Human beings are simply amazing.

They are the only species on earth who have the innate ability to convert outlandish thoughts into reality.

We see a beautiful woman, and paint the Mona Lisa.

We see a bay, and we build a bridge to cross that bay.

We see birds fly, and build airplanes, so humans can fly.

We see the moon, and create rockets so we can fly to the moon.

The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world at 2,717 feet. It is 644 feet taller than the 2nd tallest building in the world. Its height pierces the cloud barrier.

Humans built that. Amazing!

What is our limit? None. Human beings are the most amazing species to inhabit the earth. Because of this unique creative ability, we are in many respects…. godlike.

I believe there is no limit to any individual’s capacity to do great things.

And yet there are those who would have you believe that if you were born into poverty you will be stuck in poverty.

Nonsense.

Poverty is a temporary condition that can be changed, if you really want to.

It was not intended for humans to be poor, to struggle financially or to live a life of quiet desperation. We exist to be great, to achieve great things – to create the life we desire. It is within our genetic makeup to create, to produce, to innovate and to grow in knowledge and skills.

Every able-bodied human being can grow their way out of poverty by reading books, seeking feedback from others, by trying and learning from our mistakes or even by watching a YouTube video.

Our brains are hardwired to be rewired.

Because each one of us is born with this unusual ability to create amazing things, this blessing mandates that we dream big dreams.

But when we pursue our dreams, life places obstacles, impediments, detours, and unforeseen problems in our path.

Out of sheer frustration, we ask why?

Here’s my answer to the why – those obstacles, that adversity, forces you to grow into the individual you need to be in order to realize success.

Adversity sharpens us. It forces us to improve and become better at what we do. As we improve, the obstacles become easier to see and easier to overcome because we are better than we were before.

Life isn’t working against us – it’s working for us.

Each one of us is endowed with a godlike creative genius to design the life we desire. We can achieve whatever our minds can conceive.

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!

Those who are truly happy are free.

But what does freedom mean?

Freedom is not one thing. In fact, it is many things:

• Financially Free – You are financially free when your invested assets generate enough income to fund your standard of living and pay the taxes on that income.
• Emotionally Free – You are emotionally free when you have become the master of your emotions.
• Stress Free – You are stress free when you mastered the habit of remaining calm under pressure.
• Time Free – You are time free when you can choose how you spend your time each day.
• Need Free – You are need free when your income is adequate enough to provide for your daily needs.
• Want Free – You are want free when you no longer want what others have and are grateful for what you have.
• Debt Free – You are debt free when you are no longer burdened by debt.
• Ideologically Free – You are ideologically free when you are no longer a prisoner to ideology and are open to new ideas and new perspectives.
• Guilt Free – You are guilt free when you no longer care what others think or say about you.

One of the reasons happiness is so elusive is due to the fact that there are so many variables to happiness. On any given day, unexpected things happen for which you have little to no control over.

Those few who are masters of their lives, respond to life’s unexpected occurrences in a thoughtful and deliberate manner, meaning they control how they react to the unexpected.

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 Those who are satisfied with the status quo of their lives, do not feel compelled to push themselves to grow in order to reach a higher level of achievement. So, in a real sense, complacency is a mindset that keeps you stuck where you are in life.

Dreamer-Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often put everything on the line – their savings, their home, their retirement funds, personal guarantees on any money they borrow to fund their dreams, etc.

When every asset you own is being used to finance a dream, the prospect of failing is a scary thing, not just to you but to your spouse or significant other. That very real fear of failing forces Dreamer-Entrepreneurs to do what they have to do in order to survive. That fear of failure forces them to learn everything they need to know in order to avoid mistakes and when they do make a mistake, they become quick studies, so they won’t make the same mistake twice.

During this survival period, Dreamers grow into the individuals they need to be in order to survive and avoid failure. That growth is like a bank account of knowledge that they tap in order to help keep them moving forward, further and further away from failure.

And, the further away they get from failure, the closer they get to success.

So, don’t let fear hold you back from pursuing your dreams. Double down if you have to, but never quit. When you know you have everything to lose by failing, failure does not become an option. Success is your only escape hatch.

Use fear to your advantage. Let fear push you to become the person you need to be in order to succeed. When you make a decision to go for it, leveraging everything you own, you’ll be forced to grow and achieve, in order to avoid failure.

Being scared is not always a bad thing.

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Success takes a long time, for those who succeed. Unfortunately, very few succeed.

Why is success so elusive?

Most individuals who are pursuing financial success are doing it wrong.

What do you mean when you say, they are doing it wrong?

There are two big things that prevent individuals from succeeding:

#1 – You Are Not Doing What You’re Supposed to be Doing

When you are not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, this means you are not engaged in an activity for which you have a natural, innate talent. When you are engaged in something you are just not naturally good at, it’s like trying to fit a circular object in a square hole. Because you are trying to be something you are not, your work life is hard and unfulfilling. This shows up in your net pay check.

When you are engaged in something you were meant to be doing, this means you are exploiting some natural, innate talent that is unique to you. Your brain alerts you in one of two ways, when you stumble upon a natural, innate talent:

1. It’s Easy – The task is easier for you to perform than it is for other people.
2. Passion – You enjoy the activity. When you are engaged in some activity you like or love, time flies by and you don’t want to stop doing it.

We all have natural, innate talents but almost none of us every figure out what they are. Consequently, most do not enjoy what they do for a living, feel unfulfilled and the pay they receive keeps them perpetually stuck in mediocrity.

#2 – You Are Following the Wrong Path to Wealth

There are 4 Path’s To Wealth:

1. Saver-Investor Path
2. Big Company Climber Path
3. Virtuoso Path
4. Dreamer-Entrepreneur Path

Everyone inherits certain genes from their parents, which helps shape their personality. Also, everyone is raised in different environments – we are all raised in different households, in different neighborhoods, go to different schools, etc.

Our unique genes and upbringing help to shape the individuals we become as adults.

Everyone’s different.

And because everyone’s different, each path to creating wealth, is different for each person.

Some people are outgoing or shy. Some are risk takers or risk averse. Some can shoulder great stress, without affecting their health and relationships; others crumble under too much stress.

You see, everyone is different and because everyone is different, their path to accumulating wealth must be in alignment with their particular personality.

For example, shy, risk averse, low stress-tolerant individuals would find the life of a Dreamer-Entrepreneur or Big Company Climber, ill-suited for their specific personality. Most likely, they would hate being in either of those two work environments and their pay would reflect this.

Such individuals would be better suited pursuing wealth by following the Saver-Investor or Virtuoso Path. Either path would work best for them, given their personality type.

Likewise, outgoing individuals who love high-risk challenges and seem immune to stress, are perfectly suited for the Big Company Climber Path or the Dreamer/Entrepreneur Path. If these individuals worked in a back-office job, they would very likely dislike their job.

Because there are four paths to wealth, it is critical for those who seek wealth to understand which path is right for them. If you pick the wrong path, success will remain elusive.

When you eventually stumble upon the right track, you know it. Everything starts to get much easier for you. When you are on the right track, it’s as if everything in your universe comes into perfect alignment.

When you are on the right track, life rewards you financially and emotionally.

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At the end of 2008, Elon Musk and all of his companies were on the verge of outright bankruptcy.

His Falcon 1 rocket had failed to reach orbit for the third time in early August, 2008. He was rapidly running out of money.

Musk had gone through most of the $180 million windfall he received in 2002, when eBay acquired his PayPal stock. Plus he had tapped all of the hundreds of millions of dollars venture capitalists and the Federal government had collectively invested in SpaceX.

Most would have thrown in the towel after so many failures. But Musk refused to quit. So, he put everything on the line on September 28, 2009, the fourth attempt to put his Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. Everything hinged on that fourth flight. If it failed, it was over.

Only it didn’t fail. On his fourth and final try, the first privately built rocket made orbit and Elon Musk entered the history books.

Due to his rocket’s success, Musk was able to cobble together enough money to get SpaceX through the end of December, 2008. Then, on December 28, 2008 NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract.

The rest, as they say is history.

Today, Musk is estimated to be worth north of $23 billion. His companies are changing the world.

Success miracles often happen when relentlessly persistent Dreamers are able to overcome adversity and survive until they thrive.

For Musk, the difference between success and failure was one day – September 29, 2008. One day completely changed his life. One day was the difference between success and bankruptcy, for Elon Musk.

Life rewards Dreamers who simply refuse to quit.

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!

Successful people seem to be obsessed with success quotes. They love to throw them around wherever and whenever they can.

Successful speakers love to use quotes as do successful authors.

Success and quotes go together like beer and pretzels. So, I thought I’d share some of the quotes I’ve accumulated from interviewing self-made millionaires, from some of my favorite books/blogs and from some of the best speakers I’ve come in contact with. I haven’t taken the time to uncover the original source of some of these quotes. If you know the authors, shoot me an email.

Here’s some of my favorites:

“Successful people don’t wait for the elevator in life; they take the stairs.” Unknown

“The path to success involves surviving one disappointment after another without losing your enthusiasm.” I’ve seen various versions of this quote. They all seem to originate from Winston Churchill

“Motivation: With it you can run a marathon; without it you can’t lace your sneakers.” Unknown

“Dreams are God’s way of whispering in our ears.” Unknown

“Though times never last. Touch people do.” Robert Schuller

“Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do.” Henry Ford

“Big shots are only little shots who just kept shooting.” Christopher Morley

“Experience is a hard teacher because the test is given first and the lesson is given afterward.” John Maxwell

“The big hit never comes without a great number of little hits first.” John Maxwell

“Sometimes you need to build your own ship in order for it to come in.” Billy Cox

“Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Rohn

“Courage is admired so much because it is lacking in so few.” Found this quote in a book Dr. Ben Carson wrote but I’ve read this in other books. I think the source is Winston Churchill

“Don’t follow someone else’s dream.” Unknown

“All leaders are readers.” Unknown

“Inch by inch, everything’s a cinch.” Robert Schuller

“Poor people spend their money and save what’s left. Rich people save their money and spend what’s left.” Unknown

“We become the combined average of the five people we hang around the most.” Jim Rohn

“Everything seems like a failure when you are halfway towards becoming a success.” Unknown

“Going through the moment of uncertainty; facing the period of extreme doubt. That’s when we discover ourselves.” James Clear

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!

According to my Rich Habits study, one of the reasons the wealthy accumulated so much wealth was due to the fact that they worked more hours than those who were not rich, or who were poor. Here’s some of the data:

• 44% of the wealthy worked 11 hours more each week than the poor.
• 86% of the wealthy who had full time jobs worked 50 hours or more each week, whereas 57% of the poor who had full-time jobs worked less than 50 hours each week.
• 88% of the wealthy took fewer sick days than the poor.
• 79% of the wealthy, on top of their robust work hours, networked 5 or more hours each month. 55% of this networking was done during their lunch hour.
• 65% of the wealthy were working so many hours, in part, because they had 3 sources of income to manage.
• 45% had 4 sources of income. Only 6% of the poor had more than one source of income.
• 67% of the wealthy watched less than an hour of T.V. a day, whereas 77% of the poor watched more than an hour of T.V. a day.
• 63% of the wealthy spent less than an hour a day on the Internet whereas 74% of the poor spent more than an hour a day on the Internet.

So, the rich are just harder working than everyone else?

Yes.

But not necessarily because they have a better work ethic. They just like what they do and, as a result, they devote more hours doing what they like to do.

Eighty six percent of the rich in my study liked what they did for a living. Seven percent loved what they did for a living.

Those who loved what they did for a living worked 58 hours a week on average vs. 51 hours a week for those who liked their jobs. That’s an average of 7 hours a week more. This works out to 336 more working hours a year for the job lovers.

I initially thought this disparity in work hours, between the rich and the poor, was in large part due to the fact that 91% of the wealthy in my study were decision makers, which carries with it more responsibility and, thus, more work hours. But that’s not the case.

According to the Census Bureau, the average wealthy household (defined by the IRS as the top 20% of income earners in the U.S.) worked five times as many hours as the average poor household. The cause of this, according to Census data, is due to:

• The high rate of single parent households among the poor – The poverty rate in single parent households is triple the rate of two parent households – 42% vs. 13%.
• Fewer workers in the household – 95% of poor households have only one worker. 75% of the wealthy households have two or more workers.
• Unemployment – 60% of poor households have no one working at all.

When politicians, bent on bashing the wealthy, tell us the poor work just as hard as the rich, they’re lying. And they know it because they have access to the same Census data as we do. When these same politicians pontificate that the only way to fix the wealth gap is through higher taxes on the wealthy, wealth redistribution policies, increasing the minimum wage or outright government assistance, they are missing the elephant in the room.

The genesis of much of the poverty in our country has nothing to do with policy or that evil 1%.

It has everything to do with the broken family unit.

We don’t have a wealth gap in this country, we have a parent gap. We don’t have income inequality, we have parent inequality.

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Your habitual thoughts drive your daily activities.

Those with a positive outlook engage in activities that mirror their upbeat, optimistic, enthusiastic, open-minded, grateful thoughts:

• Pursue Knowledge – Those who succeed are open-minded. As a result, they are always in pursuit of new knowledge and new facts. They do not allow ideology to interfere with their search for knowledge.
• Practice Relentlessly – Those who succeed in skill-based professions, believe in themselves. Their strong belief that they can succeed drives them to engage in Deliberate and Analytical Practice for many hours a day.
• Pursue Dreams & Goals – Those who succeed are optimists. They believe they can accomplish anything they put their mind to.
• Fearless Investors – Those who succeed do their homework when it comes to investments. Doing your homework means learning everything about a potential investment. Because they do their homework, they actually reduce the risks associated with investing. This is known as Educated Risk.
• Forge Valuable Partnerships – The successful seek to partner with other individuals who possess a positive mental outlook.

If you think negative thoughts you will fail in life. Negative thoughts say to the world, “I am thinking this way because I want negative things in my life.”

Every successful person has failed or run up against one roadblock after another. If they accepted a negative, defeatist attitude they would have certainly quit. When you allow negative thoughts to dominate your thinking, success becomes impossible because negative thoughts act like stop signs – the stop you from pursuing dreams, goals, learning, practicing and moving forward in life.

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In order to get, you must first give. It is one of the universal laws of success that has never changed. You must first give value to others if you want to succeed in life.

It was no surprise that 79% of the self-made millionaires in my rich Habits Study volunteered for charities or non-profit groups on a regular basis. Many of the individuals who run non-profits or charities happen to be successful people. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. Birds of a feather like to flock together.

If you want to find out where many of the rich and successful congregate, join a community charity or non-profit. This is one of the avenues the rich use to develop relationships with other success-minded people. Those relationships often end up doing business together and helping one another thrive and succeed.

You won’t find many selfish individuals volunteering at charities or non-profits. It goes against their me first philosophy.

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Financial success takes a long time.

In my Rich Habits Study that “long time” depended upon your chosen the path to wealth:

• Saver-Investor Path = 32 years to accumulate an average of $3,260,000
• Big Company Climber Path = 21 years to accumulate an average of $3,375,000
• Virtuoso Path = 20 years to accumulate an average of $3,980,000
• Dreamer-Entrepreneur Path = 12 years to accumulate an average of $7,450,000

When I began my study I wanted to know the answer to one question: why are some people rich and other people poor? Five years, and 51,984 questions later I learned the answer – your daily habits are the cause, wealth or poverty, the effect. Habits, it turned out, had more to do with wealth and poverty than any of the many other factors I unearthed in my study.

Habits affect just about every aspect of your life and they do so at an unconscious or non-conscious level. Most are simply unaware that habits dictate your circumstances in life.

This is a truly groundbreaking discovery.

And there are many shades of habits.

We have: money habits, eating habits, drinking habits, exercise habits, sleeping habits, downtime habits, work-time habits, reading habits, relationship habits, happiness habits, thinking habits eating habits, time-wasting habits, inner-circle habits, cultural habits, neighborhood habits, country habits. We also have morning habits, afternoon habits and nighttime habits.

According to many habit studies I’ve studied, 40% or more of your daily activities, thinking, emotions and decision-making are habits.

We pick up most of our habits from those in our inner circle: parents, teachers, family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, mentors, coaches, etc.

Those who you associate with frequently will infect you with their habits. For those who desire to become wealthy, it is therefore paramount to associate with individuals who are on the same path you are on.

Those on the Saver-Investor Path in my study surrounded themselves with other individuals who shared their smart money habits.

Those on the Corporate Climber Path in my study forged Power Relationships with senior executives within their company and/or their industry.

Those on the Virtuoso Path will in my study had close friends and colleagues who were also seeking to become the best at what they did to make money.

And those on the Dreamer-Entrepreneur Path in my study surrounded themselves only with individuals who helped mentor, encourage and support them during their journey.

The common thread among all of the different types of self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study was the intentional, conscious effort they made to associate with like-minded individuals.

In short – choose your path to wealth and then surround yourself with others who are on the same path.

They will infect you with the Rich Habits that are specific to the path you are on and this will dramatically increase your chances of succeeding in building the wealth you desire.

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!