In 1938 Harvard University embarked on what would become the longest study of adult development. The study involved 724 men who were split into two groups:

1. 268 sophomore students from Harvard University and
2. 456 sixteen year olds from the most disadvantaged areas in Boston

There have been 4 directors at Harvard who have continued this study. Sixty of the 724 subjects are still alive. Four conclusions have been made about happiness:

1. Loneliness Kills – People with little to no relationships are unhappy, less healthy and do not live long lives.
2. Toxic Relationships Kill – Relationships with individuals who have problems and bring conflict and stress into our lives cause unhappiness, poor health and reduced longevity.
3. Rich Relationships Improve Life – Relationships with individuals who lift us up and improve our lives make us happier, healthier and live longer.
4. The Stronger and More Rich Relationships You Have, the Better – Strong Rich Relationships increase brain function, health and longevity.

Our brain is really two brains. The New Brain (neocortex) and the Old Brain (Brain Stem and Limbic System). The New Brain has only been around for a few hundred thousands years. From a human evolutionary perspective, the New Brain is brand new. It is the CEO of the brain and houses our executive functions. Some refer to it as the conscious brain. The Old Brain has been around for millions of millions of years. From an evolutionary perspective, the Old Brain is very old. It houses all of our emotions and controls most of autonomic functions of the body, like keeping our organs working properly without any thinking required. Some refer to is as the subconscious brain.

Because our Old Brain, our emotional brain, has been around so much longer than our New Brain, it is infinitely more powerful than our New Brain. This can be a good or a bad thing. If we have been raised in a negative environment and thus, habituated or programmed at an early age with negative emotions, then our emotional brain becomes our enemy. It will undermine us during our entire lives with outbursts of anger that destroy relationships, tell us to quit when the going gets tough, fill us with a scarcity mindset using envy and jealousy as its tools and it will demand instant gratification every chance it gets. When your emotional brain is filled with negative emotions you have absolutely no chance of succeeding in life. You will fail.

If you were raised in a negative environment, or are filled with all sorts of limiting, negative beliefs, all is not lost. You still have your New Brain to rescue you. Your New Brain can be called into action to help reprogram your emotional brain from negative to positive. And it’s not hard at all. It’s just a three-step process. The first part of the process is to engage in something I call Dream-Setting. The second part is expressing gratitude every day for the things you have. Gratitude is the gateway to optimism and a positive mindset. The third part is to create daily affirmations around new beliefs you would like to have. Examples: “I believe I can accomplish anything if I put my mind to it,” “I am confident in myself,” “I will lose 30 pounds by May,” “I love to exercise”.  Customize your affirmations to reflect the future ideal person you desire to be. These affirmations are programmed into the Old Brain as if they were goals to pursue. The Old Brain loves goals, so it will nudge you through that voice inside your head to take certain actions. As long as you continue to repeat these affirmations, the Old Brain will continue to nudge you. It won’t stop nudging you. It will nudge you in your sleep, in the shower, on the toilet, while your commuting to work, when you’re sitting on the couch or turning into a McDonalds.

As soon as you begin to shift your Old Brain from negative to positive, it will immediately begin to produce positive emotions and suppress negative emotions. It’s automatic. Stay positive my friends!

Daily self-education is one of the Rich Habits of self-made millionaires. Self-education through reading, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts or watching videos such as TEDx talks causes you to grow in knowledge. The more knowledgable you become, the more valuable you become to those you serve. The more valuable you become, the more money you make. Below are some strategies I uncovered in my Rich Habits study that will help you maximize your learning time:

First Hour of the Day

The first hour of the day is the optimal time to engage in self-education. Your brain is just emerging from its alpha stage (sleep stage conducive to learning), is well rested and your willpower is at its highest. During this first hour devote 15 – 20 minutes of technical reading. Technical reading is any reading that is related to your what you do for a living. It is the hardest type of reading. Do your technical reading first. After completing your technical reading, devote another 15 – 20 minutes to any reading material that excites you. This could be inspirational reading or reading related to some hobby or passion.

Document What You Learn

Keep a Fact Binder broken up into a few key categories:

• Job-Related
• Passion/Hobby-Related
• Current Events
• Science
• History
• Health
• Successful People
• New Words

You should customize your categories to suit your interests. When you learn anything new, write it down in your Fact Binder.

Review What You’ve Learned

Repetition is the key to long-term memory consolidation. Spend 15 – 20 minutes each day reviewing your Fact Binder.

Blog What You’ve Learned

The process of writing down what you’ve learned helps transfer that new knowledge to long-term memory.

Communicate New Knowledge

Sharing new information with others improves your understanding of that new information. When you have to communicate something you know, just like a teacher does, it elevates your grasp of the subject matter. You really have to know your topic in order to effectively communicate what you know to others.

By the time the world woke up to the frightening emergence of the Nazi regime, group-think had already infected most of Germany. Being part of a group changes how you think and behave. It changes your habits and the direction of your life. We see group-think at work in sports teams around the world, large corporations like Google, self-help organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers and we see it even within the family unit.

For those struggling in life or those who would like to reach for the stars, finding a group of like-minded, success-oriented people who can help lift you up, will fast track your escape from poverty or rise to riches.

But how do you find the right group of individuals to join? That is the million dollar question. The first step requires self-assessment. You need to define the future life you want to have. To do this, you must ask yourself a few fundamental questions:

1. What does my future life look like?
2. What does the future me do for a living?
3. What type of people does the future me associate with?
4. Where does the future me live and work?
5. What skills and knowledge does the future me possess?

You need to clearly define what type of life you desire. Once you have done this, the next part of the process is to find people who share your dreams, goals, lifestyle, thinking, etc. It’s not that easy. But there is a shortcut.

Organizing a Mastermind Group of like-minded people is a good start. All you need is four, besides yourself. Meet once a week physically or via Skype, phone, etc. The key to the success of the group is consistency. You must devote at least one hour every week to the group. The individuals within the group will eventually open up their contact list to you and introduce you to many other like-minded people. Ben Franklin got his start with a Mastermind Group. So too did Steve Jobs and many other successful people.

If you are disgusted with your life and want real change, you need to change your environment. That environment is made up of people you associate with regularly. That means, in order to change your life, you need to change who you associate with. When you find the right group of success-minded individuals your life will begin to change almost immediately.

Every person has limitless potential to do and be something great. It does not matter where you start out in life – you can start out homeless and poor and still become a millionaire or a billionaire. The only thing that does matter is that you want to succeed. There has to be a deep, inner drive to succeed. That driver is whatever taps into your emotions.

It is virtually impossible to achieve success, realize your dreams or accomplish your goals without tapping into your emotions. All motivation comes from some emotion, whether positive (i.e. passion or enthusiasm) or negative (i.e. disgust or fear).  Emotion triggers motivation. It sets everything in motion. You need a driver, something meaningful that allows you to tap into your emotions if you want to do anything significant with your life.

How do you find that driver, that trigger, that taps into your emotions and that motivates you to do something important in life?

You Must Find Your WHY

Everyone who wants to realize a dream or achieve their goals must have a big WHY. Your WHY could be: your kids, your spouse, a fear of poverty, a fear of failure, to realize a drew or, vision, disgust with some aspect of your life, to make someone you love or admire proud of you, to prove someone wrong, to be like someone you admire, to be free from someone or something in your life, or to overcome something (handicap, poverty, rejection, etc.).

Finding your WHY means you have found that thing (your driver) that taps into some emotion. That driver is the catalyst which inspires you to achieve something great. Everyone has a WHY. Find your WHY and you will unleash the emotional part of your brain that will motivate you to achieve and succeed.

It’s too bad, in my opinion, that the word faith has been co-opted by religious groups. Belief in God is a very personal thing, but not everyone believes in God.  As a result, when personal development experts use the word faith, it has a way of turning off those who do not believe in God. That’s too bad, because without faith, success in unattainable. You will not succeed if you do not have faith in your dreams, goals and yourself. So, I thought I’d dissect the true non-religious meaning of faith. This way, everyone will understand what it really is and why it’s so critical to success.

Faith encompasses a multitude of success characteristics: fortitude, persistence, mental stamina, grit, sticking it out during tough times, confidence, belief, conviction, certainty, hope, certainty, courage, tenacity, fearlessness, boldness, resoluteness, guts, intestinal fortitude, determination, resolve, will, willpower and toughness.

Faith means you never quit on your dreams, your goals and the pursuit of your main purpose in life. Those who have faith in their dreams, goals and their main purpose in life do not allow anything to get in their way. Faith enables you to overcome every obstacle in your path towards success. It is an undying belief that you will succeed. When you have faith, success is just a matter of time. When you have faith, it can transform the poorest of the poor into the richest of the rich. Faith erases all doubts and all fears. Faith is the most important ingredient to success. With faith all things are possible.

In a paper published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in which the brains of 46 teenagers were scanned, they found that risk-taking teens activated a portion of the brain called the ventral striatum. The ventral striatum is comprised of a large amount of dopamine receptors. Dopamine is the happiness neurotransmitter.

In my Rich Habits study, I found that 142 of the 177 self-made millionaires (80%) had devoted much of their adult lives in the pursuit of some dream. Anyone who has ever pursued a dream understands that doing so requires that you take significant risks with your time and money, since there is no guarantee that you will realize your dream. An interesting correlation to this was also found in my study: 82% of the wealthy said they were happy. Conversely, only 3% of the poor people in my study took a risk in pursuing some dream and interestingly, only 2% of the poor in my study said they were happy.

It’s clear from these studies that the pursuit of success will make you happier in life. Playing it safe in life not only prevents you from pursuing success, it also results long-term unhappiness. If your ultimate goal in life is long-term happiness, pursue something you are passionate about.

We were not put here on earth to play it safe. We are here to push ourselves to realize our potential. We can only realize that true potential by taking risks and pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zones. The discomfort inherent in taking a risk by pursuing some dream forces us to grow our knowledge, expertise, skills and relationships. The true reward in pursuing a dream and realizing success is not money, it is happiness.

According to a study published by the Journal of Happiness, associating with other happy people turns on a gene that increases happiness levels. The gene is called “A allele”. A Allele regulates anandamine, a substance that increases pleasure and reduces pain.

Conversely, when you associate with unhappy, toxic people you turn this gene off, and this acts like a stopgap, preventing the release of anandamine, resulting in increased pain and reduced happiness.

The old adage is true, we are who we associate with. Create a culture of happiness by making a habit of associating with other happy people and avoiding unhappy people.

For years we’ve been advised that the key to weight loss is to burn more calories than we consume. And many accepted this advice, put on their running shoes, or bike helmet or weight belt and went to town burning calories. But the latest science on obesity is turning this strategy to weight loss on its head. Here’s why.

There are approximately 3-5 pounds of bacteria in our large intestine. This bacteria breaks down the food we eat and provides us (and the bacteria) with nutrients that keep us alive. Nutrients that are not needed at the moment are then stored as fat around different parts of the body. Recent studies on obesity indicate that a combination of our western diet (high fat, high refined carbohydrates and low fiber) and the overuse of antibiotics is killing key species of bacteria that live in our large intestine. The death of this bacteria impairs our ability to extract nutrients from the food we eat and forces the body to store these unused nutrients as fat. Your inability to lose weight is very likely the result of not having enough diverse species of bacteria living in your gut. So what do you do?

There’s something called pre-biotics (not to be confused with pro-biotics) which, when ingested, can restore the natural balance of bacteria in your gut, making digestion more efficient, while reducing fat. Pre-biotics include:

• Artichokes
• Beans
• Root Vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions, etc.)
• Yogurt
• Sauerkraut
• Asparagus
• Bananas
• Garlic
• Cabbage
• Legumes (chick peas, lentils and green peas)
• Bran
• Leeks
• Apples

Amazingly, consuming these pre-biotics can restore the lost bacteria within 24 hours and help you get back on track with your weight loss. Make it a daily habit to consume foods rich in these pre-biotics and you will find it much easier to burn calories and lose weight.