I spent most of this weekend at a Millionaire's Boot Camp!

If English is not your first language, you might look in your dictionary to see what "Boot Camp" means and find one of the following definitions:

1. A training camp for military recruits.
2. A correctional facility that uses the training techniques applied to military recruits to teach usually youthful offenders socially acceptable patterns of behavior.

You may be wondering why wannabe "Millionaires" may need to attend "Boot Camps". Well, if you have ever attended a Tony Robbins seminar, or seminars based on the same model, you will know that the audience is controlled & manipulated by a set of regular "Simon says" type of commands eg. stand up! sit down! raise your fist! shout "I'm a millionaire!", louder! jump! shout "I'm a millionaire!"

When you get 12,000 people in an auditoriam with Tony Robbins, people will even walk over burning coal shouting "Cool Moss! Cool Moss" after a whole day of being asked to jump, shout and gesticulate. What the controlled mind is capable of!?

So, the title "Boot Camp" is quite apt for the Millionaire Mindset weekend where we were treated to the wisdom of self-professed multi-millionaires flown in all the way from Australia and Europe.

One of the most interesting statistics I heard over the weekend is that immigrants in any country are 4 times more likely to be successful in business than the indigeneous folk. The reason given for this is that immigrants are much more aware of the opportunities available to them and much more in gratitude (which is supposedly an essential character trait of the rich and wealthy...must be hard! :) :))

On the other hand, when I have met successful immigrant business people, they have usually given their prime reason for starting a business as the fact that they had no other choice...that it was a case of survival. Racism and discrimination in the workplace pushed the intelligent to restore their self-esteem and take control of their own capacity for success.

Perhaps it makes no real difference whether the cause was an attempt to escape pain or to gain pleasure. What matters is the end result?

Actually, it's not quite as simple as that.

One of my second-generation Indian friends gave up her professional career as a Lawyer and bought a large hotel in the centre of London instead. This roused the disappointment and despair of her parents who have been successful business people ever since they migrated to England from East Africa.

"We had no choice but to go into business" they admonished their reckless daughter. "We have worked hard all our lives so that our offspring could enjoy doing something professional instead!"

What do you think? If you were advising a younger friend about choosing a careerpath in business vs a profession, what would you say?

So many entrepreneurs & successful professionals seem to be driven by a deep underlying fear of not being good enough. The psychologist Adler, a contemporary of Freud, based psychological theories on this "inferiority complex" ...he said that we are driven to compensate for our feelings of unworthiness and inferiority by engaging in behaviour that disguises this...sometimes this manifests in the "superiority complex" which is basically just a disguise for the former.I have been wondering about how this inferiority/superiority complex manifests in the slave trade (which unfortunately is not just a thing of the past) and workaholism where we make OURSELVES slaves to work.I know I have an inferiority complex...do YOU? or do you, like most of us, just disguise it well....or was Adler just off his head and way off the mark? :) :)

If you saw the BBC programme "The Happiness Formula", you may recall the experiment they did where three participants were given an envelope each and asked to open their envelope in turn. The first participant found a "thank you" note and £5 and was pleased. The second participant found a "thank you" note and £10 and was even more pleased. Seeing that the second participant had received twice as much money, the first participant felt disappointed with his lot (whereas previously he'd been happy). The third participant opened the envelope and found only a "thank you" note. She shook the envelope several times hoping to find some money like the previous two participants had received but her envelope was totally devoid of any monetary reward. As you can imagine, she was quite peeved.

The point of this experiment was to illustrate how comparisons cause us to be disappointed and unhappy.

And yet, we are biologically programmed to compare. Our senses discern subtle differences between the essence and quality of everything we ingest and absorb, whether it is physical matter, emotional or intellectual stimulation.

Did you know that one of the greatest fears that drives people to become workaholics or other expressions of despair, is the deep-rooted belief that they are not good enough? When we feel that we or anyone else that we are judging is "not good enough", it may be appropriate to ask ourselves "compared to what?" or "compared to whom?"

Comparing yourself or others to something or someone inappropriately can be one of the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction. Relationship patterns at the micro level reflect themselves in the macro level. If you feel you are "not good enough" with a mediocre salary, you will continue to feel that you are "not good enough" when you win the lottery.

How have you escaped from the "enough" comparison trap? I am interested to know what strategies people use to rise above the "good enough" trap.....