After nine years

It has been nine years since we left... from our own perspective, our lives have become much better. Not everyone would agree with that, but that is just our own experience. I am sure that for a lot of people, the network marketing business is still working great.

Our only sincere request to all the business owners with such enterprises is to be honest with themselves. Do what is right. Practice what you preach. Make sure what you speak from stage aligns with what you actually do.

I know many people in such businesses stay in for the serendipity. If that is so, what you are telling is that, you are not treating it as a profitable business. In that case, make sure you at least let your up and down lines know that. So, that way, they don't need to wonder what's "wrong" with you.

I would like to thank this business opportunity for helping me in several ways:

• It helped me understand who I am and what I stand for.
• It taught us the importance of, and joy in donating money. It helped us become more detached to money.
• The "book of the month" club exposed us to several excellent books, some of which I still read, refer to, or recommend. Here are some I have used in the past three months:
• Think and grow rich 
• Success through a positive mental attitude 
• Seven habits of highly effective people 
• Man's search for meaning
• The one CD per day recommendation helped me become a better listener.
• The group messaging system (it was called Communikate then) helped us stay connected with other people in the business.
• The business pushed us to limits that we wouldn't have experienced otherwise.
• It helped us become less egoistical by making us do very uncomfortable things (like talking to strangers in malls, and following up people until they shut the doors on our faces).

Finally, to our sponsor and up lines, about whom we have complained a lot here, I don't think they suggested to us anything that they did not actually do themselves. They genuinely felt that they were helping us grow. When I confronted my up lines with things that were uncomfortable to us, they always told us, "Look. This is how we did it. This is the only way we have seen this business grow for us, and the people on our team who are platinum today." - I don't think our up lines were lying when they said that. What I should have done is tell them how I really felt, and gone with my own inner guidance system, than blindly follow whatever "Power of submission" suggested. Each one of us has an internal moral compass, and once it is well calibrated, submitting to that inner guidance system is enough. You don't need to submit to other people, because other people can't know what is going on inside you.

Also, with this (hopefully) final post, I absolve everyone else that we were involved with, like our up lines, down lines, cross lines, and all the people whom we came across, and take 100% responsibility for whatever we experienced.