Network Marketing - A Path to Personal Healing - The Mastermind Group

People enter into the field of network marketing for so many different reasons, but the most common motivations appear to be the the attraction of the huge potential income, the loss or impending loss of a job, the need to stay at home yet continue to earn, and the need to augment retirement. But there is another one, one that surfaces after the process is well underway, one completely unexpected. This one appears quietly, slipping into your awareness only after weeks, maybe months of effort and work, first as a side effect, but then quickly becoming a powerful motivation to keep moving forward, even on the days that feel like failure. That surprise is the experience of personal healing.Two years ago I suffered a catastrophic loss that dismantled my life as I knew it. For months I sat on my sofa, wadded up in a blanket, utterly unable to crawl up out of my own personal black hole. Despair became a constant companion, and the spark of life dwindled to a pinpoint. I knew it was going to take something totally new to jump-start my heart, and I prayed daily for the light to return. And it did, but in an unexpected way. I got an invitation to attend one of Dani Johnson's "First Steps To Success" seminars.Some instinctual knowing that a door had opened drew me and I got myself moving, pushing through the ravages of isolation to get that event. And once there, I was nearly overwhelmed with being in that room full of busy, active, vibrant people who were filled with purpose. It was exhausting and nearly beyond my strength, but I hung in, because I was alarmed to see to the vast contrast between my very low state, and the aliveness around me. I saw I had help myself, or I would be lost! The message Dani kept delivering over and over was that I had within me a God-given potential to do something great, and that all I needed was commitment and persistence, and association with powerfully positive people. And something within me dormant for long dark months reawakened. I listened to story after story of those who had hit their own rock bottom and risen up to triumph. It was a lifeline! I knew that I had found a group of people who were walking a path that I could step onto myself, a path of personal healing. I couldn't see clearly at the time what I needed to do, but I knew I had to move forward in faith.One of the hardest challenges of grief was the injury to my belief in the goodness of life and the value of my own spirit. Being in the community of successful network marketers directly refuted this. Loss can come in so many forms, different from my particular experience; loss of a job, home, break up of a marriage, any difficult or unwelcome change, or perhaps the struggle against poverty. The single most valuable advice I took at the beginning of this journey, was to create for myself a mastermind group. Dani Johnson was my first mastermind mentor.At that early stage in her seminar, I did not even know the term, yet I was powerfully aware of the uplifting impact of being in her field of influence. A great spiritual maxim is, "The mind takes on the color of the company it keeps." I began to read and study and listen to talks by other leaders in this field: Jim Rohn, Darren Hardy, Napoleon Hill (Think And Grow Rich), Mike Dillard, Brian Fanale, Jim Chao, and Norbert Orlewicz. I often watch the movies "What the Bleep Do We Know," and "The Secret." Listening to the stories of others who just like me started out from a humble place, helped me to grasp I was not any different. And though I did not personally know any self-made millionaires (well, I did meet Dani!), through books and the internet, studying and listening, I could saturate my negative thinking and negative emotions with the positive counter thoughts of my mastermind group. Slowly over time, I am learning how to direct my thinking along the pathways of successful people. And through this, the grief begins to be replaced with hope. I have found purpose!In the year and a half since that first seminar my journey has taken many turns as I have sought out more teachers and skills. I have so many moments when the sun shines that I have never doubted my choice, and always the movement is upward, even, when looking back, it did not seem so. I still have days when grief rolls in to wash away the light, but in this process of acquiring the skills of getting myself out there into the world, I have connected with so many positive and committed people who have helped me to find my voice, and the courage and joy to be seen; these potent and supportive mastermind relationships I have formed along the way keep me steady on the path, and help me to keep singing my song, because I know the darkness always passes. If you are in the place of despair, there is hope, there is a remedy. Find your mentors, form your own mastermind group, and allow their positivity to carry you along until you are on your feet again. And who knows, perhaps one day your words will in turn uplift others.