Practice makes perfect.

We’ve all heard someone, probably a teacher, tell us that. That is why teachers assign homework.

But the truth is, practice only makes you good enough – good enough to master the basics of whatever skill you are trying to learn. Then, you move on to the next thing, another topic or skill. That’s the process millions of schoolchildren follow. It’s the educational process in America.

Analytical practice, however, takes you from good to virtuoso.

Analytical practice is very different from plain vanilla practice. It requires more consistent effort and more time.

In the case of analytical practice, analysis results in improved quality. You practice and then you dissect and analyze every component of the actions involved in that skill.

Take tennis, for example.

The good tennis players master every skill: serve, volley, backhand, forehand, overhead and drop shots.

But virtuosos don’t stop at good.

For virtuosos, once they master the basics, that is when the hard work really begins.

Virtuoso tennis players will focus months on one stroke. They will hit hundreds of backhands down the line and hundreds of backhands cross court. They will hit hundreds of backhands with topspin. They will hit hundreds of backhands with a slice. They will hit hundreds of short backhands, those that land within the service lines. They will hit hundreds of long backhands, those the land within on inch of the baseline.

Each time they hit one particular type of backhand, they stop to analyze what went right and what went wrong. Then they make adjustments and practice some more.

Since 2013 I have been applying Analytical Practice to my writing. Every morning I write for at least one hour. Then, at night, I analyze what I wrote that morning. I dissect it, study it, and often, re-write what I wrote that morning.

After years of doing this, I have had at least a dozen of my media articles go viral. I’ve had books that have become bestsellers. That’s not an accident. It’s the byproduct of analytical practice.

If you want to take your life to the next level, you must become a virtuoso in whatever it is you do. Virtuosos make more money. Because they make more money, they are able to accumulate more wealth.

And the path to becoming a Virtuoso is Analytical Practice.

Life is hard.

Loss of a major client/customer, kids struggling in school, family or close friends getting divorced, cancer, heart attacks, recessions that affect your business or job, bad politicians messing things up, countries at war.

As long as you are alive, there will be problems. And those problems, if you allow them too, can get you down. They can even break you, if you allow them too. 

What’s not easy is to stay positive before, during and after dealing with life’s burdens. What’s not easy is to forge the positive mental attitude of looking for the rainbows after the storms.

There will always be problems in life. Problems, like wrenches, get tossed in everyones path. Problems which can momentarily take you off task. When you have a positive outlook on life, however, you learn from those problems, smile and move on.

Those problems help you grow into the person you need to be in order for success to visit you.

You have a dream. And deep down you know that dream will create a better life for you and your family. But life wants to know if you have what it takes to become a success.

Whether you know it or not, you do. You are stronger than you ever imagined.

Stand up to life’s hardships. Refuse to surrender to adversity.

Your dream will become a reality if you learn to waltz between the hardships.

It’s the common denominator in all self-made millionaires which allows them to keep moving forward.

There are 1,440 minutes in each day. That is the one common denominator we all share. With respect to time, we are all on equal footing.

Most people, rich or poor, consume about 1,200 of those minutes engaged in the following activities: work, commuting, family-related, sleeping, eating, bathing, bathroom, grooming and dressing.

That leaves about 240 minutes of time, each day. And it is what the rich do with those 240 minutes that separates them from everyone else in society.

According to my Rich Habits Study, the self-made rich make good use of their 240 minutes by forging daily habits that cover the following activities:

82% Engaged in Sixty Minutes a Day of Dream-Setting Activities

Dream-Setting activities involve the pursuit of a dream and the goals behind that dream. Typically, this is something extracurricular to work, such as engaging in some side hustle or spending time creating one or more additional streams of income. I cover Dream-Setting in detail in my book Change Your Habits Change Your Life.

77% Engaged in Sixty Minutes a Day of Deliberate Practice/Self Education Activities

Each day, the self-made rich in my Rich Habits Study regularly practiced some skill and regularly devoted time to increasing their knowledge related to that skill, their career or their industry. This daily habit helped them maintain and improve their skills and their knowledge, making them virtuosos in whatever it is they did to make money.

95% Engaged in Thirty Minutes a Day of Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise has numerous benefits:

• Improves Mental Functioning – Aerobic exercise floods the bloodstream with oxygen. This oxygen eventually makes its way to the brain. Since the brain uses 20% of our oxygen reserves, increased oxygen flow into the brain soaks up more free radicals inside the brain, making brain cells cleaner and healthier.
• Improves Health –Aerobic exercise increases blood flow, feeds the body with oxygen, strengthens the heart, helps reduce the risk of osteoporosis, helps lower high blood pressure, helps control blood sugar levels, boosts your high-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good”) cholesterol and lowers your low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad”) cholesterol. The self-made rich understand that healthier people have fewer sick days, more energy and this translates into more productivity at work. More productivity makes you more valuable to your organization, customers or clients, which translates into more value and ultimately more money.
• Reduces Risk of Sickness and Disease – Oxygen is like a sponge. It soaks up free radicals (cancer causing elements) and converts these free radicals to carbon dioxide. The blood carries this carbon dioxide to the lungs, which then removes the carbon dioxide from our bodies by exhaling it into the environment. Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of many conditions, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke and certain types of cancer.
• Reduces the Effects of Stress Which Improves Immune System – When we feel stress, there is a domino effect of physiology that takes place inside our bodies which depresses the immune system and opens the door to sickness and disease. Because aerobic exercise contributes to an overall feeling of well-being through the release of certain hormones, it acts as a stress reducer.
• Makes Us Feel Happier –Aerobic exercise contributes to an overall feeling of well-being by releasing endorphins, natural painkillers that promote an increased sense of well-being and make us feel “happier”.

You can’t make money in a hospital bed. Creating wealth requires good health. Good health translates into longevity, which means more time to create more wealth.

89% Devoted 30 Minutes a Day to Building Rich Relationships

The self-made rich in my study did certain things every day to maintain and grow powerful relationships:

• Networking – Participating in or running business organizations, non-profits or trade associations.
• Hello Calls – Calling important relationships just to say hello.
• Happy Birthday Calls – Calling the relationships that matter on their birthday.
• Life Event Calls – Making calls to relationships who have had a baby, gotten married, experienced a death in the family, etc. Life Event Calls are critical because life events are always emotion-based and emotions create powerful memories. They will remember you and your call.

100% Engaged in Relaxation/Leisure Activities

The self-made are not superhuman. Like everyone else, they require some daily downtime. The difference between them and everyone else is that they moderate that downtime to no more than an hour a day.

How you spend your time each day determines the financial circumstances of your life. The rich forge daily habits that make productive use of their time. They stick to their daily routines for many years. These daily habits have a cumulative effect which eventually shows up in the form of increased wealth towards the later part of their lives.

Every productive minute pays dividends down the road in the form of virtuoso skills and knowledge, good health and increased longevity, strong relationships and greater wealth.

For the rich, every minute counts.

Jerry Rice was overlooked by all of the big college football programs. As a result, he had to settle for a very small school in Mississippi, called Mississippi Valley State (MVS).

The school was so small and poor that its football athletes wore borrowed uniforms.

Rice ran the 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds, rather than the speedy 4.3 seconds needed to catch the attention of those who mattered.

Nonetheless, Rice had a dream and that dream included a plan. That dream was to become a professional football player. But not just any professional football player. Rice wanted to be the best wide receiver ever to play the game.

So, his plan included relentless practice. Rice followed that plan religiously while at MVS and eventually his hard work ethic caught the eye of Bill Walsh, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Walsh took Rice as the 16th player in the first round of the 1985 draft.

The unknown kid from a small school in Mississippi was officially a first-round draft choice.

But Rice did not abandon his plan and continued, throughout his career, following his plan by working hard every day to perfect his skills and knowledge.

Jerry Rice eventually realized his dream. He is the all-time leader in most major statistical categories for wide receivers in the history of the National Football League.

All plans begin with a dream. Find your dream and your dream will reveal your plan.

What’s Your Dream? Buried deep inside every dream is a plan, or path to the realization of that dream.

Find your dream and your plan will unfold, revealing itself.

Dreams create clarity. Clarity reveals the path towards the realization of those dreams. When that path then becomes your life plan, dreams become a reality.

How many of you are perfect?

How many of you had amazingly perfect parents?

Here’s a little, dirty secret – we are all products of an imperfect upbringing.

So, will you wallow in your dysfunctional upbringing?

Not me. I will not.

I intend to rise above my inherited imperfections.

Will you join me?

The path to overcoming the imperfections that are a byproduct of your upbringing is awareness. Awareness of the minutiae that is holding you back.

That minutiae is represented by the unconscious programming you received during your upbringing, primarily from your parents.

That unconscious programming is why:

• You eat too much junk food
• You are negative and unhappy
• You respond with anger to those around you
• You find fault in everything around you
• You do not read to learn
• You do not exercise
• You have Type II diabetes
• You drink too much
• You curse
• You sabotage relationships
• You quit when the going gets tough
• You see yourself as stupid
• You think you’re inferior

Awareness of your faults opens your eyes to them. If you want to change your life, you must become aware of and then change the imperfections that are the springboard for the life you currently have.

We are all imperfect because we were raised imperfectly. Dysfunction is commonplace and omnipresent. But the flaws you inherited from your upbringing do not have to be a death sentence.

Acknowledge your flaws. Make a list of them. Stare at them.

Once you see them on paper, they begin to lose their power over you.

Then, change is possible.

You can rewrite the script for your life. The life you desire is completely within your control.

Envy your future.

When you know exactly who you want to become – what your future holds for you – this creates a clear vision of the end.

This is clarity – a superpower of high achievers, the successful and self-made millionaires.

Once you define your end, your subconscious then goes to work to reveal the path that will get you to where you want to go.

That path will then reveal the plans to help guide you to your end. Those plans manifest themselves in the form of dreams and goals. Those dreams and goals represent your GPS, or map, which leads you to your destination.

Those plans reveal the knowledge and the skills that you must acquire, during your journey, in order to reach your destination.

This creates persistence – the relentless acquisition of knowledge and the mastery of the skills, that lead you to your destination.

Clarity sets all of this in motion: the Plan, the daily Practices you must engage in and Persistence.

The by products for High Achievement are success and wealth. A prerequisite for high achievement is clarity.

Without clarity success and wealth are almost certainly unattainable.

Clarity is really the secret superpower of the super-wealthy.

Here’s why.

Knowing where you want to go supercharges your brain. It opens up areas of the subconscious mind, that were previously dormant or not functioning to their full capacity:

• Identifying exactly where you want to be in, say, five years, activates the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is part of the subconscious brain’s Limbic System. It is the brain’s radar system – taking in targeted stimuli from the environment, via the five senses.
• Clarity also supercharges the Thalamus. The Thalamus resides just above the Brain Stem, the oldest part of the brain. It is intricately connected to the Basal Ganglia (part of the Limbic System and the hub of habit formation) and the cerebral cortex (the most advanced and modern addition to the brain).

The Thalamus, along with the RAS, then begin to work together as a team searching for clues within your environment that help to subconsciously guide you to the correct path you must take. 

The moment you define where you want to be in five years, is the moment you supercharge these two very powerful parts of the “old brain”.

Once supercharged, these two areas of the “old brain” go to work, behind the scenes, helping direct you and guide you via intuition, on the path that will take you to the realization of your dreams and goals.

Toxic people are Dream Disruptors.

They throw a wrench into your path, disrupting your march towards success. This is why it is critical to eliminate toxic people from your inner circle.

There are certain give-aways, traits or signs that will help you easily identify toxic people.:

• Sarcasm – Toxic people use sarcasm to demean. Their goal is to take you down a notch, which makes them feel superior to you. Oftentimes this sarcasm is shrouded in humor. When you see this Poor Habit or toxic trait in anyone, you know you are in the presence of a toxic person.
• Gossip – Toxic people have the Poor Habit of gossiping. Gossiping is almost always negative. The underlying goal of gossip is to impair or damage your reputation.  When you find out someone gossiped about you, distance yourself from them. They have only one goal in mind and that is to disrupt you.
• Negative Mindset – Toxic people often possess a negative mindset. They see problems everywhere. They see negative outcomes everywhere. They see the bad in every situation.
• Money Problems – Toxic people struggle financially. They have difficulty paying their bills. They are swimming is debt. They live beyond their means. They do not make enough money to sustain their standard of living.
• Relationship Problems – Toxic people struggle with their relationships. They do things, like gossiping, that undermine the relationship. Toxic people do not have many friends or long-term relationships. They are constantly bickering or fighting with family members.
• Job Hopping – Toxic people struggle in maintaining a job. Because of their toxic traits, their work lives are in constant turmoil. They hop from one job to the next.
• Deceitful – Toxic people cannot be trusted. They have a reputation of being untrustworthy and will, eventually, stab you in the back.

Toxic people infect you with their toxic traits.

Once you become aware of these toxic traits, however, toxic people lose their power over you.

It’s very much like diffusing a bomb before it detonates and can cause any damage. Awareness enables you to shake off anything toxic people might say or do to take you off purpose – the pursuit of your dreams and goals.