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During the past several years, we have
trained hundreds of
people in basic gold mining techniques and dozens of men and women in commercial
underwater mining procedures. We have also had the opportunity
 to observe many
others conduct their own mining operations in Africa, South and Central America,
Alaska, Canada, Indonesia, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Madagascar and along the rivers
of northern California.
Running a successful underwater mining operation is one thing. Training someone
else to be able to run successful operations is something else altogether.
Because in addition to working with the theories and operating procedures, you
are also working with the student’s ability, or lack of ability, to apply the
principles, and her or her ability to manage a business.
A number of years ago, it became apparent that future growth and success of my
own commercial activities in this field would depend, in part, on our ability to
train others how to do it -- not just in theory, but in actual application. As
part of our effort to improve our training capability, we have devoted quite a
lot of effort trying to understand why some people (a healthy percentage,
actually) cannot seem to acquire the ability of practical application of
successful mining and sampling procedures--even though they apparently
understand all of the theory behind them.
I personally know a fair number of successful gold miners; some who we trained
and some who learned on their own. Some are successful on a smaller-scale. Some
mine gold to support themselves and their families.
I also know a fair number of rather-unsuccessful miners; some who we have given
some training to and others who would not accept help if their lives depended
upon it.
Unquestionably, there is a distinct difference between successful miners,
partially successful miners, and those who are completely unsuccessful. A
fundamental way to explain the differences is with the concept of wavelengths.
Consider the idea that each person is similar to an electronic frequency radio
tuner, and that the universe consists of an infinity of possible frequencies
which can be tuned in. I propose a theory that successful gold miners have
themselves more finely-tuned on a particular frequency than those who are not so
successful.
Why is it that sometimes you try and tell a person how to do something better,
when the person obviously does not know how to do it properly -- but the person
won’t listen, won’t understand, wants to disagree, becomes suspicious of you,
won’t accept help or rejects your information? Helpful information is coming the
person’s way, but the person is not tuned to the frequency to receive and
utilize the signal. In fact, he may be tuned to reject the very frequency that
will help him.
One of the primary common denominators I recognize being present in successful
miners alike is a never-ending drive, or hunger, or urge to get on and stay on
the pay-streak
during their mining activities. You can actually see this drive or hunger as
part of their fundamental character. This urge is similar to an entrepreneur
looking for a good investment opportunity, or a businessman wanting to close a
profitable deal, or a musician trying to create a creative melody, or the drive
an athlete has to win a race.
All gold miners want to be successful and find lots of gold. The difference is
that successful miners create success by learning how to do it, by hustling
around to find the best opportunities, and by actually making success happen.
They are not sitting around waiting for success to come to them. The best simply
have themselves more finely-tuned and focused on the required wavelength!
Unsuccessful people often divert themselves off the wavelength, when little
losses, or unknowns, are encountered along the way -- by making internal
decisions: “I can’t do it,” “I don’t know,” “I’m not good enough,” and "It's too
hard."
As an example, I can look back to my own involvement with gymnastics in high
school. I was moderately successful -- enough to become co-captain of our team
during my senior year. But there were others we competed against who were far
better than me.
I look at these kids today who are near perfection and realize that I was never
really even in the league. Why? At the time I felt that those who were better
had more inherent gymnastics ability than I did. But the truth is that they were
more focused into gymnastics-perfection than I was. This made them better
gymnasts. There is no rightness or wrongness in this; you usually end up
receiving exactly what you focus upon.
Someone more sympathetic might say that I lacked the proper coaching. And I’m
sure they are right that exterior environmental factors play a part in this. But
even the best coach cannot help a person who insists upon setting fixed personal
limitations.
My wife’s son, Derek Parra, wanted to be the world’s fastest speed
roller-skater. He finished high school a half-year early with honors so he could
move on with training. And then, with no money or financial support, he moved to
Florida where he could be near a world-class coach. He made the world skating
team and took a gold medal at the World Games in his first year. When he
realized that roller skating would not make it into the Olympic games during his
time, he made the very difficult move of switching from the top of the roller
skating world to the lower-end of ice skating. But within several years, he
worked his way up to take gold and silver metals in the Olympics. That is focus
far beyond coaching!!
I’m focused on being the world’s best underwater mining specialist--and on
training others, also, to be very good at it. In working at this, I am finding
that training people only partially has to do with passing along helpful
information. It actually seems more to do with developing the proper focus. This
is why on-the-job training
is so enormously valuable in this particular field.
If I wanted to be an expert at computer programming, knowing what I know now, I
would spend the necessary time learning the basics and then devote myself, at
any cost, for as long as necessary, working under the guidance of a proven
master. Why? Because the master is riding directly upon the frequency of success
in this endeavor. His tuner is locked onto the precise channel I am searching
for. My time is valuable. Why spend ten years trying to attain the successful
frequency, when I can learn it from a master in a fraction of the time?
There is a big difference between having an understanding of the theory of
mining, and having the ability to
apply the knowledge
in the field to obtain the optimum result.
The following is a short list of some of the differences I have noticed between
successful and unsuccessful people -- both inside and outside of the field of
gold mining. Any of us can measure ourselves up against these different factors:
Receiving Help: Successful people willingly and gladly accept help wherever it
is needed. They also jump right in and extend a helping hand to others who are
in need. Unsuccessful people are often suspicious of helpers, wondering what
their underlying intent might be. They might refuse help to others
altogether--or help somebody so they can gain leverage over them. Some refuse
help from others, feeling they don’t deserve it--or sometimes feel that to
accept help would be admitting failure. Such people are nearly impossible to
train.
Handling Data and Knowledge: Successful people, and those on their way towards
success, are hungry for new and more information which they can utilize to boost
themselves towards accomplishment. Each piece of useful information is learned
with care, sorted properly as to its importance and usefulness, and held in
standby as another tool in a never-ending drive for success.
Less-successful people are often trying to be “experts,” remembering bits and
pieces of information to prove to others they know what they are talking about.
Most often, because of lack of true focus upon accomplishing a goal, the
unsuccessful person also has an inability to evaluate the different degrees of
importance of information. For example, such a person might not understand (as
far as his ability to apply knowledge in the gold-finding field), that the datum
“Gold is six times heavier than gravel” is substantially-more important than
“Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity.” An electronics engineer would
probably see the second datum as more important. A successful miner knows the
first datum is more important to him, because it is a far more useful tool by
today’s methods in finding where gold deposits are located.
Focus and Intention: You cannot be an expert at everything. Successful people
choose the areas in which they want to do well and focus their attention and
intention (getting on the frequency) at becoming good in those areas. Such
people are a breeze to train. If you are not telling them how to do it, they are
figuring it out for themselves.
Less-successful people tend to focus either too narrowly--where they cannot
evaluate importance, or too broadly -- where they don’t have the necessary
attention or intention to follow through. Often, unsuccessful people tend to
focus upon failure, problems, barriers, or resentments; rather than focus on
what needs to be done to get on with progress.
Handling setbacks: There is no person who hates a failure more than a
predominantly-successful person! However, many very valuable lessons are learned
the hard way by doing things less than perfect the first few
attempts--especially when moving through a steep learning curve. Successful
people generally have enough personal drive to learn from mistakes and keep
pushing forward, even though there may be some pain and discomfort during the
process.
Unsuccessful people tend to collapse emotionally because of setbacks, resulting
in the primary focus staying on the problems, rather than achievement. After a
time, small setbacks add up to a major failure - which eventually results in the
person giving up altogether on the endeavor. We see this quite regularly in gold
mining, when a person is in the prospecting-phase and doesn’t find a pay-streak
right away.
The successful person, even while feeling some pain during setbacks, recovers
from the loss, re-focuses on the goal, throws off the negative energy, feeds on
the gains, and keeps moving forward as best he or she can. Retaining hope is
probably the most single important ingredient to a successful sampling
operation.
Dealing with Success: Some unsuccessful people don’t do well because they do not
feel they deserve to. But most often, you will find them consciously blaming
others for their problems and failures. Lack of responsibility for one’s self
and one’s actions goes hand in hand with failure. Along with this, you will find
unsuccessful people upset and resentful about the success of others who are
working more energetically towards accomplishment of life’s goals.
Generally, successful miners are happy to see others do well. A successful miner
maybe a bit envious of another’s gold find--but not resentful. And if anything,
he is most likely to spur himself on to work harder to find a better hot spot of
his own.
 Personal Integrity:
This is most important, so I left it for last.
What kind of person am I? Certainly there will not be much personal improvement
if we are not willing to look at what we are, and be honest with ourselves about
what we see.
Don’t like what you see? Change it--don’t bury it!
Everyone is somewhere on the scale from heaven to hell. The direction upward is
through personal honesty, integrity and willingness to improve those things you
see in yourself which you are not pleased with. The way downward is to not look,
to hide from yourself, and to be ruled by those things inside of you that you
don’t like.
Cheaters never really win! Because, by definition, a person who feels he must
cheat to win is below the level of actually playing the game in the first place.
Therefore, cheaters are really living in a game of their own--not truly in
communication with those around them. Giving up your true self, your real
happiness and your personal well-being, is a huge price to pay for having some
temporary material belongings.
However, the game is never over. Wherever a person finds him or herself, the
road continues in two directions.
Successful people win their games by focusing themselves towards accomplishment
within the rules of the game. Don’t like the rules? Do something effective to
bring about agreement to have the rules changed. Winning the game by the rules
brings true satisfaction, and successful people are willing to put out the
necessary effort to gain each step along the way.
Sure, it’s always a bit more difficult to not take the unethical short cuts
which present themselves. But real progress is built upon a solid foundation of
the ability to accomplish.
Unsuccessful people can often be found looking for the short cuts, the
get-rich-quick schemes, or are searching for a way to bend the rules--or cheat
outright to win the game the easy way. Ultimately, such gains are only
temporary, because they are not built upon a foundation of the ability to create
or perform--only the ability to take advantage of shortcuts.
Personal integrity is most important, because a person’s ultimate success in
life, in mining, or any other endeavor, starts from his or her own source-point,
wherever that may be. A person low in personal integrity may not allow himself
to succeed, regardless of how hard we try and train him!
The desire to become a successful gold miner, computer programmer, athlete, or
good husband is an impulse that begins and ends with the individual. And if the
person isn’t being honest with himself about who he is, what he is, what he is
doing, what principle he stands for, and where he truly wants to go, then it’s
more than likely the person will not have the necessary drive to become truly
successful at mining.
There is more to training a person than just showing him or her how to do it
right. Sometimes, you also have to help get the person onto the
success-frequency. And when you have accomplished this in a training activity,
then you have struck real pay-dirt.
Application is the Key
to Success
Hard Work
Never Give Up!
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