1 Welcome

Welcome, dear reader. And thank you for making the decision to read this book. That decision indicates that you have an interest in changing your life for the better. It shows that you want to learn something new that will help you improve your present situation.

You’ve made a good decision, for the simple decision to learn something new is one of the first steps in personal and professional growth. Learning is critical to staying mentally and physically sharp no matter what your age. It’s been said that when you stop learning, you begin to die. So don’t ever stop learning!

There is magic in this book. Not so much in the words but in the results that will happen for you as you go through the processes that may fit your situation best. You’ll discover how to make your dreams and desires become reality. You’ll find ways to become the person you want to be. You’ll learn to find happiness and satisfaction in accomplishing your goals.

Are you truly happy in your current relationships with yourself, your significant other, your career, your community, your constituency or any other people or things with whom you interact? If not, there is only one person who can change things to make you truly happy. And that person is YOU!

How do YOU define happiness?

Think about that for a moment.  The critical words in the previous paragraph are “important to you.” Throughout this book you will find advice, suggestions and exercises that start with making sure that what you are going after is truly important to you, and not some superficial thing that your mate, your boss or society thrusts upon you in the name of success.

Will that bigger screen television make you truly happy? And, if so, for how long? What about the fancy new car, a bigger house or the promotion? What if the new TV helps you isolate you from your spouse and children? What if it adds to your debt? How about that car? Besides the monthly payment does it raise your auto insurance premium to astronomical levels, make you a target for local law enforcement and tempt you to do reckless things while driving?

And what about the big, fancy expensive house? How much time and money will you spend decorating and maintaining it? Or throwing parties to show it off? The promotion you’ll need to pay for all these things might come with an impressive title and a corner office. An office you might spend very little time in because your new prestigious high-paying position requires you to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting in cramped airplane seats as you suffer the vagaries of what passes for commercial air travel these days. How much of this will make you happy?

The way you see yourself and feel about yourself will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life and whether or not you fulfill your destiny. — Joel Osteen

Answering that question requires that you take time and effort to think about what happiness means to you. What success means to you. What fulfillment means to you. And what tradeoffs you are willing to make both short and long term, to achieve your goals. It really boils down to how you feel about yourself in both the short- and long-term. Because the way you see yourself and feel about yourself will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life and whether or not you fulfill your destiny.

If it is important to you to spend time with your children so that they grow up to be productive members of society, however you may define that, does spending the majority of your time away from home on business matters contribute to the accomplishment of that goal?

If going camping most weekends in different locales is important to you, will having a house that requires a full day of maintenance each weekend be compatible with that goal?

While you will find magic in this book, you will not find a magic wand. You will find tools and techniques to help you achieve what is important to you with effort, sacrifice, trade-offs and work.

We’ll explore the topic of visualizing the outcomes you wish to achieve as you move through your life and career choices. You’ll learn who to integrate into your plans so

Once you learn how to be happy, you won’t tolerate being around people who make you feel anything less.

that they support your vision and contribute to your long-term happiness, contentment and success. You’ll realize the importance of practicing and how good it feels when that practice pays off when it comes to realizing your dreams and desires. We’ll also talk about the importance of celebrating your successes – small and large, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year.

Perhaps the most critical messages are contained in Visual Image Formation. That is where you’ll learn the nuts and bolts of making “the magic” happen – of making your pictures, coupling them with pleasurable feelings and then making them real. This is how I have been able to do some amazing, remarkable and wonderfully rewarding things over the years.

I went to a customer in Canada one winter in the mid-1970s – when I was in my late 20s – to collect $125,000 for a piece of test equipment that still wasn’t working. The company I worked for needed the money to survive and I was the VP of customer support (which is another story for later in this book). I received the check and my people eventually got things working. The company survived.

Who could have told me that at age 28 I’d be talking to the 50-year old General Manager of a multi-million dollar division of an office machines supplier, basically begging for enough cash to let our company keep its promises to him. I could hardly imagine it as I was doing it!

I gave presentations to audiences in the hundreds. Sometimes on topics I was given on short notice and sometimes for clients I had ghost-written them for. And I won awards for many of those presentations. I don’t tell you this to brag. I say this to illustrate the point that you will be amazed at what you can do when you put your mind to it.

I wrote a 77-page book over a single weekend in 1978. I decided to self-publish it. This was long before print-on-demand and e-books for those of you who may not be old enough to remember when you took a typed – not word processed – manuscript to your local printer and had him make your first print run. And you went to VeloBind to get covers and binding strips and even punching and binding machines.

I had the book printed on very nice paper and the hard cover was a walnut veneer with gold printing. Very good looking and conveying very high quality. The book was titled “Design for Testability” and I priced it at $95. That’s $95 in 1978 dollars, which today would be roughly $347. For a 77-page book in 8-1/2” x 11” format.

Everyone said that I was crazy to ever expect to sell any of these books. But I was convinced based on experience that there was a knowledge vacuum on this topic that I could fill. So I bought a full-page ad in Electronics Test magazine for $1,800 (which today would cost $6,500).

And I sold a few books. About half as many as needed to pay for the ad. But I ran the ad again the following month and sold 3 times as many books as I needed to pay for the ad. I was now on the way to profitability, even with a $10 ($36.50) cost of goods sold. And sales kept increasing.

Gosh, it was fun to get the mail every day. Orders with checks attached. Names of book buyers who obviously had a significant problem to get their companies to spend that amount of money for a book. Going to the garage to punch, bind and put the covers on those books was a labor of love. J

Not six months after that first book was sold I was in the seminar business teaching design for testability to all of the major electronics manufacturers in the United States. My little book had become “The Bible” of design for testability. And it remained that way for over ten years.

Why do I tell you that story? Only to point out that what I’m about to say to you in this book is not fiction. Nor is it wishful thinking. It is a compendium of thoughts, beliefs, and processes that are proven to work. Because they have worked for me and, properly applied, they will work for you.

I was privileged in my formative stages many years ago to have had many opportunities to listen to many wise people. And to be associated with several people who I respected and admired and who became role models for me. I have also been privileged to have become a mentor, an example and a role model for others. And it is that role – that role of giving to others, of inspiring them to do things they never thought that they could do –  that I cherish most throughout all these many years.

I want to inspire people. I want someone to look at me and say “Because of you I didn’t give up.”

And so, dear reader, I invite you to move on to the rest of this book in the hope that you will take my words to heart. I believe that following at least some of them will do you some good. Enjoy, grow and succeed.

There is magic in pursuing personal growth.

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If any of the above resonates with you at all you owe it to yourself to read the whole book. You can order it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RQT1BLK for only $3.49 (electronic) or $12.95 (printed copy that you can hold in your hands — highly recommended!)