I hope you are fit and thinking positive. If you are not the following might help. This article contains a brief but very powerful message about how we program or fail to program success into our minds. It is well worth reading even if you have heard something similar before.

You may, for example, already have heard the famous story about the fleas that were put in a jar with a glass lid.

The fleas jumped as fleas do but kept banging their heads on the glass lid. They could only jump about three inches because of the lid barrier.

Eventually the glass lid was removed but the fleas still kept jumping only three inches high.

They had become programmed to believe that they would never jump higher than three inches. None of them escaped from the jar and none of them reached the height of 30 or more inches that they could easily reach.

Humans are exactly the same. We are programmed at an early age to believe that we will only be capable of making about 20,000 or $40,000 dollars a year by working hard from 9 till 5.

We may go throughout our entire lives holding this belief and never realising that we have the ability to make at least a million dollars a year or more by working less but in a different way. .

Such programming can be provided with the best of intentions by our parents, friends and even ourselves.

The programming does not only apply to money.

I programmed myself to believe that I was no good at maths until I actually started taking the subject seriously and realised that it was not as difficult as I thought. I had been struggling unnecessarily for a very long time.

For several years I have not used the radio/tape recorder in my car. I had lost the instructions for entering the code and believed I was not able to enter the code without these instructions.

This morning, I thought I would have a go anyway without the instructions. It took me about two minutes to enter the code successfully. I could now listen again to great self-improvement audio tapes as I drove along.

Negative self-programming had deprived me of the radio and the tape recorder combined with it for years. In other words negative programming can turn us into complete idiots!

Mercifully positive programming through reading the great positive literature of the world can turn things around. If you don't have time to read an entire book read just one chapter a day or read some of the many great articles on success that are readily available here and elsewhere.

John Watson

John Watson was born in Shanghai at the start of World War II on Dec 31st 1939

His father, a British civil engineer, was given the choice of working in the mines of Northern China for the occupying forces or going to a concentration camp. He refused to work for the invading forces.

As a result the whole family were imprisoned in a concentration camp in the middle of China in 1942. Eric Liddell (featured in the Chariots of Fire) the Scottish runner and missionary was imprisoned in the same camp.

In 1945 the family was rescued by American troops who were parachuted in. John's most treasured possession from this time is a plane made of bullets given him by one of the US soldiers. The tail parts have been lost but most of it remains. He also remembers being given a bottle of coca cola by one of the US troops and has been an addict ever since!

They moved to England and then, when John's father died, to the Isle of Man.

John went to school in the Isle of Man and then taught Physical Education at a prep school in Hertfordshire. Around this time he had three mystical experiences of contact with God.

He then studied English Literature at Cambridge University and later became an English teacher in South East London but, after 5 years, he did a diploma in Religious Studies and began teaching about religion full time.

After 33 years teaching in three London Comprehensive schools, John retired from teaching. He received several awards and commendations for teaching both religious studies and the martial arts. He still teaches martial arts after beginning training in karate at the age of 37. The style he now teaches is Choikwangdo, a brilliant self-defence and health oriented style founded by Grandmaster Kwang Jo Choi in 1987.

In his retirement he began studying internet marketing and continued his study of the psychology of achievement and self development. This has always been a key interest.

John plans on writing reports and books on both teaching and on achievement in general. He feels that many schools let their students down by not teaching enough about how to study (by using mind maps for example) and about how to set goals and how to start saving money for their early retirement!

John's main aim is to make the most of his own potential and to help others make the most of their's. He also wishes to pass on whatever he knows of the meaning of life and to discover more and share more about the truths behind the universe.