It is that time of year ... the holiday season is upon us and we gather with family and friends.

One of my favorite movies to watch this time of year is the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

This time of year it is easy to be gloomy and feel down in the dumps.  The fun times of Summer and Fall are over; the days are getting colder, it is feeling more like winter, and there is less sunshine each day because there are few and fewer hours of daylight.

Add to this our feeling that it has been a tough year (circa 2012) with several natural disasters and a toxic presidential election season here in the U.S. it is easy to be grumpy, full of anxiety, and in a state of flux.

So many of us are seeing that our livelihoods and that our investments are being impacted by the Internet-driven restructuring of the economy. Many believe that what has been unfolding in our economy since 2008 is just the opening phase of an economic revolution that has only been experienced twice before in human history.

The first was about 10,000 years ago when the human race transitioned from hunter-gathers to farmers.  The second was when the Industrial Revolution kicked off in 1769 as Richard Arkwright built the world’s first true factory in Derbyshire, England.  This caused a complete refashioning of the agrarian way of life and England was not recognizable from the nation it was a mere century before. 

Today’s most trustworthy brands, may not have the biggest sales or the market share in their categories, however they have created relationships with consumers through experiences that trigger a visceral response.

Once you build trust through branding, you will have a customer for life.

The Inner Game is a new term for a classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the words, “thoughts are things.”