Those who find their WHY in life, find their passion to pursue something with a fanatical persistence that virtually guarantees they will succeed. When you find your WHY, there is no lack of knowledge, no obstacle, no NO that will stop you. Your WHY motivates you every day so you can keep pushing the ball up the hill. There’s no question that when you find your WHY, you know it. There is never any doubt. If you are unsure about whether you have found your WHY, you haven’t. But finding your WHY is not that easy. You can either wait for your WHY to find you, or you can go out and find it yourself. So, where do you begin?

There are many places to look but, from my research, I have discovered that your WHY typically can be found inside one of the following Freedoms:

• Freedom from poverty
• Freedom from financial worry
• Freedom from debt
• Freedom from “work”, employment or being a wage slave
• Freedom from your current responsibilities
• Freedom from others currently in your life
• Freedom from your current life and environment
• Freedom to travel
• Freedom to spend more time with the ones you love
• Freedom from addictions
• Freedom from poor health
• Freedom to live your life on your own terms
• Freedom from dependence on others
• Freedom from time pressures
• Freedom to learn and pursue novel, or new things

Don’t wait for your WHY to find you. Go out and find it yourself. It’s out there, waiting to be discovered. It is the light switch that, when found, will turn on some passion that resides deep inside of you. Your WHY can usually be found inside some freedom you desire. Each morning find a quiet place, sit down for 10 minutes, close your eyes, silence your mind and focus your thoughts on one singular thing: What is my WHY? This puts the old brain (subconscious – aka limbic system and brain stem) to work. In time, your old brain will find the answer and let you know through intuition (that voice inside your head).

It is virtually impossible, for most individuals, to immediately abstain from a bad habit. It requires enormous willpower and willpower is a very limited resource. Willpower appropriates too much brain fuel (glucose). Eventually the brain runs out of brain fuel and willpower fades, forcing us to fall back on bad habits. But there is a way to train your brain to release you from bad habits that does not demand too much brain fuel.

Instead of going cold turkey on a bad habit, continue to engage in the bad habit, but reduce your engagement in the habit by 50%. The brain will not fight you on this because it requires a minimum expense of willpower. Once you have trained yourself to engage in a bad habit at a reduced rate of 50%, that 50% becomes the new habit in about 30 days. After 30 days you can then reduce your engagement another 50%. After a few months you will be able to abstain from the bad habit altogether without any push back from your brain.

In 1938 Harvard University embarked on what would become the longest study of adult development. The study involved 724 men who were split into two groups:

1. 268 sophomore students from Harvard University and
2. 456 sixteen year olds from the most disadvantaged areas in Boston

There have been 4 directors at Harvard who have continued this study. Sixty of the 724 subjects are still alive. Four conclusions have been made about happiness:

1. Loneliness Kills – People with little to no relationships are unhappy, less healthy and do not live long lives.
2. Toxic Relationships Kill – Relationships with individuals who have problems and bring conflict and stress into our lives cause unhappiness, poor health and reduced longevity.
3. Rich Relationships Improve Life – Relationships with individuals who lift us up and improve our lives make us happier, healthier and live longer.
4. The Stronger and More Rich Relationships You Have, the Better – Strong Rich Relationships increase brain function, health and longevity.

Our brain is really two brains. The New Brain (neocortex) and the Old Brain (Brain Stem and Limbic System). The New Brain has only been around for a few hundred thousands years. From a human evolutionary perspective, the New Brain is brand new. It is the CEO of the brain and houses our executive functions. Some refer to it as the conscious brain. The Old Brain has been around for millions of millions of years. From an evolutionary perspective, the Old Brain is very old. It houses all of our emotions and controls most of autonomic functions of the body, like keeping our organs working properly without any thinking required. Some refer to is as the subconscious brain.

Because our Old Brain, our emotional brain, has been around so much longer than our New Brain, it is infinitely more powerful than our New Brain. This can be a good or a bad thing. If we have been raised in a negative environment and thus, habituated or programmed at an early age with negative emotions, then our emotional brain becomes our enemy. It will undermine us during our entire lives with outbursts of anger that destroy relationships, tell us to quit when the going gets tough, fill us with a scarcity mindset using envy and jealousy as its tools and it will demand instant gratification every chance it gets. When your emotional brain is filled with negative emotions you have absolutely no chance of succeeding in life. You will fail.

If you were raised in a negative environment, or are filled with all sorts of limiting, negative beliefs, all is not lost. You still have your New Brain to rescue you. Your New Brain can be called into action to help reprogram your emotional brain from negative to positive. And it’s not hard at all. It’s just a three-step process. The first part of the process is to engage in something I call Dream-Setting. The second part is expressing gratitude every day for the things you have. Gratitude is the gateway to optimism and a positive mindset. The third part is to create daily affirmations around new beliefs you would like to have. Examples: “I believe I can accomplish anything if I put my mind to it,” “I am confident in myself,” “I will lose 30 pounds by May,” “I love to exercise”.  Customize your affirmations to reflect the future ideal person you desire to be. These affirmations are programmed into the Old Brain as if they were goals to pursue. The Old Brain loves goals, so it will nudge you through that voice inside your head to take certain actions. As long as you continue to repeat these affirmations, the Old Brain will continue to nudge you. It won’t stop nudging you. It will nudge you in your sleep, in the shower, on the toilet, while your commuting to work, when you’re sitting on the couch or turning into a McDonalds.

As soon as you begin to shift your Old Brain from negative to positive, it will immediately begin to produce positive emotions and suppress negative emotions. It’s automatic. Stay positive my friends!

Daily self-education is one of the Rich Habits of self-made millionaires. Self-education through reading, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts or watching videos such as TEDx talks causes you to grow in knowledge. The more knowledgable you become, the more valuable you become to those you serve. The more valuable you become, the more money you make. Below are some strategies I uncovered in my Rich Habits study that will help you maximize your learning time:

First Hour of the Day

The first hour of the day is the optimal time to engage in self-education. Your brain is just emerging from its alpha stage (sleep stage conducive to learning), is well rested and your willpower is at its highest. During this first hour devote 15 – 20 minutes of technical reading. Technical reading is any reading that is related to your what you do for a living. It is the hardest type of reading. Do your technical reading first. After completing your technical reading, devote another 15 – 20 minutes to any reading material that excites you. This could be inspirational reading or reading related to some hobby or passion.

Document What You Learn

Keep a Fact Binder broken up into a few key categories:

• Job-Related
• Passion/Hobby-Related
• Current Events
• Science
• History
• Health
• Successful People
• New Words

You should customize your categories to suit your interests. When you learn anything new, write it down in your Fact Binder.

Review What You’ve Learned

Repetition is the key to long-term memory consolidation. Spend 15 – 20 minutes each day reviewing your Fact Binder.

Blog What You’ve Learned

The process of writing down what you’ve learned helps transfer that new knowledge to long-term memory.

Communicate New Knowledge

Sharing new information with others improves your understanding of that new information. When you have to communicate something you know, just like a teacher does, it elevates your grasp of the subject matter. You really have to know your topic in order to effectively communicate what you know to others.

By the time the world woke up to the frightening emergence of the Nazi regime, group-think had already infected most of Germany. Being part of a group changes how you think and behave. It changes your habits and the direction of your life. We see group-think at work in sports teams around the world, large corporations like Google, self-help organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers and we see it even within the family unit.

For those struggling in life or those who would like to reach for the stars, finding a group of like-minded, success-oriented people who can help lift you up, will fast track your escape from poverty or rise to riches.

But how do you find the right group of individuals to join? That is the million dollar question. The first step requires self-assessment. You need to define the future life you want to have. To do this, you must ask yourself a few fundamental questions:

1. What does my future life look like?
2. What does the future me do for a living?
3. What type of people does the future me associate with?
4. Where does the future me live and work?
5. What skills and knowledge does the future me possess?

You need to clearly define what type of life you desire. Once you have done this, the next part of the process is to find people who share your dreams, goals, lifestyle, thinking, etc. It’s not that easy. But there is a shortcut.

Organizing a Mastermind Group of like-minded people is a good start. All you need is four, besides yourself. Meet once a week physically or via Skype, phone, etc. The key to the success of the group is consistency. You must devote at least one hour every week to the group. The individuals within the group will eventually open up their contact list to you and introduce you to many other like-minded people. Ben Franklin got his start with a Mastermind Group. So too did Steve Jobs and many other successful people.

If you are disgusted with your life and want real change, you need to change your environment. That environment is made up of people you associate with regularly. That means, in order to change your life, you need to change who you associate with. When you find the right group of success-minded individuals your life will begin to change almost immediately.