One of the common habits of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study was something called Gamma Focus.

Gamma Focus is a unique type of focus.

Gamma Focus is why we were able to go to the moon.

Gamma Focus is why Steve Jobs was able to raise Apple, like a phoenix, from the ashes of near-bankruptcy to the trillion dollar company it is today.

Gamma Focus is why only a few businesses thrive, while most others eek out a living.

Very few make Gamma Focus a daily habit.

Almost everyone has experienced Gamma Focus:

• Studying for and taking college finals.
• Studying for and taking a standardized test.
• Working on a deadline.
• Creating something – writing a book, developing an app, designing a new product or starting a new business.

When you are in a state of Gamma Focus, your brain waves operate at an accelerated rate.

Your goal should be to make Gamma Focus a daily habit.

How?

Blocking off 90 minutes to two hours each day to focus on the things that help move you forward in realizing your dreams and goals or in growing your business.

How To Get Yourself Into the Gamma State

Prior to engaging in any Gamma Focus, do the following five things:

#1 Eliminate Environmental Distractions:

• Avoid People – Shut Door or Isolate Yourself
• Ignore Phone Calls
• Ignore Text Messages
• Ignore Emails
• Shut off all devices that create background noise – TVs, radio, phones, notifications, etc.

#2 Exercise Aerobically and/or Anaerobically

Aerobic and Anaerobic exercise helps de-stress your brain and boosts your metabolic rate.

• Aerobic Exercise: Running, Jogging, Biking, FastWalking.
• Anaerobic Exercise: Weight Lifting, Resistance Exercise, High Intensity Exercise.

#3 Naps – Take a 30 Minute Nap 

This helps restore any loss of willpower energy and eliminates Decision Fatigue.

#4 Eat a Healthy Meal Prior to Engaging in Gamma Focus

Consume high fiber foods. This will give you about two hours of energy, perfect for optimal Gamma Focus.

#5 Gamma Focus After a Full Night’s Sleep

You need between 7 to 8.5 hours of sleep every night. Sleep cleans the brain, resets your emotional and metabolic state and helps consolidate memories.

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When negative thoughts dominate your thinking, you shut down or stifle the amazing powers of your prefrontal cortex, your brain’s highly evolved and very powerful executive command and control center.

The prefrontal cortex is the most advanced part of the human brain. It’s incredible power is derived from it’s connection to other parts of the brain. The prefrontal cortex uses spindle neurons (neurons with a long axon and long dendrites) to connect to the limbic system and the brain stem.

Because of this master connection, the prefrontal cortex has access to the treasure trove of information that exists throughout the entire brain.

Negativity shuts down or interferes with this master, brain-wide connection.

When you are in a negative mindset, the amygdala, part of the limbic system, overpowers the prefrontal cortex.

Example: Sometimes car accident victims go into shock. When the police or emergency service personnel arrive at the scene they are trained in dealing with individuals who are in this state of shock. Those in a state of shock are unable to communicate with the outside world. This is because they are still under the complete control of the amygdala, which has effectively shut down the prefrontal cortex and taken control of the brain. It’s a survival mechanism, intended to  eliminate the need to ponder what to do in emergency situations. The amygdala takes the prefrontal cortex offline, and automates what you do in emergency situations. It is the seat of your fight or flight control system. It’s there for a reason – survival during life threatening emergencies.

Obviously shock is the extreme effects of the amygdala taking control of the brain and shutting down the prefrontal cortex. But, a negative mindset does the same thing, albeit, in a watered-down sense.

A negative mindset allows the amygdala to subordinate the prefrontal cortex, effectively cutting off or short circuiting prefrontal cortex access to other parts of the brain.

Negativity hands over control of your brain from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala, thus muting or disabling your prefrontal cortex.

When your prefrontal cortex is disabled, you are operating without the most powerful, most evolved part of our brain.

Success is hard, even with your prefrontal cortex operating at full capacity. But success is impossible when your prefrontal cortex has been disabled by negativity.

This is why it is no coincidence that so many self-made millionaires are often described as having a very upbeat, optimistic, positive mental outlook.

Positivity unleashes the incredible powers of the prefrontal cortex, thus increasing your odds of success.

In order to put an end to negative thinking, you must make positivity a daily habit. Here’s how:

1. Meditation
2. Positive Affirmations
3. Five-Year Future Journal
4. Vision Board
5. Gratitude List
6. Love

Meditation

• Sit in a chair and get comfortable
• Close eyes
• Feel your eyes relax, then your whole head, then your neck, then your shoulders, then your chest, then your arms, then your waist, then your legs and then your feet
• Take thirty deep breathes and see the numbers in your head. Let all thoughts drift by one after the other
• Visualize your big dream coming true. Visualize all of your goals being realized. Visualize your ideal life, with your ideal home, ideal job, your income, your good health. See yourself happy and successful
• Ask for help in overcoming any obstacles that are in your way
• Open eyes and say “I am happy”

Positive Affirmations

Affirmations need to be in the present tense and represent a future state of being. For example: “I Am our company’s #1 salesman”.  Affirmations only work when they are tied to your goals or your dreams.

Five-Year Future Journal

This is an entry you write in your Journal, if you have one, that is five years into the future. It lists all of the major goals you accomplished over the past five years, the things you acquired during that period, the wealth you accumulated during this period etc. It paints a picture of your ideal life, five years from now.

Vision Board

Your Vision Board is a visual representation of all of the the things you desire in life. Each dream you desire is represented by a picture.

Gratitude List

Each day write down at least three things that happened yesterday, that you are grateful for. Gratitude is the gateway to positivity. It shifts your thinking from lacking to abundance by forcing you focus on what you have, not what you lack.

Love

Love is the most powerful positive emotion. When you make a daily habit of utilizing this very powerful emotion, like a muscle, it strengthens your positive mental outlook. Express love as often and as frequently as possible. The more you “love” the more positive you become and the less negative you become.

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Consistency was a hallmark of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study.

Consistency was often represented by specific habits adopted by these millionaires. These habits were often tailored, or customized by each individual’s need to accomplish something, such as a goal.

They are known as Goal Habits.

Goal Habits are the construction crew used by ordinary individuals in pursuit of a dream. GoalHabits are strategic, consistent actions taken, that, when achieved, move you forward and closer to the realization of an individual dream.

When that one individual dream is realized, a new dream takes its place, and, thus, new Goal Habits are created, specific to your new dream.

Each dream you realize moves you up your ladder of success, until all dreams are realized – at which point you find yourself at the top of your ladder, living the life of your dreams.

The Daily Five Strategy is a great tool to help you automate the goal achievement process.

It’s a simple strategy.

Each day do five small things, activities, that will help move you forward in achieving each singular goal. These five things should take no more than an hour each day to accomplish. If done every day, within short order, you should be able to realize your one goal. Then, you move on to the next goal and so on until all of the goals that pertain to your singular dream are accomplished and the dream is realized.

Achieving any goal is not a linear process. It involves detours, obstacles, and challenges that can never be anticipated. The Daily Five turns you into a human guided missile, a goal-seeking, human guided missile, enabling you to navigate those detours, obstacles and challenges, on a daily basis, until each goal is accomplished.

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Why is it so hard for those raised in poverty to become successful and wealthy?

One of the fancy terms economists like to toss around to describe this phenomenon is inter-generational poverty.

A few other related terms are low economic mobility, the wealth gap and income inequality.

They all have different meanings inside the minds of those economists but to ordinary folk, they all mean pretty much the same thing – if you were poor as a child you’ll probably be poor as an adult.

Education and expanded government initiatives were supposed to be the great emancipators of the poor and huddled masses. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, since the Johnson Administration, almost $15 trillion has been spent in an attempt by government to lift people out of poverty.

Yet poverty, as a percentage of the population, has changed very little. 

Despite the fact that millions more today are offered government-funded educational opportunities, government assistance and numerous other anti-poverty program benefits, not much has changed.

Clearly, government anti-poverty programs do not work and are, in fact, having the opposite effect, creating a dependent and entitlement mindset that passes from one generation to the next.

Something else must be causing poverty and a growing inequality between the haves and the have nots. But what?

Poor Parenting.

We have a parenting gap that is responsible for the wealth gap, the income gap, the economic mobility problem and never ending poverty.

How do I know?

My research tells me so.

I spent five years studying the daily habits of 361 rich and poor people. I asked each person 144 questions. I then analyzed their responses and discovered over 300 differences between the habits of the rich and the habits of the poor.

So, you might say, I know a little bit about the habits that make you rich, poor or keep you stuck in the middle-class.

When I finished my research, I identified twelve sources where individuals picked up their habits in life. The #1 source of habits are our parents.

Many adult habits, I found, are forged in childhood. You pick up habits at home.

Kids watch what their parents do and then emulated them, good or bad.

The self-made millionaires and poor people in my study picked up habits from their parents that unknowingly set them on the path to wealth or poverty.

Don’t believe me?

A recent study by Brown University, in which nearly 50,000 families were surveyed, concluded that habits in children are unlikely to vary after age 9 Study Finds Habits in Children Take Root by Age 9 | Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/school-thought/201502/study-finds-habits-in-children-take-root-age-9)

While there is not much you can do about the habits you pick up from your parents as kids, there is a great deal you can do as adults.

You can choose which habits you adopt or cast aside by changing who you associate with.

Associating with the right people dramatically alters your habits. By right people, I am referring to success-minded individuals – upbeat, positive, enthusiastic, optimistic, goal-oriented people.

These individuals represent between 5-10% of the population, so you have to make an effort to find them.

Here’s a little secret – they can be found running non-profits, charitable groups, business groups, or mentor groups (Boys and Girls Club, Boys and Girl Scouts, iMentor etc.). You can also find them at large, successful companies and in trade organizations.

Your lifelong objective should be to associate with those who possess certain habits that are essential to success in life.

What are those habits?

If you email me, I’ll send you my Rich Habits Summary. Otherwise, I post all of my research on my website (www.richhabits.net), or you can buy my books.

Why are habits so important?

What you do every day matters.

Those who succeed in life, consistently avoid bad habits and consistently follow good habits.

Those who struggle financially in life consistently avoid good habits and consistently follow bad habits.

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Habits are repetitive behaviors, choices, emotions and thinking that take place unconsciously – meaning below the awareness of your prefrontal cortex, the executive command and control center of the brain.

Depending on the study, habits represent between 40 – 60% of an individual’s daily activities.

This means 40 – 60% or more of the time, each day, we are all doing things, making choices, responding emotionally and thinking a certain way, without ever being aware of it.

I first began to realize that most of us were unaware of our daily activities in my five year study of the daily habits of the rich and poor – my Rich Habits Study.

The more I peeled this onion regarding the cause of wealth and poverty, the clearer it became that the rich possessed certain habits that were directly correlated to creating wealth and the poor possessed certain habits that were directly correlated to poverty.

Most people are on autopilot, just doing the same things their parents did, or taught them to do, without realizing it.

This is a huge problem, as far as I was concerned.

Since millions of people are poor, this means poor parents are unintentionally passing along certain Poor Habits to their children, creating a generational cycle of poverty.

It also represented a revelation to me. If poor families could change the habits they teach their children, their children could be set free from poverty, as adults.

I learned from my research that awareness of your habits is the key to changing them.

Parents are often the only shot kids have at having a mentor in life.

Poor or middle-class parents who teach their children the Rich Habits, tee their children up to become successful and wealthy, as adults.

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Below are four statistics from my five year study on the daily habits of the self-made millionaires::

1. 21% of self-made millionaires were “A” students.
2. 41% of self-made millionaires were “B” students.
3. 29% of self-made millionaires were “C” students.
4. 7% of self-made millionaires were below average students.

77% of the self-made millionaires in my study were not exceptional students. In fact, more than a third under-performed academically.

How can this be?

Most people assume that successful people are outstanding students.

Since academic performance and a high IQ are correlated, these statistics are evidence that a high IQ has no bearing on success in life.

In fact, a high IQ is often a disadvantage when it comes to success.

Academic success comes easy to those with a high IQ. But success in real life never comes easy. It is fraught with pitfalls, obstacles, failure and mistakes.

Success requires persistence and mental toughness in overcoming impediments to success. Its pursuit pushes you to the edge emotionally and physically. You must grow a thick skin and become accustomed to struggle, failure and mistakes. Those who are not accustomed to struggle, quit.

Ironically, individuals who struggle academically, become accustomed to struggle. Overcoming pitfalls, mistakes and failures is a daily habit for them. Struggle is their norm. They expect it.

Consequently, they have no fear of failure or mistakes. This is important because success is built upon a mountain of mistakes. The greater your mistakes, the higher your mountain.

What’s interesting about the self-made millionaires in my study is, despite the fact they did not start out with high IQs, they nonetheless grew their intelligence significantly during their lifetimes. They never stopped trying and they never stopped learning.

Until about ten years ago, the notion that your IQ was fixed at birth was accepted science.

But that thinking has changed.

Over the past ten years, neuroscience (the study of the brain), has completely transformed our understanding of how the brain works.

We now know that the brain changes every day. We can rewire our brains (called neuroplasticity).

We now know that the hippocampus gives birth to thousands of new neurons every day (called neurogenesis). Our brains grow new brain cells to be put to use in your pursuit of success.

We now know, thanks to our recent understanding of epigenetics, that certain genes can be turned on to boost IQs.

IQ’s can and do change over one’s lifetime. IQ is not fixed.

Just because you were a “C” student at age 17 with an IQ of 100 doesn’t necessarily mean you will stay that way. You can increase your IQ all during your life, even into your eighties. What drives IQ change, is growth.

Self-made millionaires grow by doing certain things every day that improves their brains and continuously increases their intelligence during their lifetimes.

They read. They develop and improve their skill-sets. They figure out creative solutions to intractable problems. They overcome obstacles. They figure out what to do and what not to do.

All of this, forces them to grow into the person they need to be in order for success to happen.

Let’s touch on some of the IQ-boosting habits of self-made millionaires – habits that not only amp up brain cells, but that also turn on brain-boosting genes:

Daily Learning

Every time you learn something new, you re-wire your brain. New neurons are recruited and begin firing with one another (known as synapses). As new neural pathways are created by learning, your brain actually increases in size; your intelligence grows. 88% of the self-made millionaires in my study, sometime prior to realizing financial success in life, formed the daily habit of engaging in 30 minutes or more of self-education reading. This daily habit allowed them to increase their cognitive abilities during their lives, which contributed to their later success in life.

Daily Aerobic Exercise

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 it cleaner and healthier. 20 – 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day has been proven to stimulate the growth of axons and axon branches on each neuron. The number of axons and axon branches your brain has is directly related to your intelligence. Aerobic exercise also increases the release of neurotrophins, or Nerve Growth Factor (NFG). NFG stimulates the growth of neurons, helps maintain a healthy coating around every neuron (called myelin sheath) and stimulates synaptic communications between neurons. Increased synaptic communication translates into better memory and speed of recall. So daily aerobic exercise increases your intelligence, each and every time you engage in it.

Eating Healthy Food

The microbiome is bacteria that lives within our large intestine. It is responsible for extracting energy from the calories we consume. It also synthesizes vitamins out of the food we consume.

Having the right microbiome, makes you healthy. Having the wrong microbiome, causes colds, flus, upper respiratory infections, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and all sorts of other horrific diseases.

Eating healthy, nutritional foods, packed with fiber and good microbiota improves every aspect of your health, including brain health.

Deliberate and Analytical Practice

Deliberate Practice involves consistent, focused practice in specific subsets of your skill set which transforms you from ordinary to excellent. Deliberate Practice requires many hours a day of Targeted Practice. Targeted Practice involves practicing specific sub-elements of each aspect of your skill.

Analytical Practice takes you to the top level, beyond excellent, and into the rarefied category known as Virtuoso status.

The bedrock of Analytical Practice is something called The Feedback Loop. Analytical Practice requires feedback from other experts, sharing an identical skill-set.

This feedback is typically provided by a coach, a mentor, a supervisor, etc.

Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

89% of the self-made millionaires in my study slept an average of seven to eight hours each night.

Why is sleep so important to brain function?

Everyone who sleeps goes through four to six sleep cycles a night. Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes. Each of these sleep cycles is composed of five separate levels of sleep: Alpha, theta, delta, rapid eye movement (REM) and then back to theta.

For each individual sleep cycle, the first three sleep levels (alpha, theta and delta) last 65 minutes. REM lasts 20 minutes and the final level of sleep lasts 5 minutes. The number of hours you sleep is less important than the number of complete sleep cycles you have each night.

Five complete sleep cycles a night is considered optimal. Completing less than four sleep cycles a night, however, negatively affects our health.

REM sleep is particularly important as one of it’s important functions appears to be long-term memory storage. During the day, what we’ve learned the day before is temporarily stored in the hippocampus. During REM sleep, the hippocampus transfers important information to different parts of the neocortex, for long-term memory storage.

If we do not complete at least four 90 minute sleep cycles a night, long-term memory storage becomes impaired. Completing at least four sleep cycles the night after learning new information or a new skill locks in the new information or new skill.

If we get less than four complete 90 minute sleep cycles the night after learning anything, it’s as if the learning never occurred. Sleep helps you remember what you’ve learned the previous day. And, when you are pursuing success, having a good memory matters.

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Is it bad to want to be rich?

Let me ask that question a different way.

Is it bad to want to be successful at your job or in your business?

If your knee jerk reaction is to say, “yes, it’s wrong to want to be rich,” what you’re really saying is it’s wrong to want to succeed in life.

You see, wealth is just a byproduct of success. It’s one of the perks of being successful.

So, if you profess to hate the rich, your subconscious assumes you hate success, since wealth comes from success.

When I asked the millionaires in my Rich Habits Study if they always wanted to be rich, 53% of the self-made millionaires said yes.

The desire to be rich was an important mindset for the majority of self-made millionaires. It drove them to grow, to learn, to take calculated risks, to forge good habits and eliminate bad habits. It forced them to dream, to reach and to step outside their comfort zone.

The desire to become rich is not a bad thing. It can motivate you to do extraordinary things you would not otherwise attempt to do.

Conversely, a disdain for money is almost certainly a financial death sentence.

A study conducted by Kansas State University found that those who had positive feelings about money were more likely to attain wealth and those who had negative feelings about money were more likely to become poor.

According to the study, most of our beliefs about money can be traced back to how we were raised. Parents, the study said, were the source of many of our beliefs about money.

Parents with positive beliefs about money, raised children who would one day become rich.

Parents with negative beliefs about money, raised children who would one day become poor.

While most wealthy people don’t necessarily worship money, they certainly admire it a great deal.

According to my Rich Habits Study, the vast majority of the wealthy believed that wealth was good. They saw it as a cure to the many ills in life.

According to my data, being rich eliminated 67% of your problems in life. That’s 67% fewer things to worry and get stressed out about.

Worry and stress, according to numerous health studies, depresses your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to cancer, heart disease and many other diseases.

Therefore, becoming rich means less worry and stress which, in turn, reduces the incidence of of cancer, heart disease and many other health issues.

Despite what you may have learned as a child, the desire to become rich is not a bad thing. It’s just another false myth, or limiting belief, that will absolutely hold you back in life.

Seek out wealth. Seek out success. Seek out prosperity.

Wealth isn’t a zero sum game. Your becoming rich does not require that another person become poor. There is an abundance of money out there.

The thing that will most definitely limit your access to that money, however, is the negative, limiting belief that wealth is bad.

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Fifty-four percent of the millionaires in my Rich Habits study said that optimism was a critical factor in their success.

Since optimism seemed to be so widespread among the rich in my study, understanding optimism became a sort of side-hobby of mine.

I sought out studies on optimism in an effort to better understand this positive emotion. What I learned was that optimism has many benefits, besides wealth creation.

Optimists Live Longer

Telomeres are the caps at the end of each chromosome. Numerous studies have found a direct correlation between the length of Telomeres and life expectancy. The longer your Telomere, the longer you will live.

Becca Levy is a Professor of Epidemiology/Psychology at the Yale School of Public Health. She is also the lead author of a prominent study on Telomeres. Levy found that those who were more upbeat and positive had longer Telomeres and better health.

Optimists Are More Successful

Martin Seligman was a Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1980’s, he created a Style Questionnaire that MetLife’s new salesmen were all required to complete. The responses to the Questionnaire helped Seligman classify each salesman as skewing more towards optimism or pessimism.

After two years of selling, Seligman compared the success of each salesman to the answers on the Questionnaires. What he found was eye-opening – the MetLife salesmen who skewed towards optimism outsold the pessimists by 20% in year one and 50% in year two.

Optimism Increases Your Concentration & Memory

In 1998 and 2001, B.L. Frederickson conducted two studies, measuring cognitive ability and risk tolerance. What he found was that those who were more optimistic had a greater degree of risk tolerance and, this increased positivity dramatically boosted their ability to focus and concentrate – two very important traits of success.

An increased ability to focus is critical to long-term potentiation – creating long-term memory.

Optimism is Contagious

In a Farmington Heart Study, in which twenty years of data was analyzed, James Fowler, lead study author, found that emotions, such as optimism, spread throughout your social networks – they infect everyone within your inner circle, including your children.

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Good timing, right place at right time, knowing the right people, things dropping in your lap, opportunity of a lifetime.

Luck is fundamental to success. And to a large extent, not entirely within your control.

The fact is, in many cases there is no behind the scenes, great design responsible for the success of self-made millionaires.

But, what is a common thread of all self-made millionaires, something completely within your control, is taking action, taking a chance – seeing an opportunity and going for it.

Opportunities can come and go. If you do not take action on them, they fade away. Other different opportunities may manifest themselves down the road, but really, there is no second bite at the apple.

The truth is, success depends on jumping on an opportunity when it presents itself.

Sometimes the path chooses you.

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I am your constant companion.

I am your most valuable asset or greatest liability.

I will pull you up to the peak of success or drag you down to pits of failure.

I will do your bidding and be under your control.

Half of the things you do every day, I am responsible for – I do them quickly, without thought or effort.

I can be managed – but only if I am not ignored.

Show me exactly how you want something done and, after a little practice, I will do it automatically the same way, every time.

I am the servant of all great successes and, alas, of all great failures.

Those who are great, I have made great.

Those who are failures, I have made failures.

I am not a machine, though I work with the precision of a machine, plus the intelligence of a person.

You may use me to create wealth, or use me to create poverty – it makes no difference to me.

Pay attention to me so you can control me, and I will place the world at your feet.

Ignore me and I will destroy you.

Who am I? I am Habit.

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!