Values are the things that are most important to you.

I know people whose lives revolve around their friends. Their #1 priority is their friends.

I know people whose lives revolve around exercise. They spend an enormous amount of time every week exercising.

I know people whose lives revolve around the pursuit of their dreams and their goals. In fact, I know 177 of them – my Rich Habits self-made millionaires.

You values determine how you spend your time. And how you spend your time, shapes the circumstances of your life.

If you are happy with your life, then your values are good. If you are unhappy, then you’re spending time on the wrong things. Or, put another way, you’re spending time on things that, deep down, are unimportant to you.

Happiness is value-driven. When you are doing things that are truly important to you, happiness follows. When you are doing things that are not important to you, unhappiness follows.

If you are unhappy with your life, you must focus your actions and behaviors on the things that are most important to you. Those things that are most important to you, are your values.

In order to determine your values, however, you must have a come to Jesus meeting with yourself. You must be honest with yourself in order to unearth what’s important to you. To define your values, ask yourself this one question – what matters most to me?.

Once you define what’s most important to you, you will then know where you should be spending your time.

When you act in accordance with your values, happiness follows. So, your values are your own personally constructed guidance system, leading you to a life of health, wealth and happiness.

The mirror tells all.

If you’re able to pay your bills and save money, the refection is of someone living below their means and building their future wealth.

If you’re eating nutritious food and exercising consistently, the reflection is of someone who is fit and healthy.

If you’re pursuing your dreams and your goals, the reflection is of someone who loves what they do for a living.

It’s hard to look in the mirror, however, when you know you are not doing the things you should be doing.

If you’re overweight, the reflection is of someone eating too much and exercising too little.

If you’re struggling financially, the reflection is of someone spending too much and saving too little.

If you hate your job, the reflection is of someone who has put their ladder on someone else’s wall, and who is still climbing the wrong wall.

If your reflection in the mirror is a negative one, I want you to indulge me.

Imagine for a moment that you are a writer who has been tasked to write a chapter about the ideal you, ten years into the future. What would the chapter say?

Hopefully, it would paint a picture with words of your amazing future life. It would include information about how fit and healthy you were. It would, in detail, describe your amazing home, the fascinating places you’ve traveled to over the past ten years, the fun and exciting things you’ve done on your many vacations, the passion you have for what you do for a living that has helped you create your enormous wealth. It would share details about a life, dreams are made of.

The purpose of this exercise is to create a blueprint of the life you were intended to live. It will help provide clarity in the form of a future desired destination. This blueprint will become your GPS, directing you to forge good habits and make better decisions, forever changing the trajectory of your life.

With this clear vision of the life you desire, your blueprint will change the reflection you see, the next time you look in the mirror.

24% of the wealthy in my Rich Habits Study had a success mentor. Of this 24% however, 93% attributed their wealth to the fact that they had a success mentor.

The average saver/investor in my study accumulated $3.3 million over a period of thirty-two years. The average wealth of the rich in my study who were mentored, however, was $4.6 million, which they accumulated over eighteen years.

So, mentors not only shortcut the accumulation of wealth, they dramatically increase how much wealth you accumulate.

Success Mentors teach you what to do and what not to do. They steer you in the right direction, helping you avoid mistakes and obstacles. They offer valuable feedback, so that you can improve your skills. They share their wisdom and experience, helping you solve problems.

How and where do you find mentors?

• Work – The easiest way is to find someone at work, who is outstanding at what they do, and regularly pick their brain and experience.
• Networking Group – Networking groups are a great way to meet new people both within and without your field of expertise. Over time, your relationships will grow stronger and you will be able to identify outstanding individuals who can act as your mentor.
• Local Non-Profits – Volunteering at coal  community-based non-profits or civic organizations will introduce you to individuals who can become your mentors in life. Many wealthy, successful individuals sit on the boards of these non-profit organizations or work in the various committees that every non-profit has. In these nonprofits you will find that outstanding individual who can act as your mentor.
• Trade Groups – Trade groups or trade organizations are another source for mentors. Getting involved in these trade groups will expose you to many individuals who are leaders in their industry. They have industry-specific wisdom and experience.
• Books – You can find mentors in books. Biographies of successful people share the life stories of these successful people. They also sure the pitfalls and obstacles they had to overcome. This not only helps you identify the potential obstacles and pitfalls you’ll face, but also the solutions to them.

Has your hot water heater ever broken down? Has the roof of your home ever leaked? Have you ever had a major car problem? Do you have kids that go to college and the tuition must be paid before you send them off to school?

When you face one of these common problems, what’s your initial reaction? If you’re like most, thee problems create what we call stress. And stress makes you unhappy.

When you are poor or struggling financially, these problems and the unhappiness they create can linger for days, weeks or even months. Because you lack the money to immediately solve the problem, you must either borrow the money to fix the problem, apply some band aid solution which makes the problem go away temporarily or live with the consequences of not solving the problem.

Rich or poor, everyone faces common problems.

I spent the past 12 years studying the rich and the poor (Rich Habits Study) and found that there were 12 frequent big problems almost everyone has to contend with:

1. Health Problems
2. Financial Problems
3. Family Problems
4. Neighbor Problems
5. Home Repair Problems
6. Car Problems
7. Addiction Problems
8. Job Problems
9. Relationship Problems
10. Death or Disability Problems
11. Time Management Problems
12. Weather Problems

These are all common, modern day problems almost everyone, rich or poor faces. And these problems create unhappiness for everyone. The big difference between the rich and the poor, is that the rich are able to easily overcome and eliminate most of these problems and thus, eliminate the unhappiness these problems create.

When I analyzed my study data, I discovered that, out of all of these modern day problems, the rich really only struggle with four of these problem areas:

1. Family Problems
2. Health Problems
3. Time Management Problems and
4. Weather Problems.

If you do the math, that’s only 33% of life’s problems that the wealthy have to contend with. Or, looking at it another way – being rich eliminates 67% of life’s major problems. Being rich, therefore, eliminates 67% of life’s unhappiness.

Let’s delve into this in a little more detail.  [Read more…]

One of the hallmarks of self-made millionaires is their ability to intentionally focus their attention. They pay attention to things that help move them forward toward the realization of their dreams and the goals behind their dreams.

This is why creating a blueprint of your ideal, future life is so important. Your blueprint will help you reveal the dreams the goals that will transform those dreams into reality.

When you have a blueprint of the life you desire, this creates clarity of vision and this vision acts like a magnet, drawing your attention and focus to the things in your environment that will help manifest all that you desire.

When you lack a clear vision, anything and everything distracts you – TV, porn, Facebook, Instagram, the Kardashians, sports gambling, texting, email, gossip, partying, Twitter, or any external environmental influence.

When you lack clarity of vision, you become like leaves on a fall day, floating around aimlessly, carried by the wind from one place to the next. Never knowing where you will end up.

That’s most of the population. Only a small fraction of the population has created a blueprint of their lives and spends most of their time working on the dreams and goals that will transform that blueprint into reality.

And that is also why so few control so much wealth.

Focus your attention on what matters – your dreams and goals. When you do, your highly evolved, powerful subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem) will attract everything you need in order to transform the vision of the life you desire, into reality.

Get focused. Define your future life. If you don’t, others who have a blueprint, will.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

This quote has been credited to Albert Einstein, the world’s most famous genius.

Some of the feedback I’ve received over the years considered this statement a direct challenge to the application of habits in the pursuit of success, since habits represent doing the same thing over and over again and don’t create immediate results.

So, let me address that.

If a habit produces results you do not want, which usually means results that set you back, then of course you must change the habit. But if the habit produces no immediate results, that doesn’t mean you are caught up inside the definition of insanity.

The fact is, results take time. Success, takes time. The average Saver/Investor in my Rich Habits Study took thirty-two years to become wealthy. The average Virtuoso in my study took twenty years to become wealthy. And the average Dreamer in my study took twelve years to become wealthy.

The journey towards success is a slow slog, and often feels like you’re pushing a boulder up a never ending hill. This long, slow slog, if you do not have proven habits that produce success, can create doubts and cause you to begin questioning yourself.

Am I doing the right things?

Should I be doing something different?

Am I waisting my time?

The true value of my Rich Habits Study, my ultimate legacy to those who desire wealth, health and happiness, is that the Rich Habits removes all doubt. I’ve taken the guesswork out of finding habits that produce wealth health and happiness (aka, a successful life). Success no longer has to be a trial and error process.

The Rich Habits are proven behavioral processes that create wealth, health and happiness. The results will follow. But, as I’ve said, results take time.

Mediocrity keeps you employed. Excellence gets you promoted.

Mediocre employees are among the first to be terminated or exited from organizations.

If you’re a small business owner, mediocrity keeps customers, clients or patients hanging on by a thread. They will leave for a competitor offering a cheaper price, better service or when something goes wrong.

Excellence, however, transforms employees into senior executives and transforms customers, clients or patients into ardent long-term patrons who are happy to make referrals to their family and friends, helping you to grow your business and your wealth.

Mediocrity and Excellence are habits of thought.

Those who forge the Rich Thinking habit of Excellence, seek to exceed the expectations of themselves and others. They provide added value to the lives of those they serve. This Excellence habit translates into higher income or profits, which produces wealth.

Mediocrity, or the desire to do the bare minimum, is also a habitual way of thinking – a Poor Thinking habit. Those who forge the Poor Thinking habit of Mediocrity, do the bare minimum to keep their job or keep their customers. This Mediocrity habit keeps you stuck in a rut, struggling financially all your life.

Thoughts are seeds. As those seeds sprout, they create good or bad circumstances, depending on the types of seeds (thoughts) you decide to plant.

You are the farmer. You plant the seeds. Which seeds are you planting?

The food manufacturing system in most industrialized countries has institutionalized obesity.

GMO-enhanced farming, cows and poultry fed antibiotics, the mass-manufacturing of processed foods and finally, the delivery systems for those unnatural foods (supermarkets and fast food restaurants) makes obesity possible.

U.S. food policy has created a system that encourages the judicial use of antibiotics on farm animals and the manufacture of flour, sugar and vegetable oils to support the food needs of its growing population.

Even worse, there is very little education within the medical community surrounding nutrition. Medical students receive an average of just 19 hours of nutrition education over their four-years of medical school. This means doctors are not technically proficient in dealing with this obesity epidemic.

But, all is not lost. Some are fighting back and trying to put a stop to the institutionalization of obesity, not through fat-shaming, but through education and support. In study after study surrounding obesity, habits, it turns out, are the key to eliminating obesity.

In my Rich Habits Study, I discovered certain behaviors, that when habitualized, improve health and help decrease obesity:

1. The 300 Habit – Exercising aerobically 300 minutes a week. If you jog, this is about 30 miles a week. If you bike, this is approximately 75 miles a week.
2. The 1,500 Habit – Eating 1,500 calories of healthy, non-processed food a day. Think vegetables, yogurt, nuts, fish, low-sugar fruits, etc.
3. The Hybrid Habit – Exercising aerobically 200 minutes a week and eating 2,000 calories of healthy, non-processed food a day. By blending both elements of Habits #1 and #2, this Hybrid Habit moderates the extremism required by those two habits. 
4. Intermittent Fasting – With intermittent fasting, you eat just one meal a day. Intermittent fasting forces your body to produce ketones after 10-12 hours of not eating. Ketones are manufactured from fat by the liver when glucose is absent from your diet. As the liver manufactures ketones, fat cells naturally shrink. Additionally, intermittent fasting changes your stomach and resets your appetite thermostat. Many who engage in intermittent fasting report that they feel full faster and with less food.

There are an abundance of studies since 1959 that all say the same thing – diets don’t work. Research has shown that 95-98% of dieters fail to lose weight and 67% of dieters who do lose weight, gain back more than they lost.

You must, instead, forge habits that can be sustained in the long-term. Once you forge good healthy habits, you automate good health. There’s no thinking, discipline or willpower required.

Once your healthy behavior transforms into habits (about 90 days), they then come under the control of your limbic system and become unconscious automated behaviors. Good health habits turn you into a health zombie.

If you’ve read Change Your Habits Change Your Life, you know that the most successful entrepreneurs in my Rich Habits Study used certain strategies that enabled them to focus for extended periods of time, often ten hours at a time, without feeling drained or losing focus. This ability to focus on tasks for long periods of time enabled these millionaires to accomplish more than their competition, every day.

Since we are all on equal footing when it comes to time, getting more done with the same amount of time makes you more valuable to your boss, your clients, your customers and everyone else who depends on you getting your job done.

So, how did these self-made millionaires get more done?

You’ve probably heard of fusion and fission before.

Fusion is the process that powers all stars in the universe. In the case of our sun, fusion is the conversion of hydrogen to helium. Fusion releases an enormous amount of energy over a long period of time. Average-sized stars, such as our own, can produce this star-power for up to 10 billion years.

Fission is how nuclear power plants produce energy. In this process, the nucleus of a large radioactive atom is intentionally split into two. The energy it releases, although very powerful, pales in comparison to fusion and is very short-lived.

When we engage in any activity, we use one of two types of energy.

Willpower Energy

Every cell in the human body is fueled primarily by glucose and occasionally by ketones. The brain is the largest consumer of glucose and ketones. It uses up to 20% of all of the fuel produced by our bodies every day.

Willpower is conscious exertion, meaning we force ourselves to do something. The cortex, the font of our consciousness, is the newest part of our brain (about 300,000 years old), and controls Willpower Energy.

This forced conscious effort, however, depletes the body’s reserves of glucose within two to three hours. When glucose reserves become depleted, the brain sends a signal to stop engaging in the activity. This is commonly referred to as Decision Fatigue. So, Decision Fatigue is really just the depletion of glucose reserves in the body.

For most people, this ends whatever task they were engaged in. A select few, however, are able to ignore this brain signal and power through Decision Fatigue in order to complete their task. When we fight Decision Fatigue, the brain sends another signal to the liver to produce more glucose, thus restoring our reserves of glucose for another two to three hours.

Willpower Energy is, for this reason, very much like Fission Energy – powerful but short-lived.

Emotional Energy

Our emotions reside in the subconscious parts of our brain, primarily in the Amygdala, which is part of the Limbic System.

The subconscious is very powerful. Far more powerful than our conscious brain. It has evolved over millions of years.

As a result, it is more efficient in performing tasks. For example, the subconscious can multi-task, which is something the conscious brain (cortex) cannot do. The subconscious can control your heart beat, blood flow, keep organs functioning, deploy immune cells to fight invaders, etc.

When you tap into Emotional Energy, you are unleashing the subconscious brain’s enormously powerful energy source. Like fusion, you are releasing your inner star-power.

Because the subconscious is far more efficient and powerful than the conscious part of your brain, Emotional Energy allows you to engage in a task for an entire day, not just two to three hours.

With Emotional Energy, your ability to focus is greater, your ability to focus is long-lived and you can therefore get far more accomplished. And, with Emotional Energy, you can do this every day for many years, without your brain sending you any signals to stop.

You unleash Emotional Energy whenever you pursue anything you are passionate about. This includes dreams and the goals behind those dreams. So, dreams and goals unleash your inner star-power.

This is why pursuing dreams or goals is critical to success. They unleash the star-power that resides in each one of us.

Pursuing a dream isn’t easy. The obstacles and pitfalls you encounter make you keenly aware of the importance of knowing what to do and what not to do. This “knowing” saves you time and money down the road.

But it takes time and money to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills that prevent mistakes, which ultimatley saves you time and precious money. This learning process is called “Growth”.

The most successful entrepreneurs, therefore, have a growth mindset. They thirst for learning. This desire to learn is often forced upon them when they first begin to pursue the goals behind their dream. And, this desire to learn needs to be regular and consistent, meaning a daily habit.

That’s one of the reasons why habits are so important to success, as an entrepreneur. Habits make success possible by habitualizing learning so goals can be achieved.

Goals, therefore, are the instigators of growth. Goals force entrepreneurs to forge “Growth-Habits”, which are daily routines that automate learning.

What are the daily “Growth-Habits” I discovered in my Rich Habits study of successful entrepreneurs?

• Growth-Habits That Result in the Acquisition of Knowledge – Often, new goals can only be pursued after acquiring new knowledge. Successful entrepreneurs are able to acquire this knowledge by reading books related to their industry. So, reading is a Growth-Habit. But, thanks to YouTube, they also gain knowledge by watching YouTube videos which inform. So, watching informative videos, is a Growth-Habit. Lastly, many new podcasts offer listeners/subscribers an opportunity to listen and learn from experienced entrepreneurs. So, listening to informative podcasts, is a Growth-Habit.
• Growth-Habits That Help You Maintain Existing Knowledge – Once again, reading is the main whetstone with which they sharpen their ax. Reading, once again is a Growth-Habit.
• Growth-Habits That Help You to Develop New Skills – Many goals require the acquisition and development of new skills. This is typically school of hard knocks, or learn by doing-type learning. Through hours of daily Deliberate and Analytical Practice, entrepreneurs are able to become proficient in skills that are necessary in order for them to accomplish their goals. So, Deliberate and Analytical Practice are Growth-Habits.
• Growth-Habits That Help You Maintain Existing Skills – Deliberate Practice is the primary tool used by entrepreneurs to maintain their skills.
• Growth-Habits That Short-Cut the Learning Process – Experienced mentors can shortcut the learning process for entrepreneurs. The smart entrepreneurs, therefore, seek out mentors who can teach them what to do and what not to do. This way they can avoid many of the mistakes and pitfalls that result from a lack of knowing or a lack of skills.

This “Growth Mindset” is what separates successful people from ordinary people. Growth transforms you into a Virtuoso (Expert).

By forging the above habits, entrepreneurs are able to transform themselves into the individuals they need to be (Virtuosos/Experts) in order to achieve the goals that transform dreams into reality.