What to Do When You Hate Your Life

Tom Corley boats - crop

Does your life suck? When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you smile or do you feel like throwing up on the mirror?

If you’re like most, you are probably not happy with your life and have no idea what to do to alter your current circumstances. You feel lost and helpless.

So, what can you do? How do you even begin the process of altering your current circumstances? [Read more…]

How to Eliminate Beliefs That Are Keeping You Poor

Tom Corley boats - crop

We all have negative and limiting beliefs that hold us back in life. Most of these beliefs came from our parents and were forged during our early childhood years, prior to the age of nine. These negative and limiting beliefs cause us to develop habits that hold us back in our adult lives. Most are not even aware of the negative and limiting beliefs they have. These beliefs prevent us from becoming successful in life and in many cases they act like an anchor dragging us down into failure, poverty and a life of misery. If you want to be wealthy and successful in life you need to remove and replace these negative and limiting beliefs. Here’s how: [Read more…]

What is at the Heart of Hope?

Tom Corley boats - crop

I don’t very often do this but one of my readers wrote an article that I thought was very insightful and, so, I’ve agreed to post their article to my blog.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Hope by definition is an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.

How Long Does One Stay Hopeful as an Actor? [Read more…]

Gratitude – The Gateway to Optimism

tip-o-the-morning

Tom Corley boats - crop

According to a 2013 Associated Press survey, 80% of America’s adults were struggling with unemployment, poverty or near poverty. That’s a lot of unhappy people. Unhappy people tend to have unhappy thoughts. Conversely, happy people tend to have happy thoughts. Cognitive psychologists call this tendency to see the world through either a negative or positive lens, mood congruency.

According to the latest science on the ability to solve complex problems through creative thought, better known as insight, negativity inhibits your ability to think clearly. When the lens through which you view the world is negative, you see nothing but problems. You become blind to opportunities. A negative mental outlook causes tunnel vision, limiting creativity. If you’re one of those 80% struggling in life, a negative mental outlook acts like gasoline, fueling the flames of negativity and perpetuating a life of unemployment, poverty or near poverty. Conversely, a positive mental outlook, according to that same science, enhances creative problem solving. A positive mental outlook is the only means to escape a life of unemployment, poverty or near poverty. But how do you flip the switch on your mental outlook?

Gratitude is the gateway to optimism and a positive mental outlook. Gratitude forces you to become aware of the good things about your life. My car started today, I was able to feed my family, I have a roof over my head, I’m healthy, I’m alive, I have a loving family, etc. When you shift your thinking to the good things about your life, you cause your brain to begin to shift from negative to positive. If you practice gratitude every day, eventually your positive mental outlook will overpower your negative mental outlook. Gratitude changes the lens through which you view your world, from negative to positive. And when that happens you’ll begin to see solutions to your problems. Ideas will pop into your head that will help you climb your way out of your unemployment, poverty or near poverty. Expressing gratitude every day is not some pseudo, new age b.s. Gratitude is the gateway to optimism and a positive mental outlook. It’s the means to transforming your life from one filled with limitations to one filled with unlimited opportunities.

Stress Makes You Do Bad Things

tip-o-the-morning

Tom Corley boats - crop

Stress decreases willpower, self control and weakens your resistance to old bad habits. Stress comes primarily from four places:

  1. Work
  2. Family
  3. Finances
  4. Health

The key to not giving into the caustic effects of stress is awareness. Being aware that you are experiencing stress and being aware that that stress might cause you to make bad decisions wakes up the pre-frontal cortex, which typically shuts down or hibernates under stress. Once the pre-frontal cortex is woken up it can come to the rescue and stop you from doing any damage. But the key is awareness to stress. Awareness puts you on the offensive against bad choices, bad behavior, negative emotions and bad habits.

Dream Big, Expect Small

tip-o-the-morning

Tom Corley boats - crop

While it may sound contradictory to dream big and, at the same time, set low expectations, it isn’t. The reality is that when you pursue any dream or major initiative it is an emotional roller coaster ride and you need to manage the emotions associated with those ups and downs. Your dream creates the long-term vision that keeps you focused on the big picture. Your expectations with respect to overcoming the day to day hurdles, however, are short-term matters and should be low. This way you are better able to either meet those expectations or exceed them.

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 it can become emotionally too much to bare, causing you to raise the white flag and quit on your dream.

Conversely, if you set low expectations and exceed them, this increases your confidence and strengthens your positive mental outlook, infusing you with optimism, enthusiasm and an overall sense of contentment. One of the things I learned in my research and in this Rich Habits journey I’m on is that achieving success is contingent on maintaining a positive mental outlook. Managing expectations makes that possible by smoothing out the emotional wrinkles one experiences in pursuing success. Setting low expectations will keep you from quitting on your dream.

Who Are You Attracting Into Your Life?

tip-o-the-morning

Tom Corley boats - crop

Birds of a feather flock together. We’ve all heard this saying many times before. In my study on the daily habits of the rich and poor one common thread among the rich was their desire to associate with other success-minded people and one of the traits of the poor was their desire to associate with those who were also struggling financially. It seemed to me that the poor subscribed to the misery loves company crowd because of this birds of a feather inclination people seem to have.

What I found interesting in my study was the fact that 177 of the rich were self-made. Thirty one percent of these 177 came from poor households and 45% came from middle-class backgrounds. Yet somewhere along the line these two groups decided to defy this birds of a feather inclination. They decided to associate with individuals outside their natural comfort zone – successful people. Why? They knew something everyone else didn’t: you attract specific people into your life by mimicking those people:

  • To attract successful people, you must be success-minded.
  • To attract positive people, you must be positive.
  • To attract visionaries, you must be a visionary.
  • To attract persistent people, you must be persistent.
  • To attract enthusiastic people, you must be enthusiastic.
  • To attract kind people, you must be kind.
  • To attract disciplined people, you must be disciplined.
  • To attract gifted people, you must be gifted.
  • To attract compassionate people, you must be compassionate.
  • To attract loyal people, you must be loyal.
  • To attract dedicated people, you must be dedicated.

When you adopt certain thinking traits you will attract like-minded people and you will repel unlike-minded people.

I have been pursuing success these past seven years and I can tell you that many people have joined my Rich Habits movement. And many of these same people jumped off that bandwagon. Why? Because they did not share the traits of persistence, vision, dedication and enthusiasm that I had adopted along the way. Unknowingly, my newly adopted traits eventually repelled those who lacked the same traits – those who would drag me down, distract me and hold me back.

If you want to succeed in life, you need to adopt those traits that will attract success-minded people. The byproduct is the creation of a team of like-minded, success oriented people. So let me ask you, who are you attracting into your life? If you’re not happy with who is in your life, you need to work on you first. Once you adopt the traits of success-minded people, you will find yourself attracting other success-minded people and repelling those who would drag your down and hold you back.

Unhealthy Thoughts

tip-o-the-morning

Tom Corley boats - crop

Did you know that most of your thoughts are a waste of time and bad for your health? Oftentimes, the thoughts we think are negative and cause us to worry. This leads to stress, which causes a rise in cortisol. Excessive and continued production of cortisol impairs our immune system and opens the door to disease and infection.

Don’t think you think bad thoughts? Have you ever thought about the riots that have been in the news lately? What about all the various murders that are reported by the media? Do you think about them? Were you obsessing over the U.S.-Iraq nuclear deal? How about what Trump said about McCain the other day? Did you give it even a single thought?

Every day I see people interacting on social media about things that are outside their control. Some of the interaction gets heated and its clear those things are causing stress.

Because the media knows we humans have a predilection to think about negative things, the buffet of news includes, for the most part, anything that is negative. And most of those things are completely outside your control. There is virtually nothing you can do about most of the negative things you think about. When you think about negative things you can’t control, it leads to long-term stress because you cannot change the outcome of those negative things and, thus, they will not improve and won’t go away. Those thoughts will repeat inside your brain over and over again causing long-term stress.

You should only be thinking about things you can control in your life. Focus only on thoughts about things in your life you have complete control over. Why? Because you can take action on those things, fix whatever needs to be fixed, and then move on, allowing those thoughts to go away. Stop thinking about things you can’t control. It’s a waste of your time and impairs you health.

Powerful Money Habits for Millennials

Tom Corley boats - crop

According to various studies, the first crop of Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2004) who have entered the workforce are ahead of the curve when it comes to savings and spending than that of their parents. A 2014 Transamerica study found that 70 percent of Millennials in the work force were already saving for retirement either through employer-sponsored plans, such as 401(k)s or similar plans and they also found that these Millennials began saving at the unprecedented age of 22. According to the Financial Trade-Offs study, commissioned by Ameriprise Financial, Millennials are significantly more likely than both Boomers and Gen Xers to be consciously cutting back on discretionary expenses.

This is good news and a good trend if it continues. To ensure that it does continue I’d like to share some powerful money habits I uncovered in my five-year study on the daily habits of wealthy individuals. These money habits were instrumental in helping transform 177 ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires. [Read more…]

The Simplicity of Success

Tom Corley boats - crop

Over the past 3 plus years I’ve shared my Rich Habits research with tens of millions of people around the world, thanks to the media, podcasts and blogs. In these interviews I am always asked the same question: “What’s the #1 factor in becoming a millionaire?”

My answer is always the same: “Your daily habits are why you are rich, poor or stuck in the middle-class.”

It’s the little things you do day in and day out. It’s never any massive, explosive eureka-type event or activity that, like Cinderella, magically transforms you into a self-made millionaire. While this is not what most want to hear, I think it’s actually good news for those struggling in life financially. You see, because success is about doing certain little things every day, that means the difference between being rich and poor is incremental. It’s about making little changes in your life, not massive ones. Success doesn’t require that you climb Mount Everest, or invent the next Facebook, get a PhD or take some enormous risk, putting it all on the line in the pursuit of wealth. It requires small changes that, on a daily basis, seem inconsequential. But those inconsequential daily activities build up over time and eventually create an avalanche of success. There are only a few daily habits that separate the rich from the poor. Most people simply don’t understand that there is a real simplicity to success if you pursue it every day.

 

.