Understanding failure is more important than understanding success. If you want to succeed in life you must learn what not to do. There are two ways to learn what not to do when pursuing a dream or something you are passionate about:

1. The Easy Way – Find a success mentor and learn from their mistakes and failures.
2. The Hard Way – Taking action and learning through the school of hard knocks what works and what doesn’t work. This is the hard way because it often costs you time and money to learn what not to do. It is also an emotional roller coaster ride. Negative emotions, when things go wrong and positive emotions, when things go right. The Hard Way requires an enormous amount of persistence and patience.

“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

This famous line from the 1976 movie Network, became so famous because it hit a nerve with the audience. There are many who feel as if they are stuck in life. Stuck in a job they either hate or could care less about. Stuck in toxic relationships that are eating them from the inside out. Stuck with too much month left over when their money runs out. And tired of always being the statue instead of the pigeon. When they feel like their going to burst, they pop a few pills, drink a few beers or have a few glasses of wine. Anything to numb the pain.

This is the life of the majority of people. They do nothing to change their life circumstances because they don’t believe they can. They don’t understand that they have the ability to design the life of their dreams. This is slave thinking. Knowing your life is not what you intended, yet doing nothing to change it because your beliefs tell you that you can’t. Too many believe they are not good enough, not smart enough, too lazy or lacking the right skills or knowledge. They believe that those who succeed do so because they were born into the right family, went to the right schools, had the right connections, etc. The fact is, success in life comes not in playing a good hand, but in playing the hand you were dealt. According to my data, and supported by independent third party data, 69-80% of all millionaires were self-made. They came from poverty or the middle-class. How is it possible that they were able to break free from their poverty or mediocre lives and achieve success?

We are all born with a genius gene. Every single human being possesses the capacity for greatness. Slave thinking keeps the genius gene switch in the off position. You need to stop being a slave to your thoughts and create new, positive, good thoughts. You need to transform your thinking from a victim mindset to a can-do mindset. You need to become disgusted with your life. You need to rise up and scream,”I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Habits never go away. They are with us forever. This is because habits are formed over many years by repetitive behavior. A habit is nothing more than a series of brain cells (neurons) that have wired together. Once the wiring occurs, the habit if formed and it never goes away. But there is a way to fool the brain into disengaging in a habit that is not serving you well. To stop yourself from engaging in a bad habit, you must avoid the environmental triggers that set the habit in motion.

For example, let’s say you have a habit of eating popcorn every time you go to the movie theatre. You promise yourself that the next time you go to the movie theatre you will not eat popcorn. But the moment you enter the theatre you feel that compulsion to buy popcorn. So what do you do? You avoid going to movie theaters. You change your environment.

Through the exercise of willpower, you are able to forge new habits. But just because you have forged a good habit, it does not mean that the adverserial old bad habit has been erased. It’s still there. Ready to pounce and re-engage, when the time is ripe. An example would be engaging in daily aerobic exercise. Let’s say you’ve taken up jogging. It’s been six months of jogging for 20-30 minutes a day for you. You feel great and you look great. Then you get sick and you’re unable to jog for a week. Or, you experience a death in the family and are unable to jog for a week. Or, you are forced to travel for a week for work and you are unable to find the time to jog that week. In short, some life event takes you off your new good habit for a week. What happens? The adverserial old habit, not exercising, is re-engaged. Because this old habit of not exercising has been with you far longer than the new habit, it is still far more powerful. When you return after a week off from exercise, it has woken up and now fights to stay awake.

What do you do? When you are forced to disengage from a new good habit, such as jogging every day, the only way to re-engage that habit is to start small. You don’t want to go to battle with the old bad habit. You want to fool it into thinking it is still re-engaged and dominant. When you return from that week off, go for a 5 minute jog. The second day try 10 minutes. By day three, your new good habit will awaken and you will be back to jogging 20-30 minutes a day. Your old bad habit will fall back to sleep, anxiously waiting for the next opportunity. Re-engaging a new good habit requires taking baby steps.

I have issues with money. I hate money. I always feel like I never have enough money. I am constantly worrying about money. Anyone have these thoughts? I do. So do hundreds of millions of people. How do you stop these thoughts from ruining your day and creating stress in your life? To change bad thinking habits you must repetitively engage in good thinking habits. For example, the next time a negative money thought enters your head, say one or all of the following:

• I am grateful for the car I have. It runs well and it makes my life so much easier.
• I am grateful for the house I have. I am putting a roof over the heads of my kids. I am proud that I have a house where my kids are warm and safe.
• I am grateful for the paycheck that was just deposited into my bank account. It enables me to have this great car and allows me to afford the house we live in. I am grateful for every paycheck I receive.

Most of our money issues stem from being raised in a family that struggled financially. All of the fights, arguments and stress that we witnessed from our parents inability to make ends meet acts like scar tissue on the brain. That is, any emotional event, good or bad, forms the most lasting memories. Oftentimes, long-term memories give birth to certain beliefs, such as, I never have enough money. The only way to change beliefs formed in our upbringing is to become aware of those thinking habits, change your thinking and then track your new good thinking until it becomes a habit. Did I express gratitude for three things today? Put that on your to do list or on a bathroom mirror for 2 months to make sure you engage in that thinking. After a few months you will find yourself automatically engaging in the new thinking habit without any to do list or notes on the mirror.

Selflessness is considered a noble trait. Selfishness, on the other hand, is considered a character flaw. Society reveres the selfless and demonizes the selfish. Those who are selfless are admired by others, while those who are selfish are reviled.

Well, that’s how most of us were programmed to think. In reality, many of those so-called selfless individuals history likes to elevate to near nobility status were anything but selfless. Individuals like Bono (U2), Oprah and Winston Churchill were actually very demanding, obstinate and self-centered. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing.

You see, if you want to be respected and treated properly by others you must train them to respect and treat you properly. Below are a few guidelines for training others to treat you with the respect you deserve:

• Stop saying yes to everything. Saying no sends a message that your time is valuable. The occasional no lets others know that they cannot walk all over you. It takes courage to say no. Don’t let fear hold you back. No is like a stop sign that says “I am not your slave”. Saying yes to everything is another sign that says “I am your slave”. Saying yes all the time trains others to walk all over you.
• Don’t give into others just to get along. Surrendering all the time to the will of others sends a powerful message that you are weak. Be obstinate every now and then. It lets others know that you are a force to be reckoned with, that you are strong and confident. Giving in trains others that you are weak.
• Don’t vacillate. Stand your ground on things you believe in. If you constantly change your mind or allow others to change your opinion you send a message that you can be manipulated. You train others to manipulate you.

Protein is critical to good health. Here’s why:

• Protein is critical in building muscles, repairing tissue and making enzymes, hormones and other chemicals in the body. Almost half of the protein we consume every day is used to make enzymes for the purpose of digestion.
• Protein is necessary for the body to produce new cells and transport nutrients to those cells.
• Protein enables brain cells to communicate to each other.
• Consuming the right amount of protein can help you lose weight – 100 calories or more each day.

Plant-based protein is the best source as animal foods have been found to increase rates of cancer. So, how much protein do you need to consume every day? About 50-90 grams, depending on your weight and level of activity. A simple formula to determine your individual protein needs is as follows:

1. Divide your weight in pounds by 2.2. This converts pounds to kilograms.
2. Multiply this kilogram # by between .08 to 1.8. .08 if you are a couch potato and 1.8 if you are a professional athlete. If you exercise regularly (4 days a week, 30 minutes each day) 1.0 to 1.2 is a good # to use.

Example, I am 190 pounds. 190 / 2.2 = 86.36 x 1.0 = 86 grams of protein I would need to consume each day.

Your body can’t absorb more than 30 grams of protein at one meal, so the key is to consume protein throughout the day in order to maximize its absorption.

Eating healthy must become a daily habit. Turning new behaviors into habits requires three things:

1. Awareness
2. Repetition and
3. Tracking

Being aware of those behaviors that improve your health and your life is always the starting point. Once you decide to engage in a new good habit, the key to sticking to that habit is to track it for at least two months. Tracking creates individual accountability and will keep you engaged in the behavior until it becomes a habit. Habits, on average, take about 66 days to form. Make a habit of being aware how much protein you consume every day and then track it for 66 days.

After eleven plus years of studying wealth and poverty, I have come to the conclusion that poverty is a mental disorder. I like to refer to it as Poverty Mind Syndrome. Poverty Mind Syndrome is born at home, primarily in poor households, with parents who are raising their kids, unintentionally, to be poor. This syndrome is like a virus that causes a Generational Cycle of Poverty, infecting the children in these households, who eventually become adults who struggle with poverty. How do you know you have Poverty Mind Syndrome? The symptoms are as follows:

• Victim mindset – Your financial circumstances are dictated by forces outside your control: Wall Street, rich people intent on keeping you poor, government policies, the economy, bad schools, growing up in a bad neighborhood, bad luck, etc.
• Closed-Minded – Being closed-minded means you are unwilling to embrace new ideas, new thinking or opinions that differ from your own. One of the hallmarks of self-made millionaires is the ability to be open-minded to new ideas, new knowledge and new ways of thinking. This symptom is anchored to another symptom called Ideological Constraints. 
• Ideological Constraints – Holding on to ideologies that keep you from growing out of your poverty: rich people are bad, money is the root of all evil, poor people can’t escape poverty, needing a college education to escape poverty, etc. The ability to cast aside your ideological constraints, allows you to expand your thinking, to grow and to evolve.
• Intellectually Impotent – “I’m not smart and that’s why I’m poor”. Everyone has the potential for genius. We are all born with the genius gene. What keeps the switch to that gene in the off position is your belief that you don’t have the smarts to rise above your financial circumstances in life.
• Immediate Gratification – Those with Poverty Mind Syndrome look for short-term solutions to their long-term problem. They play the lottery, they gamble on sports or they look for their 401(k) plan funding in casinos. Escaping poverty and creating wealth takes a lot of time. In my study, it took the the average rich person 32 years to accumulate their wealth. The only way your ship will come in is if you build a dock big enough to anchor it.

Long-term decisions are irrevocable decisions you make which impact your career, business, your life or your relationships. Because long-term decisions have such profound effects, you must always take time in making those types of decisions. Never make a long-term decision when you are sick or when you have not gotten enough sleep. When you are sick, suffering from sleep deprivation, or struggling with PMS, your glucose level drops significantly.

Glucose is the brain’s fuel source. When it’s low, your ability to make decisions is impaired. You’re not thinking clearly. The part of the brain that is responsible for decision-making, the prefrontal cortex, is weakened during days when you are sick, sleep deprived or dealing with PMS. Consequently, it is very likely this part of the brain will not be perfuming its decision-making function properly. You will be asking yourself, “what was I thinking” if you make decisions while dealing with illness, sleep depravation or PMS. If you have no choice but to make a major long-term decision, eat anything with sugar in it fifteen to thirty minutes prior to making that decision. Sugar causes a short-term boost in your glucose level and will temporarily restore your decision-making abilities. But be careful with sugar. About thirty minutes after experiencing a spike in glucose, due to this sugar boost, you will experience a crash in glucose levels which will leave you feeling tired and lethargic. Rest restores glucose levels and this is precisely why the brain sends you a message to sleep, after consuming too much sugar too quickly. It’s just trying to re-set your glucose levels back to normal.

My dad was a great man: WWII vet, father of eight kids, provider, smart, hard working and a devoted friend to many. He was also very stern and had difficulty expressing his emotions. When I was 19 years old I remember walking home from college because I was poor and my car broke down. It was a long walk, about 7-8 miles. Had a lot of time to think. One of the thoughts that I had was that I would be a great father to my future kids and also let them know that they are loved every day. I made a pledge that afternoon that when I had kids I would tell them every day “I love you”.

When I became a dad I made good on that pledge. Every morning and every night, no matter what was going on in my work life, I would give my kids a hug in the morning and at night and tell them “I love you”. When they became teens, this daily habit of mine seemed to annoy my kids. But I didn’t care.

My kids are all adults now and the habit is still with me. I never miss an opportunity to tell them “I love you.” Unfortunately now, I have to do it most of the time by phone, email, text or Facebook. What makes me happy is that, as adults, they always reciprocate with an “I love you too.” It has become a habit for each one of my kids to say “I love you.”

Kids need to know they are loved. No matter what happens in their little lives, that “I love you” from their mom or dad acts like an ointment that helps dress the wounds of life. Love is contagious. It spreads like a virus from one person to the next. When you infect your kids with this virus, you infect everyone they come into intimate contact with. Saying “I love you” is one habit that every parent should adopt.