Way back in the early 1900s, there was an Italian family with five little children. The father, Giacomo, was a tailor.

Their dream was go to America.

So, they saved all their money and finally booked passage on a cruise ship, but they had to get the lowest of the lowest berths in the very bowels of the vessel. This was not like one of those giant cruise ships we see today, although some of the things were similar.

The family ran out of money once they paid for the tickets. The mother, Vittoria, was smart, however. She prepared by packing a bunch of peanut butter and crackers to last the voyage across the Atlantic.

Every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Mom made everyone peanut butter and crackers. For dessert, she’d give them a little jelly on a cracker.

One day, Pietro, the oldest son, "escaped." He made it up to the main level and started walking around the cruise ship. His family had already been on board for three days, but Pietro hadn't seen anything else of what the ship had to offer.

He looked over into one of the lunch buffets and he couldn’t believe it.

Pietro saw a mountain of cold prawns on ice, guys carving roast beef, an omelette station, and the maître d' said, “Young man, would you like your own table?”

“Are you talking to me?” the boy asked.

“Yes, I am.”

So, the maître d’ brought the boy to a table, and the boy sat down, but with quite a bit of fear. He was uncertain.

With still some trepidation, the boy soon realized that he could take anything he wanted.

He saw a fountain of hot fudge and figured he could get ice cream to go with it. So he did. "Unbelievable," he thought.

Still a bit scared, he went back to the maître d' and asked, “Are you charging me?”

“Oh, no,” said the maître d'. “If you’re part of the cruise, no matter where you’re staying, no matter where your berth is, you have access to all of our restaurants.”

So, Pietro went down and said to his parents, “We can eat anywhere. We already paid for it!”

“No, no, no, no, you stay here with us,” his parents told him, because they had that "old-school" belief system.

But what did they really have?

What they really had was access to everything, but they didn’t take advantage of any of it.

“If we go up there,” they thought, “we’ll be thrown off.” And that’s how it is for most people—afraid to do the things they are allowed and encouraged to do.

We see it when kids go off to college. It continues in the "real world."

But, today, probably more than ever, we have the world at our fingertips. We've already paid for a lot of the "things."

Still, nobody does anything.

Well, it's time to start taking advantage. There's no time like the present.

As always,

Brian

P.S. – It's really all about mindset.

This Italian family was totally normal. And you have to keep in mind, normal is fine. It is acceptable and average.

But, if you want to do great things, become abnormal.

Our coaching program is abnormal, but we're getting great results.