When I decided in 2009 to write my first book, Rich Habits, I confess that I entertained visions of grandeur. I thought, fantasized, about selling many books and becoming rich, like so many of the millionaires I studied.

That desire to become rich lit the fire and provided the initial motivation I needed.

Since then, I’ve written and sold many books. The money’s nice but it’s no longer the reason I keep at it.

I learned something along the way. My desire to help others lift themselves up, to achieve great things in their lives, is now my driving force.

Not a day goes by where I don’t receive emails or social media messages from readers thanking me for my work. I even got a Linkedin message from a woman who wanted to thank me for helping her save her child from life threatening brain cancer.

While riches may be one of the reasons you decide to pursue a dream, there is usually a deeper, more meaningful reason, hidden beneath all of the piles of imaginary dollars.

Significance.

When you find your calling or main purpose in life, both lead to the same place – a feeling of significance.

Significance is the ultimate reward for pursuing a dream. Not money.

When you live a life of significance, you are doing much more than making money. You are helping others by adding value to their lives in some way. When your short existence on this planet leaves a positive imprint on the lives of others, your life has significance.

If a dream is a rainbow, at the end of that rainbow is a life of significance. That’s the real pot of gold that’s waiting for you. And the feeling that your life has significance, is the feeling we call happiness.

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!

Humans herd because inside the herd is safety. We’re just hardwired to seek safety. In the herd, there is no uncertainty, no risk.

But uncertainty is boring. It’s a zombie existence.

Fortunately, humans were also hardwired for adventure, or to pursue the unknown.

Inside the unknown is where opportunities lurk. Inside the unknown is where your natural gifts and talents lie, waiting to be discovered.

Venturing into the unknown is scary. The unknown will knock you down. That is because, inside the unknown is also where mistakes and failures reside. But while those mistakes and failures cause pain, suffering and cost you money, they also accelerate your growth. And, the more you grow, the better you become.

Growth causes you to stand out in the crowd. It eliminates the competition. It transforms you into a person of significance.

Everything you want resides in the unknown. Don’t fear it, embrace it.

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!

There is an all out war being waged for control of your mind. It’s a war because so many different factions have joined forces in the hope of altering your thinking, behavior and your habits.

Big consumerist-driven companies seek to brainwash you in an attempt to separate you from your money.

The political establishment seeks to brainwash you in order to get your vote and gain more power.

The media, which now includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, conspires with various special interests in an effort to brainwash you, in order to serve the needs of the various special interests.

Facebook, Snapchat and other social media sites have now become the front line of the war for your mind. Follow the wrong people and you can find yourself adopting the thinking, behaviors and habits of those you follow. Depending on who you follow, this could be good or bad.

You inner circle, unwittingly under the spell of these same special interests, can influence your thinking, behaviors and habits, in a way that serves the needs of these special interest groups.

Every day, your mind is being assaulted. If you drop your guard, meaning, if you are not in control of the content that flows into your brain, those who seek to control your thinking, behavior and habits, will win their war for your mind. You will become just another one of their mind-controlled zombies.

The Rich Habits that will help you defeat the special interests vying for control of your mind are:

• Self-Awareness – You must force yourself to become aware of the content you habitually consume each day.
• Rich Relationships – Choose your inner circle very carefully. Those inside this circle should be individuals who share your values and possess the positive thinking and good habits that will help move you forward in the pursuit of your dreams and goals. Your inner circle is your forcefield, preventing you from becoming a zombie to the special interest influencers who are waging a war to control your thinking, behaviors and habits.
• Avoid Time-Wasters – Minimize how much time you spend: watching junk TV, engaged in junk social media, consuming junk online content, playing time-wasting video games, etc. Control how you spend your time and you can prevent the special interests from gaining control over your thinking, behaviors and habits.
• Keep An Open Mind – The battle for your mind is won when you embrace and submit to the ideology of these special interests. Ideology is always one-sided thinking. It’s black and white thinking. Right and wrong thinking. Yes and no thinking. Ideology forces you to accept something as dogma, without really knowing if the facts support that dogma. Those who maintain an open mind, do not fall victim to ideologues seeking to control your mind. The special interests out there are unable to brainwash those who maintain an open mind.

Your behavior and habits are influenced by your thinking. Guard your mind as you would guard the lives of your children. Consume content that is in line with your values and which allows you to grow and improve. Seek positive, uplifting content, which helps foster a positive outlook on life.

Positivity is the path to prosperity. Negativity is the path to mediocrity and poverty.

Bad thinking leads to bad behavior and bad habits. Bad behavior and bad habits lead to a bad life.

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 hardly ever hear anyone talk about goals in a negative context. Goals are almost always perceived to be good. But there are goals that add no real value to your life when achieved, yet consume valuable resources.

So, how do you know when a goal is good or bad?

Good Goals

Good goals are long-term focused. They eschew instant gratification in order to create benefits down the road that result in financial independence, good health, long-term, valuable relationships and happiness.

Good goals benefit the future you. They push you to grow and improve as an individual.

An example of a good goal would be to lose 20 pounds. Setting a weight loss goal often involves a daily regimen of exercise, healthy eating and encourages a healthy lifestyle. Good health results from exercising and eating right. It may also motivate you to moderate your consumption of alcohol or to quit smoking. When the weight eventually comes off, you enjoy the compliments, feel healthier and all of this creates lasting happiness.

Bad Goals

Bad goals are short-term focused. They eschew delayed gratification in order to create immediate benefits, ignoring the impact on your future self.

Bad goals ignore the future. They do not help you grow or improve as an individual.

An example of a bad goal would be to own a Ferrari. In order to own a Ferrari you must make more money. Making more money will likely involve either more work or taking excessive financial risk (i.e. gambling). There’s a cost-benefit to working more – you see less of your family. Don’t misunderstand me here. Working more to make more money can be a good thing. But where the goal goes south is when you then invest that extra money in possessions, like a Ferrari.

The happiness you derive from owning more or better things will fade over time, since happiness derived from buying anything is always short term. You will eventually revert back to your genetic happiness baseline and, after a few weeks, the Ferrari will no longer create lasting happiness. The lost time with the family, however, can never be recouped.

If the goal, instead, was to judiciously invest that extra money you earned into a calculated risk, such as a side business, an investment or a vacation home that would enable you to spend more time with your family, then it transforms the “work more/earn more” goal into a good goal.

The benefits of achieving a goal should create some long-term benefit or result in long-term happiness: more time with the family, more personal growth, financial independence, improved health, etc.

When the achievement of a goal is predicated on owning more possessions or instant gratification, it’s almost always a bad goal –  a wasted investment.

Be careful of the goals you pursue. Not all goals are created equal.

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!

Controlling your emotions was one of the common Rich Habits among the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study.

There is a great deal of new brain science out there that explains how emotions, in particular, negative emotions, alter brain performance. One of the most profound impacts emotions have on the brain is that they interfere with the operations of the Prefrontal Cortex.

Why is that a problem?

It’s a problem because the Prefrontal Cortex does numerous things, some of which impact your ability to live a successful, happy, healthy and wealthy life:

• Executive Command and Control – The Prefrontal Cortex is the area of the brain where logic and decision-making reside.
• Creativity – Insight, flashes of genius and intuition result from the joint communication between the Prefrontal Cortex and the Limbic system.
• Consciousness – Although consciousness is spread out among many areas of the brain, the Prefrontal Cortex is the CEO of consciousness and self-awareness.
• Emotional Control – The Prefrontal Cortex has the ability to stop emotions in their tracks, upon command.

When your emotions erupt, you have two choices – let them flow or shut them down.

When you allow your emotions to flow, the Amygdala, one of the primary emotional centers of the brain, takes complete control of the brain by shutting down or overpowering the Prefrontal Cortex.

In a landmark study called the Broaden and Build Theory, lead researcher, B. L. Fredrickson discovered that negativity reduces cognitive ability. Meaning, emotions prevent you from focusing, thinking clearly and can impair your decision-making.

When the Amygdala is takes control of the brain, logic, decision-making and focus become impaired.

There are millions of people around the world, sitting behind bars or divorced, all because they allowed their Amygdala to control their behaviors and decision-making.

So, controlling your emotions keeps you out of trouble and loyal to your spouse?

Yes, but it is much more than that.

Controlling your emotions also happens to be critical to success, wealth, health and happiness.

When the Prefrontal Cortex is trained to control emotions, and this training becomes a habit, the Amygdala loses all power over you. This allows you to intelligently and logically think through difficult situations, without any emotional interference.

Those who have trained themselves to control their emotions are able to tune out all negativity, no matter the source, and go on about their business.

John D. Rockefeller, at one time the richest person in America, was famous for his ability to control his emotions. He would often brag to his colleagues about his ability to remain calm while everyone else flew into a panic.

This ability to control the amygdala, however, requires practice. Or, more specifically, it requires that you forge the Rich Habit of exercising control over your emotions.

Ninety-three percent of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits study agreed that controlling emotions was a major factor to their success. Their ability to moderate good and bad emotions was seen as one of the main reasons people liked doing business with them.

The rich in my study employed certain strategies to control their emotions.

Manage Your Expectations

Too many unmet expectations will lead to a feeling of hopelessness and result in a negative mental outlook. This negativity is like a cancer that eats away at your confidence and mental toughness. If a negative mental outlook takes root, you turn up the Amygdala, which only compounds your problems.

The key to keeping your emotions in check is to set low or realistic expectations. When expectations are low or realistic, you are more likely to meet those expectations and this keeps your emotions in check.

Setting low expectations will keep your emotions on an even keel and allow you to keep moving forward on your dreams.

Exercise

Aerobic exercise releases certain neuro-chemicals that have a calming effect on the Amygdala.

Hobbies

Doing something you enjoy, helps restore emotions to their natural baseline.

Eat Healthy

A study by the University of Warwick in London and University of Queensland, in Australia, asked 12,000 Australians to eat eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The study found a measurable increase in happiness due in large part to their altered diet. Further studies had isolated the reason – fruits and vegetables produce healthy probiotics and pre-biotics, improving the health of the gut (large intestine). Your gut sends information directly to the brain via the vagus nerve. When the gut is out of balance, it sends a distress signal to the limbic system, amping up the amygdala.

Get a Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep slows down your Sympathetic Nervous System, reduces stress and resets your emotions back to its natural baseline.

Talk To Friends or Family

Venting helps calm the Amygdala. When things go wrong, it helps to talk things over with sympathetic friends, family members or colleagues at work.

Journal

Journaling helps to clear your head of negative emotions. Like talking to your friends or close family members, it is a form of venting.

Laugh

Laughter boosts dopamine and oxytocin, two neurotransmitters which act to depress the Amygdala and restore your emotions back to their natural baseline.

Meditation

A study from Emory University found that 20 minutes of daily meditation had a calming effect on the brain and helped improve focus and concentration.

Music

Listening to calming music tampers down the Amygdala, making the ventromedial prefrontal cortex’s job easier.

Pleasant Conversation

The mere act of engaging in pleasant conversation calms the emotional center of the brain. This is one of the reasons you want to surround yourself with upbeat, enthusiastic, positive individuals and avoid associating with toxic, negative individuals

No one likes doing business with people who are volatile. Individuals who allow their emotions to control their decisions and their reactions to events, make others feel ill at ease – essentially, pushing away the very people you need to help you succeed in life.

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!

Think back to the worst emotional pain you experienced in your life.

Death of a loved one, a broken heart, business failure, getting fired from a job, divorce?

Whatever it was that took the legs out from underneath you, very likely altered your behavior. It likely caused you to reevaluate your life and make changes.

Were those changes positive or negative? Did they set you on a path that changed your life in a positive way or did they send you spiraling downward?

I’ve learned so many things from studying the habits of self-made millionaires and those struggling with poverty. One of the lessons I learned is that my millionaires had developed a Positive Reaction Rich Habit to negative events.

For these millionaires, negative events were the catalyst for positive change. And those changes helped them achieve enormous success in their lives.

Conversely, those struggling with poverty developed a Negative Reaction Poor Habit to negative events. Painful events became catalysts for isolation, depression, retreat and sometimes addictions.

When I discovered the Positive Reaction Rich Habit during my study, it brought back a very old and very powerful memory of a negative life event that took the legs out from underneath me when I was 19 years old.

A girl broke my heart. It was the first girl I really liked and cared about. I remember feeling like a zombie. Initially, I moped around the house. I isolated myself from my friends and family. I retreated.

As a kid, whenever I lost a baseball game (I was a Pitcher) or whenever I lost a tennis match, I would get very emotional and I would retreat into my room. My father would always come into my room and tell me that the best revenge after losing was to get better.

My father’s words carried great weight with me. He was one of the two most famous baseball players on Staten Island during his high school years. The other great player was Bobby Thomson.  Thomson became world famous for the home run he hit off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to win the 1951 National League pennant for the NY Giant’s.

So, at an early age, thanks to my Dad, I adopted the Positive Reaction Rich Habit in order to become better at sports.

Well, a few weeks after my breakup, this Positive Reaction Rich Habit began to kick in.

I joined a local gym and began lifting weights. I also threw myself into my college studies.

Within a two-year period, I had completely transformed my body by adding 15 pounds of muscle. More importantly, my college Grade Point Average increased from a 3.1 to a 4.0. I even made the Dean’s List.

My desire to improve also motivated me to make more money. I increased the number of hours I worked at my part-time janitor job. The extra money I earned made it easier for me to pay for college. It also enabled me to afford to get braces for my teeth, which dramatically improved the way I looked as well as my self-confidence.

How you react to the negative events in your life is habit. If you want to improve your life, you must develop the habit of reacting to negative events in a way that causes you to grow and improve.

Life doesn’t drag you down. It’s the negative reaction to negative events that drags you down.

The circumstances of your life are determined by your habits. They are the key to wealth, health and happiness.

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!

When you look in the mirror who do you see?

Do you see someone who is confident and certain about the path they are on?

Or, do you see someone who is lost and without direction?

Successful people intentionally shape the course of their lives. They create a blueprint of the life they desire and then work hard every day to turn that blueprint into reality.

In my research, I uncovered nine strategies that the successful people in my Rich Habits Study used to not only help them create a blueprint for every area of their lives, but strategies that also served to inspire them to take action:  [Read more…]

The vast majority of individuals are uncertain as to what they should do with their lives. Consequently, they rely on the advise of their inner circle (family, friends, etc.) in selecting their line of work.

This is a common mistake and the reason so many are unhappy with their work lives.

When you choose a career path this way, you are essentially putting your ladder on someone else’s wall and climbing that ladder for the rest of your working life.

Most people do not take the time to figure out the correct path they should take in life. The correct path is almost always doing something that exploits one or more of your innate strengths.

Everyone is born with certain innate strengths. An innate strength is any activity that simply comes easier to you than others. It is something that gives you a sense of joy, happiness or fulfillment when you are doing it. It is any activity in which time seems to fly by, meaning it puts you into a state of flow.

The key, therefore, to finding your path in life, is to uncover your innate strengths.

Finding your innate strengths involves a specific process.

FINDING YOUR INNATE STRENGTHS

1. Make a list of activities that made you feel happy – Go back in time and think about any activity that you really enjoyed doing.
2. Identify each activity that required some type of skill – just put an “S” next to it.
3. To the best of your ability, identify what that skill is. Examples:
   • You enjoy socializing and are very good at it, meaning you can walk into a room of strangers and strike up conversations = potential Sales Skills.
   • You enjoyed playing team sports = potential Team Skills (Investment Banking, Mergers & Acquisitions, Auditing).
   • You like doing research = potential Research Skills (Science, Tax Law).

When you are able to gain clarity on exactly what you should be doing with your life, an overpowering sense of happiness and calm will flow through you. It’s as if the weight of the world has been lifted off your shoulders.

Knowing exactly what you should be doing for a living requires understanding what innate strengths you possess. Once you identify those strengths and can translate them into real-world vocations, this gives you clarity. Clarity allows you to define the exact path you should take in life.

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!

“The foundation of success is built upon a mountain of mistakes. The more mistakes you make in life, the higher your mountain will be. The higher your mountain, the greater your success.” Tom Corley

I love kicking off many of my speaking engagements with this quote because it forces people to re-think mistakes. Instead of thinking about mistakes in a negative way, we need to embrace mistakes as learning opportunities.

Mistakes hurt. They cost you time and money. But mistakes also force you to pivot, or change what you are doing. They force you to move in a different direction. For this reason, mistakes are your GPS guidance system for success.

But mistakes only act as a GPS when you learn from them and apply what you’ve learned. Foolproof processes, processes that have helped small companies become big companies, and founders become millionaires, are engineered on the back of many mistakes.

If you are struggling in life, one of the reasons may be because you are repeating mistakes.

Why would anyone repeat a mistake?

When you are not mindful of the mistakes you are making, you cannot learn from them. The cure is to create a process in which you track each one of your mistakes. Every one of them. Here’s what you need to do:

For one month, track every wonderful mistake you make. Carry around a little notepad in your pocket and, for one month, write down every single mistake you make. At the end of the month review your list. Search for duplicate mistakes; those that repeat.

This tracking process will force you to become aware of your mistakes, particularly the ones you are repeating. Only after you become aware of your mistakes can you learn from them and change what you are doing. Eventually, after experimenting with different solutions or processes, you will stumble upon one that works and helps you succeed in whatever it is you are doing.

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!