Rich Habits Word of the Day

Erudition – Learning, self-education.  His erudition was self-evident the moment he began to speak.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

Arthur C. Clarke is one of America’s most celebrated science fiction writers. Too poor to go to college, he educated himself by reading magazines. He has written more than 60 books, with 50 million in print. 

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Knowledge has power when used. Make it a Rich Habit to learn one new fact every day. Create a Fact Binder and add to it every day. Spend 10 minutes each day reviewing one page of facts in your Fact Binder. The Fact Binder should be limited to 10 categories: Career/Job-Related, Current Events, Historical, Health, Biographical, General and 3 Personal Interest categories. As you gain more knowledge you will begin to see more opportunities manifest out of thin air. Increasing your knowledge creates Opportunity Luck. Opportunity Luck is the type of good luck created by wealthy people. Opportunity Luck increases your ability to make money and, thus, increases your wealth.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Millstone – Hinderance, difficulty.  Churchill faced every millstone like a man possessed with unending confidence.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

Churchill used his rhetoric to persuade all of Britain that they could succeed and be victorious. Here are a few of his famous lines:

• Never, never, never, give up.
• A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
• Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
• Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
• Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
• If you are going through hell, keep going.
• Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Incidentally, Britain won.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Success makes people think you are a genius or something very close to a genius. Success takes your confidence level on a rocket ride, straight up. Success breeds loyalty. Success creates devoted followers. Success opens the door to new, powerful relationships with other successful people. Success breeds more success. Success improves your finances and very often makes you rich. Success unshackles you from your fears. But most of all, success makes you happy. That is the carrot at the end of the stick for those pursuing their dream, main purpose or major goal in life. The power of success is intoxicating. It is worth the toil, frustration, mistakes, set-backs, failures and mental anguish that accompany all who pursue it. For those on the path toward success: never quit, never surrender, persevere. Focus, persist and be patient. It will be worth it.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Analogous – Synonymous, similar.   The use of simple analogous words was one of his greatest communication skills.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” Winston Churchill announced gravely in his first speech as Prime Minister of Great Britain. It was, in one sentence, a summary of his approach to all of life.

Winston Churchill’s speeches are among the best-loved public addresses of the 20th Century. It was Churchill’s perseverance in banishing fear, combined with his love of the English language, that defeated Adolph Hitler. That Sir Winston made an impression was not accidental. He carefully crafted and rehearsed each speech. Churchill developed a strategy to practically guarantee that people would remember his most important words. The secret to Churchill’s success was this: he saw words as weapons. He shot them out in short, staccato bursts. He often paired two adjectives together at a time and fired them as from a double-barreled gun. He marched them out rhythmically as if in a parade.

Churchill once told Edward Duke of Windsor, “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.” Churchill understood that people remember phrases, not speeches. To be memorable, a speech must contain a few well-placed, punchy, rhythmic quotes. Churchill carefully crafted two or three such phrases into every speech.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Words have power. The words you use to communicate can turn failure into success, a prospect into a client, a stranger into a lifelong relationship. It is important, therefore, to make a Rich Habit out of improving your vocabulary every day. One of the strategies I use is something I call the Word Book. A Word Book is a simple looseleaf binder I use to add new words to. Whenever you hear a new word or word that you would like to incorporate into your vocabulary, write it down in your Word Book along with its definition or synonyms. Spend ten minutes every day studying the new additions to your word book from the prior week. In time this will grow your vocabulary and increase your communication skills.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Introspection – Meditation, relaxed thinking.  Tom’s daily introspection focused on achieving his goals.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

Professor Richard Davidson from the University of Wisconsin presented research showing that people who had undertaken a meditation course were found to have a higher immunity to influenza and a higher tolerance of pain.

Studies had also shown that introducing meditation at a young age gives children greater self control and leads to fewer criminal convictions in adulthood, Prof Davidson said.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Meditation relaxes the mind and opens the connection between your conscious and subconscious mind. Meditation, when focused on reprogramming your mind from negative to positive, allows intuition to work for you. Intuition is the way the subconscious mind speaks to your conscious mind. When you are functioning in a positive mindset, intuition works for you. When you are functioning from a negative mindset, intuition works against you. This is why daily meditation is critical. It can shift your mindset from negative to positive, thus allowing intuition to help you achieve your wishes, desires, dreams and goals. Here’s a simple way to meditate. Find a quiet place, sit in a chair and count to 100. See every number in your mind. After reaching the number 100 visualize all of your wishes, desires, dreams and goals coming true. Do this for sixty seconds. This effectively reprograms your subconscious from negative to positive.  Try to meditate for 30 days in a row.You will, almost immediately, begin to notice positive events unfolding in your life.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Respite – To relax, recreate, sleep.   Tom had worked 6 weeks in a row without a day off and became physically exhausted so he took a respite yesterday and left work early at 6:20pm.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

When Barack Obama celebrated his 50th birthday in August, journalists and experts noted that the president was showing more wear and tear—mostly in the form of wrinkles and gray hair—than when he took office in January 2009. Their observations sparked a flurry of news reports referencing the longstanding theory that U.S. president grow older more quickly than their contemporaries, perhaps due to the stresses of the job.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

I have been working around the clock since January 2nd 2014. In January and February I spent 6 hours every day writing my upcoming book Rich Kids. Three hours in the morning from 4-7am and then three hours at night from 7-10pm. In between those six hours I was working at my main job of running a CPA firm. I pushed myself during those two months in order to complete my manuscript before tax season really kicked in, which officially is around February 20th. I have not taken one day off since February 24th.

My day begins usually at 4:30am. I spend that 2 1/2 hours reading, writing and relentlessly promoting my research to members of the media or anyone else who might, by rare chance, open up their eyes and read one of my research articles or pitches. It’s mostly a thankless, depressing job trying to get media attention. I also squeez in 30-45 minutes a day of aerobic exercise on my StairMaster, while also reading a book. It wears on me, it frustrates me. For every 300 daily Tweets and every 100 daily emails to members of the media which I’ve made day in and day out for the past 3 months, almost 100% ignored me. That drags me down phsically and emotionally. It also makes me feel so all alone in my mission to share my Rich Habits research with the world. At days end I am drained of all of my energy and any emotion. But, the next day, I do it all over again. I persevere one more morning. Then I head to my full-time job – preparing taxes and helping clients any way I can. At night I start reading, writing, tweeting and pitching again for another 2-3 hours.

Yesterday, for some reason I can’t explain, I felt physically exhausted, almost ill. The feeling began the moment I woke up and, somehow, I pushed on until 6:20pm. I decided to leave work early yesterday. I was in bed by 9pm. I normally wake between 4-5am every day. Today I woke at 6:45am. That’s nearly 11 hours sleep.

Here’s the lesson of the day. Our bodies are incredibly complicated machines. They know when enough is enough. Mine informed me yesterday that enough was enough, so I left work early and went home to sleep. You need to listen to your body, hear what it is saying. When your body tells you it’s time to rest, there’s a reason. It may be your immune system sending a signal, it may be your mind seeking some down time, it might be any number of body parts begging for some R&R. You need to listen. I’ve said many times, “Wealthy People are Healthy People.”  Those who are successful in life know when to push themselves and when to slow things down. Yesterday, for the first time in 94 days, I listened.

It’s not easy pursuing a major dream. Mine is Rich Habits. The key is to never quit. I am on a mission to help millions rise above their circumstances, to help them unleash their full potential in life by sharing with them what I learned from my five years of studying the daily habits of the rich and poor. Most of the time (99.9%) I get ignored by the media. But every now and then a brave member of the media takes the time to read a research article of mine and then reaches out to me for an interview. And every time the interview goes viral. For that moment there is vindication. I live for those moments of vindication. It makes all of the effort worthwhile. But for now I must rest. Tomorrow I shall begin my mission once again to help poor people rise above their circumstances in life. Tomorrow I will begin again to change the world.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Reiteration – Repetition.  Tom used the reiteration of thoughts via daily affirmations to reprogram his mind from negative to positive.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

Neoteny is a biological reference that means the retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of species.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Most of us have been are raised since childhood with limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs represent subconscious programming created by negative emotions such as fear, envy and doubt. Parents unintentionally filled our minds with “no’s” and “cant’s” in an effort to protect us from harm, because of existing financial limitations or because of their own limiting beliefs that they learned from their parents growing up. Limiting beliefs represent negative programming that hold you back in life from financial success. If you want to reprogram your mind here is the formula: Repetitive Thoughts + Emotion = Reprogramming. Repeating a positive thought every day and attaching a positive emotion to it act like computer software code and reprogram the subconscious.

Rich Habits Word of the Day

Acrimony – Bitterness, mockery.   John learned sarcasm from his parents but later realized that the acrimony created by his sarcastic wit only served to damage relationships.

Rich Habits Fact of the Day

In his vaudeville and theatre years, W.C. Fields developed the inimitable persona of a boozing, sarcastic misanthrope who somehow remains sympathetic. Probably because most of the time his character—a hen-pecked husband, abused neighbor, and badgered employee—seems to have every right to be a bit surly. Born in 1880, Fields is something of a Charles Dickens protagonist come to life—if the Dickens character grows up to become an irascible alcoholic and comic genius. Leaving his home in Pennsylvania as a teenager, Fields developed a comedic juggling act that ultimately took him to the top of vaudeville and Broadway. He appeared in the movies as early as 1915, but it was Fields’ highly-regarded short films in the early 1930s—many of which he also scripted—that led to the comedian starring in features. It’s a Gift, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, and The Bank Dick are among his best regarded works.

Rich Habits Lesson of the Day

Sarcasm is often disguised, like a halloween outfit, as humor. We all like humor, so masking sarcasm this way, makes the sarcasm more palatable. But at the end of the day, sarcasm is a Poverty Habit. Because most people have a thin skin, sarcasm damages relationships. If you want to be successful in life you need to build strong, valuable relationships. Since sarcasm damages relationships, you need to eliminate the sarcasm Poverty Habit.