap, I can’t get a darn thing done – I just can’t function. Staying in a positive and happy space has become my number one priority. But what if you’re in a relationship and your boyfriend is always making you late. It’s probably going to annoy you, and you’ll likely get upset, right? I mean, if he would just get it together and start showing up on time, 99 | David Bederman you wouldn’t be so upset. This is clearly his fault! Am I right?!

But wait a minute. Allowing someone or something else to be responsible for your happiness – or any other aspect of your success – is a dangerous game. What if he never gets it together? Will you never be happy?

Happiness, and every other aspect of your being, is a choice. You choose to get upset at the late boyfriend, just like you choose not to get upset and scream at the cop who stops you for speeding (cause if you did, you’d probably end up in jail). It’s not easy, but taking full responsibility for your feelings and for your choices, is an absolute pre-requisite of success.

Like I said before, staying in a positive space is my number one priority, because I know that for me, it’s the most determining factor of my success. So why would I ever put the keys to my success in anyone else’s hands? Why would you ever choose to let someone else’s actions determine how you feel?

People succeed because they choose to succeed; they choose to be happy, they choose to take risks and they choose to start creating the life that they choose to be living. As the author James Altucher would say, successful people are those that “Choose themselves”.

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Success is really about taking your life wherever you choose to go with it. But if you don’t control the ship, you don’t decide where it goes. When you blame others for what happens to you (like getting angry for not being treated the way you deserve to be treated) you put some control over your destiny into someone else’s hands, like a leaf getting blown around in the wind.

On the other hand, when you take 100% responsibility for everything that happens to you – including your feelings, your actions and your choices – then you take complete control over your life and you are free to take it anywhere you want to go.

When you take responsibility, it means you take control, and you anchor yourself against the changing winds that surround you. Taking control of your life means taking absolute responsibility for everything in it, and for success, that’s the best thing that could ever have happened to you… 101 | David Bederman

#12 Meditation

I have brought myself, by meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

Benjamin Disraeli

o far we have talked a lot about what a huge effect our state of mind can have on our bodies and in S Ingredient #10, we saw how exercising the body can have a major impact on our state of mind. Ingredient #12 is about bridging the two together, fusing the power of body and mind and working them, as one.

While it’s been a mainstay of spiritual and success practice in the East for thousands of years, it was only in the 1970’s that meditation started getting mainstream acceptance in the West. Scientists were starting to notice its

The Secret Sauce of Success | 102 transformational power, and the clinical results were impossible to ignore.

One of the greatest powers of Ingredient #12 is that it affects how you see and feel about yourself, which boosts self-esteem and increases happiness levels too. The secret about meditation though is that its focus is not on achieving any specific outcome; it’s about connecting yourself with an awareness of the here-and-now. When you deepen your awareness of the present moment through meditation, incredible things can happen.

Amazing Things

In his book, Destructive Emotions, researcher Daniel Goleman worked with the Dali Lama and meditation master Lama Oser to learn the scientific effects of meditation. By studying Oser’s brain patterns during days of intensive meditation, Goleman found that meditation can actually lead to:

• Increased happiness • Higher feelings of wellbeing • Increased brain functioning • More emotional sensitivity to others • Less anxiety/depression • Strengthened immune system • Increased creativity 103 | David Bederman

• Increased short/long-term memory

And the list goes on! In another experiment, Lama Oser’s relaxed, meditative state was also shown to impact others. When he entered into a controversial exchange with an intolerant and confrontational scientists, the scientist remarked:

“I couldn’t be confrontational… it was overwhelming… I felt something like a shadow or an aura and I couldn't be aggressive"

The point here is though, we don’t have to meditate for 30 years to feel these effects. Even meditation for 10 minutes a day every day can help you become more self- aware, live more consciously, take more responsibility in your life, become more accepting of yourself, be more assertive, increase your integrity and help you to achieve your goals. If you aren’t getting this, meditation has success written all over it!

And yes, this may clash with what society tells you, but society has not taught you to become successful! Success is all about uncovering your greatness and sharing it with the world. Meditation is, without a doubt, one of the big guns in that department.

There are literally thousands of different meditative practices you can check out. One of my favorites, and it’s

The Secret Sauce of Success | 104 so easy, is called “quiet sitting”. Just sit there, quietly, with your eyes closed and back straight (chair or floor…doesn’t matter), focusing on a simple, positive image, word or meaningful idea. I like to meditate on the ideas in Ingredient #9 – that we are all some of a great Oneness. For me, this is an incredibly powerful practice and meditating on it for a few minutes before I start my day has made a huge impact on my own journey towards success.

Also, meditating on the fulfillment of your goals, as we discussed in Ingredient #3 is a huge success builder. As we said over there, visualizing yourself fulfilling your goals and feeling the emotions that go along with that is a great combination of the two Ingredients, and is a super- powerful success practice.

YOGA

Yoga is a type of meditation involving movement, stretching and focused breathing which is also incredibly powerful and many people practice yoga in addition to traditional meditation as part of their routine. Nowadays, you can literally sign up for at least 10 different yoga classes in any given city, which is great because there are also a ton of different kinds of yoga.

In the end though, keep it simple. Just get some quiet, focused, meditation happening in your life and you will 105 | David Bederman see how fast it helps you to focus on your goals and helps you to get in touch with your hidden but unlimited potential.

The Secret Sauce of Success | 106 Conclusion

The Secret Sauce of Success is a framework that gives you some of the most effective ideas and tools for achieving true and lasting success in your life. The goal of making The Secret Sauce a part of your life is to help you create an extraordinary life that you absolutely love living.

Ingredient #1 brought down an ancient perspective for answering the question “who are you?” which puts your life into the big picture. “You” – the soul – are much greater than just the “character” you play in life and becoming more and more aware of that idea is the key to unlocking your true potential in the world.

Ingredient #2 revealed the ancient secret of perfection, that life is designed to be an endless journey of growth, discovery and achievement. The goal here is to avoid the trap of seeing life as a destination. The key to achieving the greatest fulfillment from life is to embrace the journey – your journey – and to never stop growing, learning and becoming the very best you can be.

Ingredient #3 showed you the power of setting goals and the creative potential of visualization and beleifbelief. The greatest way to accomplish anything in life is to set a clear goal to achieve it and then plant the belief that you 107 | David Bederman will succeed in your mind. While it sounds simple, setting clear goals and believing in your ability to achieve them is rooted in ancient wisdom, and has been proven over and over again by thousands of successful men and women as the real secret to achieving everything you want in life.

Ingredient #4 is about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and the power of going outside of your comfort zone. The more you get used to trying new things, the more it actually builds your confidence which, affects every aspect of your ability to achieve success.

Ingredient #5 is about the power of the mind and how the power of a positive mindset can actually make you live longer and help you recover from difficult situations. The road to success is paved with challenges and a positive outlook helps you grow and recover quickly from them. More importantly, a positive “merit finding” outlook helps you persist on your path towards success and avoid getting hung up by challenges and giving up.

Ingredient #6 – gratitude has been proven to increase your level of optimism, happiness, your physical health and your ability to achieve your goals. Training yourself to take time to write down and reflect upon the things you are grateful for in life is an extremely powerful practice that has more to do with creating success than most people would even believe.

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Ingredient #7 There is nothing more poisonous to your chances of success in life than the illusion of perfection. Striving for excellence – and not for perfection – embraces the truth that “failure” is a natural part of success and a normal part of the journey, as discussed in Ingredient #2.

Ingredient #8 Moving beyond the desire for validation and towards creating higher Independent Self-Esteem is a major cornerstone of success. Self-Esteem is the #1 Secret of Success, because it’s what all successful people have in common. Ancient wisdom says that the source of infinite self-esteem is the understanding that you are some of the all-encompassing Universal Oneness. In other words, you are a someOne, which makes you an all-important part of the Universe.

Ingredient #9 Every person needs Love, which makes it a vital key to success. The three-thousand year old secret of creating and attracting love into your life is first learning to make space for an “other” in your life – making room within yourself for another to exist. Respecting that Otherness is the next step, accepting other people’s ways of doing things and of seeing the world. Giving of Yourself to another – giving what they need to receive isn’t always easy, but it’s what needs to happen for love to exist. And Letting Others Give to You means letting yourself be vulnerable – allowing yourself to need someone else and letting yourself be known by them – is the deepest secret of being in love. 109 | David Bederman

Ingredient #10 Having enough Exercise, Sleep, and Touch in your life may very well be the most powerful – and necessary – drugs you ever have been prescribed; and they’re free! Amazing research shows how important getting enough of these drugs is to your mental and physical health and your overall ability to succeed.

Ingredient #11 Taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life, the good along with the bad, is the first step to really being able to choose to create success in the first place. Society often trains us to hold others accountable for our situation, but taking responsibility for yourself – for your feelings, actions and your choices – is what puts your life 100% into your control, and puts the keys to success 100% within your reach.

Ingredient #12 Meditation, the ancient power-practice of calming and focusing the mind has been proven to increase physical wellbeing, self-esteem, your ability to achieve your goals, emotional health, and the list goes on. Meditation is perhaps the most powerful of all success building tools because it bridges the power of the body and the mind together. The benefits of meditation can be achieved by the simple practice of even just sitting quietly for a few minutes each day, focusing on your breath and an awareness of “the here and now”

The Secret Sauce of Success | 110

Take the First Step

First of all, congratulations for making it this far. Success is built on action and the fact that you’ve read this book through to the end is a really big step! Now if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed from all the different ideas we’ve covered and are having trouble figuring out where to begin, don’t worry! Here’s the first step…

The first thing you need to do right now is find a quiet and relaxed place and take a minute to sit, close your eyes and just breathe for a while. Our minds have a habit of keeping us away from pausing and reflecting, rushing us off to our next appointment or other, more important thoughts. Really though, one of the most important steps in creating real success in your life is to learn to take control of those moments back, and not let your mind whisk you away from taking time to pause and reflect.

Then, as we talked about in Ingredient #3, with your eyes closed, I want you to see the success you want for yourself, in your mind. When is it happening? Is it 3 years from now, or is this a dream of success that’s 20 years down the road? All are great and, often, we set multiple goals for ourselves at different stages down the road. For now though, I want you to keep it simple.

Where are you headed? What is the most important thing you want to achieve right now? Choose that one goal and 111 | David Bederman picture it. (If you are having trouble answering that, then go back and re-read (and do!) Ingredient #2.)

Then, see yourself living in that place, having achieved that result and having become that person. Keep your eyes closed and start to feel the emotions of that new reality you have created for yourself. How does it feel to be there? If your goal is financial success, see and feel yourself in possession of the exact sum of money you aspire to have. If your goal is marriage or a family, picture yourself having found your soul-mate or with your children and feel, in as much detail as you can, what that experience will be like – how much joy and fulfillment it will bring you.

Next, after you’ve visualized that place in your mind for a few minutes, I want you to go back in time and see the steps that needed to take place in your life in order to get there; what led up to that moment? Then go forward in time – where does your life go from there? What is the end goal that this dream will achieve?

Doing this exercise every day (the more often the better!) will bring you closer to achieving your goals and creating an extraordinary life than any other one of the ingredients. While each of them play an important part in creating success, unless you can clearly see what success looks like in your mind, you won’t be able to create it!

The Secret Sauce of Success | 112

The Next Step

The next step, after you establish this daily practice of visualization is to add some spice into the mix: pick your next favorite ingredient and start stirring it into your life.

Don’t overdo it– remember that success takes time and it’s not all-or-nothing. Take the ideas and practices you connect to most from this book and slowly, start adding them, one ingredient at a time, into how you think, what you say and what you do.

Soon, you’ll find a mixture and consistency of ingredients that works best for you and you’ll make The Secret Sauce into your own recipe for Success!

Your Mission

This world needs you. There is something special that you have to bring to this world that nobody else can do it for you.

You are so much greater than the person you you’ve allowed yourself to become and now is your time to shine!

I believe that the greatest thing you can ever do is to uncover your greatness and share it with the world.

If we can support each other in doing that, then I believe we will change the world.

113 | David Bederman

Final Thoughts

Thank you for joining me on this journey through The Secret Sauce of Success. I hope you’ve found value in these pages and I encourage you to apply and share everything that you have learned.

In truth though my friend, this is only the beginning, because the real journey starts now in how you choose to put these ideas to work in your own life.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this book and would love to hear more about you and your journey. Reach out to me here and share your story: http://davidbederman.com/go/connect/

My dream is to create a global community of powerful people, who are committed to stepping into their greatness, creating remarkable lives and making a difference in the world. If this sounds like you, then join us at: http://davidbederman.com/go/community/

Enjoy the journey….

Love,

David Bederman