When you lose your passion in life, at worse you spiral out of control; at best you become a zombie, sleepwalking through life. It doesn’t matter how smart, educated, hard-working, skilled, wealthy or successful you are. A loss of passion takes away all the advantages you have in life. A loss of passion eventually leads to depression, which can take weeks, months or even years to recover from. [Read more…]
Passion and Purpose – Transform Your Life From Trivial to Triumphant
March 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Tip o’ the Morning to Ya – Make 1 Person Happy Today
March 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Rich Habits Word of the Day
Chirpy – Happy. Tom’s chirpy attitude infected the entire office, making it a better workplace.
Rich Habits Fact of the Day
Psychologist Ed Diener, author of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, describes what psychologists call “subjective well-being” as a combination of life satisfaction and having more positive emotions than negative emotions.
Martin Seligman, one of the leading researchers in positive psychology and author of Authentic Happiness, describes happiness as having three parts: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Pleasure is the “feel good” part of happiness. Engagement refers to living a “good life” of work, family, friends, and hobbies. Meaning refers to using our strengths to contribute to a larger purpose. Seligman says that all three are important, but that of the three, engagement and meaning make the most difference to living a happy life.
Rich Habits Lesson of the Day
Once we move beyond the need for food and shelter, we are all after one thing in life – happiness. Happiness, unfortunately, is elusive. Most people, unfortunately, are unhappy. You have the power within yourself to change that. If we can make just one person happy for just one day by saying something nice or by doing something nice, we elevate ourselves in the eyes of others. We turn ourselves into people magnets. People will flock to anyone who will make them happy, even if only temporarily. Become a people magnet by making it a daily habit to make just one person happy for one
How to Think Your Way to Happiness
March 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Once we move beyond the need for food and shelter, we are all after one thing in life – happiness. Happiness, unfortunately, is elusive. Most people are, in fact, unhappy and most of those unhappy people will do anything to pursue happiness. [Read more…]
Turn Yourself into a People Magnet
March 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Once we move beyond the basic needs for food and shelter, we are all after one thing in life – happiness. Happiness, unfortunately, is elusive. Most people are, in fact, unhappy and most of those unhappy people will do anything to pursue happiness. 
[Read more…]
Tip o’ the Morning to Ya – The Power of Persuasion
March 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Rich Habits Word of the Day
Blarney – Exaggeration, overpraise. Tom considered his argument blarney but, somehow, it worked and he got what he wanted.
Rich Habits Fact of the Day
Kissing the Blarney Stone is said to give a person eloquent speech. How this Irish tradition came about is told in a variety of tales that have been passed down through the ages. The Blarney Stone has a legendary history that combines Celtic mythology with facts from the Middle Ages. It is a popular destination, attracting over 300,000 visitors a year come to receive the gift of flattering and persuasive speech.
Blarney Castle is in a small town of Blarney about five miles northwest of Cork, Ireland’s second largest city. The castle, that still stands today, was built in 1446 and is the third one on this site. The first was made of wood in the 10th century; the second was out of stone in 1210. Cormac McCarthy, the King of Munster, sent 4,000 men to help the Scottish defeat the English in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. In appreciation for his help, he was given part of the “Stone of Scone,” also known as the “Stone of Destiny,” as a gift by Robert the Bruce. It was brought back to the McCarthy stronghold, Blarney Castle.
Rich Habits Lesson of the Day
The power of persuasion is not a gift but a skill. Persuasion is all about effective negotiation. There are really only two steps. The first step in persuading anyone to do anything is to understand their wants and needs. The next step is to trigger a positive or negative emotion about their wants and needs. “If you hire me as your salesman I will double your sales, which will double your income and allow you to buy a house by the beach for your family.” Once the emotion is triggered, the subconscious will go to work on the person you are trying to persuade and work its magic of reprogramming that person’s thinking and behavior. Triggering an emotion is a critical component because the subconscious only receives emotionalized thoughts. Emotion is the key that opens the door between the conscious and subconscious mind.
5 Tools That Will End Procrastination Forever
March 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Procrastination is a Poverty Habit. It prevents, even the most talented individuals, from realizing success in life. Most people have this Poverty Habit, and it is not an accident that most people struggle financially in life. Success has many moving parts and procrastination is a big moving part. [Read more…]
Strategies to Help Parents Raise Children to be Happy and Successful in Life
March 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Every parent wants their children to grow up to be happy and successful in life. For most it’s a wish. But for some parents, it’s a process they learned from their success-mentor parents. What if I told you it was possible to virtually guarantee that your children grow up to become happy and successful in life? And by happy and successful, I mean loving what they do for a living, having strong, valuable relationships and never, ever having to worry about money. [Read more…]
5 Activities That Will Motivate Your Children to Excel in Life
March 7, 2014 by 1 Comment
Getting kids motivated to do the things that will help them become successful adults is not an easy job for parents. Part of the reason for this is that kids can’t see the immediate benefit of getting straight A’s. High school, college and the adult world are far into the future. It’s also difficult for children to define their dreams. The few that can visualize their dreams and see their future are better able to focus on achievement. Parents who want their kids to live up to their potential, need to awaken their genius. [Read more…]
Tip o’ the Morning to Ya – Managing Expectations
March 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Rich Habits Word of the Day
Transcend – Exceed. Tom always tried to transcend other’s expectations at the end rather then at the beginning, by under-promising.
Rich Habits Fact of the Day
Prior to the Battle of Trenton, the general perception among the colonies was that the war was lost. Their expectations were so low that they lost all hope. George Washington’s daring midnight crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas caught the enemy by surprise and their victory rippled across the nascent nation and across the Atlantic ocean.
Rich Habits Lesson of the Day
Wealthy, successful individuals make it a Rich Habit to exceed expectations. Expectations are a tricky thing. Unsuccessful people have a tendency to want to “wow” others, so they make promises out of the gate that exceed another person’s expectations. They “wow” them at the beginning. That’s backwards. It sets you up to fail by not meeting expectations.
Successful people make it a habit of changing the other person’s perception of reality, out of the gate, reducing their expectations at the beginning of the promise stage. By reducing expectations this way, they set themselves up for success, making it easier to exceed expectations by over delivering. This allows them to “wow” them at the end.
Tip o’ the Morning to Ya – Don’t Fear Change
March 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Rich Habits Word of the Day
Cowed – Afraid, fearful. Tom would not be cowed by his fear of rejection and decided to take the baby step of starting his new book.
Rich Habits Fact of the Day
The world famous minister, Joel Osteen, sells out places like Yankee Stadium and speaks live to 40,000 a week who visit Lakewood church every Sunday (the mega-church meets in Houston at the former Compaq Center). Osteen says the week before his first sermon in 1999 marked the worst days of his life. “I was scared to death,” he says. At the time he knew very little about speaking or preparing a message. In fact he was perfectly content to sit behind the video camera during his father’s sermons. When his father passed away, Osteen’s wife and family encouraged him to take the stage.
Osteen did not overcome his fear for a long time. The conversations he heard didn’t help. “I overheard two ladies say, ‘he’s not as good as his father.’ I was already insecure and—boom—another negative label.” Words, he says, are like seeds. If you dwell on them long enough they take root and you will become what those words say you’ll become—if you let them. Osteen says negative labels—the ones people place on us and the labels we place on ourselves— prevent us from reaching our potential.
Rich Habits Lesson of the Day
Fear rears its ugly head in the face of change. Even if that change is good, fear can hold you back. Do not confuse fear with intuition. Fear is a Poverty Emotion. Giving into fear is a Poverty Habit. Wealthy, successful individuals have made it a Rich Habit not to give into fear. Fear is one of those limiting beliefs that hold many of us back. The key to overcoming fear is to make a habit of overcoming fear by embracing small change in your life through baby steps and leaning in, just a little. Small baby steps help you to gain momentum. Each time you conquer your little fears, you gain confidence to face the larger ones. Once you overcome your larger fears, the experience will give you confidence to embrace change and not fear it.
