You can fool the mirror. Alcoholics convince the man in the mirror they are not addicted, can quit at any time, and are functioning just fine. I know; I stood in front of that mirror. Lots of fat folks convince the person in the mirror they are big-boned or the victim of a conspiracy or “can’t help it” or “feel fine”. I stood in front of that mirror.

Lots of broke people convince themselves they are victims of the rich, of Wall Street, of an unjust system, of an unseen hand. Lots of people convince themselves “it” – whatever “it” is – is not their fault. And pathetically, we have politicians and a government, a public education system, dim-witted parents, and a media enabling such nonsense every day. (I pander to it as a copywriter too.) And lots and lots of people lie to their mirrors about their goals, about their ambition, about what they want, about how hard they are working at it, about the true obstacles in their way.

It’s not very easy to fool me about that last thing. When someone claims a particular ambition, I only need to observe or determine what and how much they are studying about it, how much they know about its history, what they are giving up and sacrificing in its pursuit; if they are, as Franklin put it, choosing a book to read in place of an evening meal if only one penny to spend. I need only learn how they have responded to the first punch in the nose, fall from grace, or erected barrier en-route to their claimed ambition.

At seminars it’s easy: front row or hallway? Checking e-mail, Facebook, and Angry Birds or taking notes? Break conversation business or BS? Whining about temperature or so focused you missed noticing? Seeking out new contacts or hanging with the same handful? Casualness is the cancer of modern society, more than any other – casual response to getting someone pregnant or getting pregnant outside a committed relationship, to being on unemployment welfare for 200 weeks, to incompetence, and sloth.

FedEx is growing increasingly casual about its response to delayed or lost shipments. There was a time they went ape-s**t over their failure. Now, a shrug. There was a time when young men who got girls pregnant were taken out back and beaten half to death by their fathers, and girls who failed to use free contraception were shamed. When standing in the food stamp line at the grocery store got you stared at, and grumbled about.

Whenever I encounter anybody casual about their business, their work, their claimed ambitions, I know the rest of that person’s truth. Oh, well, mistakes happen. Oh well, everybody’s entitled to a bad day now and then. Oh well, that’s what tomorrow’s for. Whatever will be, will be. Actually, no mistake just happens. Nobody’s entitled to anything. And what you permit yourself, accumulates.

The three opposites of casualness explain why so many accomplish so little and are so consistently disappointed with themselves and their lives – and such easy victims for peddlers of envy, resentment, victim-hood as well as con artists selling magic beans. The three opposites of casualness are deliberate intent, congruent behavior, and self-discipline.

Deliberate intent is always in short supply. Most people, at best, just show up. I could do an entire day on living, acting, and conducting business with deliberate intent. I recall a conversation backstage with another sales speaker at a SUCCESS event. He said, “I hope I do well today.” I said: “I’m going to do between $87,000.00 and $125,000.00 or I’m going to be really pissed.” He asked where the devil I got those numbers.

I explained that I had counted the house and, by averages from 25+ events a year for all prior years, calculated the number of buyers that I’d have to work with; checked into how the two best sales speakers in the first half of the day had done because I’d developed a formula for forecasting my opportunity in a given city based on their results; I’d checked what I did in that same city two years ago and what attendance count had been then; and I had used all that to develop the target range for today’s work, firmly implanted in my subconscious, focused on consciously, and used to set the bar for cash bonuses offered to the crews at the sales booths. To him, this was mysterious. HOPE is easier.

Congruent behavior– the next time you’re at somebody’s house and they’re yammering on endlessly about the new diet they’re on or counting Weight Watchers points or lecturing you on your diet, go open up their fridge and pantry.

In my Renegade Millionaire System, there’s a lot of discussion of Behavioral Congruency. It’s the truth meter of life. To return to the speaking example: I’d come in the night before, not in desperate, panicked, last-minute rush; I’d make sure my product shipment had arrived, giving myself a good window of time to force it being found if need be; I’d re-practiced my presentation, with a stopwatch, seven times, despite having given it hundreds of time before and just two days before; I went to the arena early to finish the above math and then go to every sales station and schmooze and coach the crews, explain the target and their cash bonuses if we hit it; I schmoozed the a/v crew so they’d pay attention; I cajoled the speaker before me to end on time; and, finally, I ran through my Psycho-Cybernetics rituals to get “in state.” I did not disrupt that by taking or making cell-phone calls and dealing with other matters. I did not just rush to the locker room at the last second, fresh off a gulped Big Mac, throw on the pads, and hit the field.

Behavior needs to be congruent with winners, not losers, in general, and in whatever you are specifically doing, and with your claimed goals.

Self-discipline governs what you do – and don’t do – when no one’s watching, and to implement behavior congruent with deliberate intent. It is also about who you are and make yourself into as a person and performer, not just what you do and don’t do. Woefully undisciplined people deservedly fail, are usually beyond help, and are often toxic to be around. Oh, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, your own mirror as much as you insist, but you can’t long fool the marketplace. Its reward or punishment of truth is generous or brutal, and 100% accurate.

I encourage you to read this newsletter at least once every month.