Maintaining a positive mental outlook is a daily habit. It must be approached that way, as a habit, because humans are hardwired to be negative – it is very easy to lapse backwards into negativity.

Below are some tools that can help you maintain your positive outlook:

• Practice Gratitude –  At the start of every day, find three things you are grateful for. They can be simple things, such as: “I’m grateful I have a dependable car”, or “I’m grateful the air conditioner in my home is working today”, or “I’m grateful my spouse loves me”. If you give it just a little thought, there is always something to be grateful for.
• Victory Log – Maintaining and reviewing a log of all of your successes, no matter how small, keeps you focused on the progress you’re making in life and prevents you from focusing on your failures. Everyone fails, all the time. Failure is good so long as you learn and move on. A Victory Log helps you do that.
• Happiness Log – Maintain a running list of all of your year’s happiness events – good things that happened during the year.
• Pursue Goals – Pursuing goals will keep your mind active and prevent it from lapsing into the abyss of negativity.
• Meditation – If you are able to meditate, meditate. Meditation soothes the mind, and resets your Central Nervous System (CNS) and Peripheral Nervous System (PNS).
• Humor – Viewing, listening to or reading anything humorous prevents negativity.
• Music – Listening to uplifting music calms your CNS and PNS.
• Read Upbeat Content – Minimize your exposure to the news, since most news stories are negative and intended to excite negative emotions. Read books about individuals who triumphed in the face of adversity.
• Future Journal – A Future Journal takes you forward in your life two or more years. Write about the amazing future life you have. This will help keep you focused on the future realization of your goals and dreams.
• Vision Board – Since our brain thinks in pictures, a Vision Board speaks the language of the brain. Pictures of the things you desire to have, places you would like to visit or people you’d like to meet or know keeps you focused on growth and starves negativity.
• Express Love – Tell someone close to you that you love them. It will make both of you feel more positive.
• Insider’s Club – Create a unique, separate inner circle comprised of positive, upbeat people.
• Volunteer – Volunteering at a local, community-based non-profit will lift your spirits. You will feel like you are doing good and this boosts your happiness neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin levels.
• Kind Acts – Doing something kind for someone will boost your happiness neurotransmitters.
• Exercise in the Morning – No matter what goes wrong with your day, you can always look back on the fact that you did something good for yourself by exercising in the morning.
• Podcasts – Listen to upbeat or motivational podcasts.
• New Skill – Take up a new hobby that requires you to develop a new skill. This will keep your mind active and prevent it from drifting into negativity.
• Eat Healthy Food – Much like morning exercise, eating healthy is something good you do for yourself.
• Sing – It’s impossible to feel bad while singing happy tunes.
• Email/Text – Email or text a loved one something upbeat or uplifting. It will have a boomerang effect, making you feel positive about yourself.

These are the tools of positivity. Use them when you need them. Try to make a habit of one or two of them every day. It will keep negativity on the bench and not in the game.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

You know positivity when it walks into a room.

One person, bubbling over with positivity, can take over up an entire room.

Some call it charisma, but in reality charisma is nothing more than someone bubbling over with positivity.  And it’s contagious.

• A positive mental outlook transforms you into a people magnet – It attracts people to you like moths to a light.
• A positive mental outlook produces good health – It improves your immune system, lowers your blood pressure and sends a stream of neurochemicals throughout the body that not only improve brain performance and alertness, but also produce a euphoric feeling.
• A positive mental outlook improves brain performance – It broadens your ability to think creatively, make decisions and allows you to see solutions to problems.
• A positive mental outlook makes you better looking – Positivity actually makes you more attractive to others.
• Positivity opens up your mind to opportunities – Opportunities are everywhere and all around you. Positivity allows you to see those opportunities clearly.
• Positivity is critical in achieving your goals and dreams – Positivity allows possibility thinking. It increases your risk tolerance and ability to go for it in life.

Positivity is a Rich Habit. Anyone, with practice, can transform their mindset from negative to positive.

Having a positive mental outlook will transform you life and change your life circumstances.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Richard Branson was not a good student. He struggled with ADD and dropped out of Stowe School, a very prestigious, private boarding school in England, in order to pursue his dream of publishing his own magazine, which eventually grew into a mail-order record business, known as Virgin Records.

Today, Virgin Group encompasses 400 businesses around the world, employing 50,000 people.

As an extension of my Rich Habits research, I devote hours every day studying the lives of rich people and poor people. I’ve amassed quite a bit of research data on numerous individuals. Richard Branson is one of those individuals. I thought I’d share with you some of Richard Branson’s Rich Habits:

Choose a Path Towards Creating Wealth

There are 4 path’s to creating wealth:

1. Saver-Investor
2. Senior Executive of Major Business
3. Virtuoso
4. Dreamer-Entrepreneur

Branson chose the Dreamer-Entrepreneur path.

Dream-set

Branson had a vision of the life he desired to have. He has devoted his life to that vision.

Control Your Emotions

Branson believed it was critical, especially in negotiations and dealing with employees, to always remain calm and collected.

Exceed The Expectations of Others

Most of Branson’s businesses are service-based. His goal was to always try to exceed the expectations of others. For example, when Virgin Airlines first started, all first class customers were picked up by a limousine and driven to the airport.

Control the Words That Come Out of Your Mouth

Branson was never openly critical to his employees. Instead, he advocated for offering only praise to employees He believed encouragement was the secret to getting the most out of employees.

Always Seek Feedback

Branson sought feedback from employees and customers. He believed constant feedback was critical to success.

Learn to Pivot

In his book Like a Virgin, Branson stated that only a fool never changes his mind.

Take Calculated Risks

Branson took significant risk in starting and growing the Virgin brand. But, he only took Calculated Risks. Calculated Risk is the primary type of risk the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study took. It requires doing your homework and planning for every good or bad outcome. When it came to taking risks, Branson always had an escape hatch, or Plan B. For example, when he started Virgin Airlines, Branson knew very little about the airline industry. So, his Plan B required the airline who sold him his first airplane to buy it back, in the event Virgin Airlines failed.

Be Persistant

Branson refused to surrender to adversity. He believed one of his greatest traits was his ability to bounce back after a setback. He stated in his book, Like a Virgin, that bouncing back from adversity is the #1 trait of successful entrepreneurs.

Take Action on Big Goals

Branson believed it was critical to think big and build small. Almost all of his businesses were start-ups. They began small and grew organically. But his vision was always the guiding light, the path, that helped those businesses grow into large companies.

Be Fearless

Branson believed you must be fearless when venturing into new areas. In order to alleviate that fear, Branson and his team took Calculated Risks and always had a Plan B.

Follow Your Passions

Branson believed that doing what you loved was the thing that enabled you to develop your skills and expose your innate talents.

Engage in Daily Exercise 

For the past 50 years, Branson has devoted himself to daily exercise. In fact, he often describes himself as an exercise junkie.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

I know it sounds crazy to say this but we are hardwired to be lazy. And we have our brains to blame.

The fact is, the human brain is lazy.

Or, looking at it another way, the brain finds ways of doing things that make it work less. That’s why we have habits.

Habits enable the brain to work less. There is no conscious thinking involved. Habits put us on autopilot.

This is a good thing if you have far more good habits than bad habits and a very bad thing if you have far more bad habits than good habits.

The vast majority of the human population has far more bad habits than good habits. This is why we have so many struggling with poverty, an obesity epidemic, increased incidence of type II diabetes, infidelity, harmful addictions (drugs, alcohol and gambling for example), racial discrimination and all sorts of other social ills.

When too many individuals have too many bad habits, it affects all of society. So, good habits improve everyone’s life, not just your own.

The commander in chief of lazy, inside our brain, is called the basal ganglia.

The basal ganglia is tasked by the brain with creating and triggering habits.

The brain wants more habits – the more the merrier.

Why?

The brain is an energy hog. It uses 20% of all of the entire body’s glucose and oxygen. Without habits, the brain’s fuel needs would be inadequate. Brain activity would be forced to slow down. When brain activity slows, it sends a message to the rest of the body to go to sleep or rest.

Without habits we would need to take numerous naps during our busy work days.

Habits make it possible for us to function for long stretches of time, without the need for rest. So, habits are wonderful things.

The brain likes habits so much that 40% or more of all of our behaviors, thinking, emotions and decision-making are habitual.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

My father, who at one time was worth millions of dollars, once told me:

“When I was rich and successful, everyone thought I was a genius.”

Success makes people think you are smart.

The interesting thing is, they’re right. Those who succeed become very knowledgable by virtue of the continuous growth that accompanies the pursuit of a dream.

But it’s not the realization of the dream, the success and the wealth that follows, that makes you a genius – it’s the pursuit.

You grow into the person you need to become in order to realize success.

Wealth is merely a derivative of success. Success is a byproduct of growth. Growth results from pursing a dream.

That pursuit forces dreamers to experiment with new and different ideas, accumulate new and different information, create new and different processes and seek out new and different opinions.

Anything new and different leads to growth. Growth leads to success and success leads to wealth.

The pursuit of a dream changes you forever. It unleashes the greatness deep inside of you, making you better.

Growth, you see, is the ultimate reward of success. Not wealth.

Wealth can come and go, if you are not diligent in preserving it or possess poor money habits.

But the learning that results from the pursuit of a dream, sticks forever. And it is that learning, or growth, that enables the recreation of wealth, over and over again.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

In my Rich Habits Study I identified four paths to accumulating wealth:

1. Saver-Investor Path
2. Senior Executive Path
3. Virtuoso Path and
4. Dreamer-Entrepreneur Path

Those who pursue the Dreamer-Entrepreneur Path begin the journey after discovering some passion – something that makes their heart sing.

Taking action on their passion lead to a fanatical obsession. Obsession endowed these Dreamers with a relentless persistence.

In fact, it took the average Dreamer-Entrepreneur in my study twelve years to realize their dream. That’s a long time to persist at anything.

Passion, followed by action, created obsession which made them appear to be relentlessly persistent.

But it all started with finding some passion and then taking action on that passion.

64% of the rich and successful in my study were obsessed with pursuing one, singular goal. Some spent years, others longer, in pursuing and achieving one major goal.

Realizing your dreams in life requires an obsessiveness that boarders on fanaticism. It must occupy your thoughts when you wake, during the day, at night and even in your dreams.

Persistence results in two things:

• Some Major Breakthrough – Figuring things out. Some call this an Ah Ha moment.
• Luck – The persistent eventually get lucky. Luck results in success and its byproduct – wealth.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

How long does it take for the average rich person to become rich? Ten years, twenty years?

How about thirty-two years.

That’s how long it took the average self-made millionaire, according to my data.

It took 38 years for 52% of the self-made millionaires in my study to accumulate their wealth and 42 years for 21% of them to get there.

Only a handful, 4%, became wealthy in less than 27 years.

Let me share some of my data with you.

Seventy-six percent of the wealthy in my Rich Habits Study (http://richhabits.net/rich-habits-study-background-on-methodology/) were self-made millionaires. Thirty-one percent came from poor households and 45% came from middle-class households.

What’s compelling about the data I gathered, is the age in which these self-made millionaires actually rang and bell and struck it rich.

Here’s the breakdown:

• 1% (2 out of 233) became wealthy before the age of 40
• 3% (6 out of 233) became wealthy between age 40 and 55
• 16% (38 out of 233) became wealthy between age 46 and 50
• 28% (66 out of 233) became wealthy between age 51 and 55
• 31% (73 out of 233) became wealthy between age 56 and 60
• 21% (48 out of 233) became wealthy after the age of 60

The romanticized notion of getting rich quick always finds an eager audience. We are stimulated by stories about the young and the wealthy. The immediate success of youthful billionaires like Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brinbut, play to our get rich quick desires.

It turns out, however, that getting rich quickly is a very rare phenomenon.

It’s clear from my Rich Habits research data, that accumulating wealth takes a very long time. It just doesn’t happen overnight.

In fact, 80% of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study did not become wealthy until after age 50.

What’s even more of an eye opener is that 27% of my Rich Habits millionaires failed at least once in business.

The path to riches is a long, winding and upward climb. Those few who do make it, are disciplined, gritty, persistent and patient.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

In my Rich Habits study I learned that all self-made millionaires who pursued a dream (Entrepreneur class of millionaires) have 6 common success traits:

1. Passion
2. Persistence
3. Laser Focus
4. Patience
5. Hard Work Ethic and
6. Desire to Learn.

What’s even more interesting is that, according to these wealthy individuals, they never knew they possessed these traits until they became passionate about pursuing their dream.

Passion unleashes hidden or dormant success traits; traits you never knew you had.

When passion is activated, it toggles on all of the other success traits.

Inside each one of us are these dormant success traits. Passion is the key to bringing them to life.

Find your passion and you will unleash the dormant success traits that make success possible.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Habits come in all shapes and sizes.

Some habits are more powerful than others and have more of an impact on your life than others. These types of habits are known as Keystone Habits. Keystone Habits have a ripple effect, triggering the formation of complimentary habits.

Some are stand-alone habits, or Ordinary Habits. These habits have very little impact on other areas of our lives.

Good habits create happiness, prosperity, success, sound health, strong relationships, increase your knowledge/IQ, create longevity or help promote an upbeat and positive mental outlook. Daily exercise, eating healthy, nutritious foods, reading to learn and volunteering with non-profits are examples.

There are also bad habits that create unhappiness, bankruptcy, contribute to failure, poor health, toxic relationships, ignorance, procrastination or make us negative and depressed. Watching too much TV, eating in excess, smoking, drinking in excess and not having control over your emotions are examples of bad habits.

Awareness and tracking of your daily habits is the key to changing them. Once you know what your habits are, you can change them. Adding new habits then becomes much easier and gives you a feeling of control over your life.

The circumstances of your life are dictated by your habits. Good habits, good life. Bad habits, bad life.

Never underestimate the awesome power of habits. The brain created them for a reason. They are a tool. Use this tool wisely. Your life circumstances will mirror your habits.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

A good night’s sleep supercharges your brain.

Neuroscientists have made some incredible breakthroughs in the past ten years. One thing they have been trying to connect the dots on is the relationship of sleep to brain function.

What they are discovering is fascinating.

Sleep accomplishes so many important things, that it is fast becoming clear sleep may be the most important thing you do with respect to your health and your success.

I’ve written previously about the importance of sleep vis-a-vis memory formation – the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex send signals back and forth to each other, thousands of times during the REM portion of sleep. Like a well choreographed dance, this process converts short-term memory to long-term memory.

Well, another incredible recent discovery is that sleep enables offline communication between the conscious mind (aka neocortex), which all but shuts down during sleep, and the subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem).

This is important because the subconscious mind is continuously taking in sensory data, behind the scenes. This massive subconscious information accumulation is completely invisible and inaccessible by the conscious mind.

Sleep, however, opens up the doorway between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind via the longitudinal fissure, part of the corpus callosum, which separates the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

When you experience intuition, that little voice inside your head, this is actually the conscious mind sharing with you, information it received from the subconscious mind while you were sleeping.

The limbic system and brain stem, aka the subconscious mind, has been around millions of years longer than the neocortex (conscious mind). Because of this, the subconscious mind is far more evolved and, thus, far more advanced and powerful than the conscious mind. Its ability to gather information from the environment, via the five senses, is far more comprehensive than anything the conscious mind is capable of gathering.

In short, the subconscious sees things that the conscious mind can’t see.

Any information the subconscious gathers, and deems important enough to share with the conscious via intuition, will therefore be information it considers critical to your health and your success.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!