Confessions of a Dumbass

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

There’s something I just need to get off of my chest. A confession of sorts. Something I have realized, in stages, pretty much my entire life. It’s a bit embarrassing, then again, liberating. I’ll explain in a minute.

For now, let me just say, “I am a Dumbass.”

Yeah, I’m a Dumbass. Now, let me elaborate a little. At some point in our lives, every one of us has been the dumbest person on the planet, right? For example, when I was in college, my room-mate came in with a box of light bulbs and proceeded to swap the bulbs out of our kitchen fixture/ fan. He hit the switch and flew in to a mild rage when the light didn’t come on. I walked over, pulled the little hanging cord and behold, there was light. At that moment, confirmed by the befuddled look on his face, he was the biggest dumbass on the planet. We have all had those moments, days,…  decades…

I’m not talking about being that kind of Dumbass. I do that 3 or 4 times a day. No, the definition I’ll use for Dumbass is: One that thinks he knows better even though his results prove otherwise. That’s a real dumbass. A guy that won’t listen, doesn’t take instruction, wouldn’t know good advice if it bit him in the ass. That’s me, or at least it was ( I’m in recovery). See, I’ve been fortunate enough to have incredible connections to people that make a lot of money. A freaking obscene ton of money, actually. I know them, they know me, we are actually friends who talk about things other than business.

Now, the part that made me a Dumbass was that I only regarded these folks as friends, not as mentors. I had a huge opportunity right in front of me, but for some reason, didn’t take it. I deleted valuable emails with killer opportunities, declined webinar training that would enhance my skills, blew off weekly training calls saying that I would catch the recording which I rarely did. Those were the same qualities that I used to complain about in those that would join my business, who really needed to make a change, but never would pull the trigger. You see, Seeing the Opportunity is not the same as Seizing the Opportunity. And when I saw it in myself a while back, it made me sick.

I believe the most important thing to keep you moving forward in life is your willingness to keep learning. In order to learn, you must be willing to be taught. I had stopped learning, didn’t really want to be taught and subsequently, Life started to suck. It was time for a plan…

Dumbass Recovery Plan

The first thing I did for my Dumbass recovery plan was to get crystal clear on what I really wanted out of life and wrote it down. I keep it with me at all times. Next, I set my intention that whatever was necessary to make it happen, I would do, without arguing or excuses. Step 3 was to question the purpose of everything I do and I mean everything. If it doesn’t take me a step closer to Step 1, it doesn’t get done. The final step was to arrange my work pattern so that I only do productive activities that will produce predictable results. For me that looks like:

Blog Daily
E-mail subscribers daily
Listen to Audio or read from someone that has the lifestyle I want
Engage and teach in a live environment at least once a week

I’m glad I could share that with you, leave a comment if you want. You can even write “Nice post, Dumbass”. That would be funny.