Archives for May 2016

To be a winner, it does not require that you win big. In fact, small is big when it comes to succeeding in life. 

In the 2016 Kentucky Derby, Nyquist won a very close race and received $1,631,600. The second place winner took home $400,000. In the 2016 NCAA basketball tournament finals Villanova won in a buzzer beater over UNC. In the 2009 Wimbledon finals Roger Federer defeated Andy Roddick 16-14 in the final fifth set. Ironically, Roddick won 39 games to Federer’s 38 games yet still lost. 

Making small incremental improvements to your life will take you from ordinary to extraordinary. Here’s how the Small is Big Doctrine can be applied in transforming your life:

• Learn one new word a day. In thirty years, that equates to 10,950 new words, putting you way ahead of the competition with 30,950 words.
• Learn one new fact every day. In thirty years you would have accumulated 10,950 new facts.
• Learn one new skill a year for 30 years. This gives you 30 more skills.
• Do one small favor a day for one of your Rich Relationships (relationships with success-minded individuals). This helps build stronger relationships with more of your Rich Relationships. Remember, relationships are the currency of the wealthy.
• Reducing the number of calories you consume each day for a year by 300 calories means you will lose 37 pounds in a year.
• Saving $1 a day for 30 years equals $25,467 in additional savings you wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Small is big when it comes to succeeding in life. Focus on the small things and, over time, you can transform your life from ordinary to extraordinary.

What you focus on every day, coupled with your daily thoughts and emotions, eventually becomes your reality. The more you focus on the outcomes, the more certain those outcomes become. This is why it is critical to be in control of your thoughts. If you constantly focus on an outcome that you fear the most, the more your subconscious mind will push or pull you towards that outcome. Visualize or script an outcome you desire and devote as much time as you can every day in thinking and obsessing about that outcome. This gets your subconscious working with you behind the scenes to push or pull you towards that desired outcome. Happy thoughts, create happy outcomes.

One of the #1 traits shared by the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits study was a positive mental outlook. The average net worth of those millionaires was $4 million. So, being positive is worth quite a bit of money. But what is a positive mental outlook? It is a lens through which you see your world. And how do you see the world? Do you see possibility or impossibility, achievable goals or unreachable goals, abundance or scarcity, opportunity or catastrophe, challenges or adversity, future success or future failure, good luck all around you or bad luck, happiness or misery, solutions or problems?

The lens through which you see your world, shapes your world. Your world will be filled with possibilities or impossibilities, depending on your mental outlook. A negative lens will weigh you down like an anchor. Positive thinking, removes that anchor and allows you to soar. Take off your lens of negativity and put on a new lens of possibility.  A positive mental outlook gives you a fighting chance to succeed, while a negative lens is like a thief; it robs you of the life you were intended to live.

When you are enveloped in negativity you literally shut down half of your brain. Have you ever read stories or seen pictures or video footage of individuals who are in “shock” following some type of catastrophic accident? In most of those stories, pictures or videos, the individuals all looks like a zombies. They are uncommunicative, unresponsive and appear lost somewhere in space. Their very consciousness seems to be closed off to the world around them.

The reason is that, when you are faced with a life or death situation, the fight or flight process of the subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem) takes over as the command and control center of the brain. The conscious part of your brain (neocortex and pre-frontal cortex), the intended command and control center of the brain, completely shuts down. Your visual cortex shuts down, so things your eyes are seeing are not processed by the occipital lobe. Your hearing shuts down and all you hear is noise. You entire awareness to the outside world goes into shut down mode. You become oblivious to everything around you. During life or death events, your thinking and focus is intentionally narrowed, so that you can focus on one thing – survival. When you are in such a negative state, literally half of your brain shuts down.

When you experience stress, a negative emotion, or other negative emotions like anger, disgust, sadness or depression, it’s as if you are putting yourself into shock. You shift into zombie mode, albeit on a lesser level. The conscious part of your brain becomes less in control and your focus and awareness are narrowed. As a result of this narrowed focus and awareness, you become oblivious to solutions and opportunities. Those who remain perpetually negative struggle financially, struggle keeping a job, struggle with relationships and have almost no chance of succeeding in life because they are unable to see solutions and opportunities that would help them solve their problems and create a happy life.

This is why it is critical to make positive thinking a daily habit. We are all faced with everyday situations that cause stress, anger, disappointment and sadness. The key to breaking out of this negative mental outlook is practicing positivity every day until it becomes a habit. The starting point is gratitude. Gratitude is the gateway to a positive mental outlook. Gratitude opens the door to positivity. It shifts your thinking from negative to positive. This has a cascading effect, opening up your mind and allowing you to see abundance in your life, rather than scarcity. Gratitude gets you started on the path to a positive mental outlook. When coupled with other positivity habits, such as meditation, daily positive affirmations, scripting your ideal life, visualizing that ideal life or pursuing your dreams and goals, negativity fades away, replaced by hope, enthusiasm, optimism, joy and contentment. There’s an abundance of science on this. It’s not new age thinking or theory. Dr. Barbara Frederickson, University of North Carolina, recently published the results of a study she conducted on this very topic. When you are able to adopt habits that shift your thinking from negative to positive, you expand your thinking. An abundance mindset takes hold and you are able to see solutions and opportunities that are all around you. You turn on your entire brain, which then goes to work helping you manufacture the life of your dreams by pushing and pulling you, though intuition and gut feelings, in certain directions that lead to a happy, successful and fulfilled life.

Most use external motivation to help them achieve some big goal in life, such as running a marathon, losing 30 pounds, or to pass some test. There is a lot of debate over external motivation. Some argue it does not lead to long-term changes in habits and behaviors. Others argue that it can completely change your life. So, who’s right?

They are both partially right. External motivation works in altering your habits and behaviors but only when that external motivation is long enough for the habits you created to stick.

What is long enough? According to the famous University London study on habits, it could take as long as 254 days to form a habit. If your big goal requires less than 254 days to accomplish then it is likely the habits you forged during the goal-seeking process will not stick. So, if you want to forge long-term habits you need to set big goals that will require at least 254 days to accomplish.

It’s neurological. It takes 254 days in order for the neural pathway inside your brain to become so strong that the brain (basal ganglia) marks the synapse (brain cells talking to each other) as a habit. Once brain cells are designated as habits by the basal ganglia, a habit is forged. And it will never go away – ever. Brain cells marked as habits will stay with you until the day you die.

So, set big goals. Goals that require at least 254 days to accomplish. Otherwise, all of the habits you created in order to make that goal a reality will eventually fade away, replaced by older habits.

Procrastination has a long history in the self-help community. It’s clear, from many studies, that those who make a habit of procrastinating do not do well in life. Procrastination is action’s evil twin. It is the opposite of action. Delayed action prevents us from moving forward in life in realizing our dreams and accomplishing our goals. It prevents, even the most talented individuals, from realizing success in life. It is the reason most are stuck in life. Procrastination results in a “put out the fire” response to meeting the needs of customers, clients, supervisors and co-workers. Oftentimes, this “put out the fire” response results in poor quality, dissatisfied customers, clients, employers and coworkers and can lead to a loss of customers, clients and litigation, costing the business valuable time and money.

So, if procrastination is so bad, why do we do it?

1. FEAR OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK – Procrastination is driven by fear of negative feedback. All action has a feedback ripple effect. Sometimes that feedback is good, sometimes bad. We fear negative feedback. But negative feedback is critical to success in life. It tells us if we are on the right or wrong path.
2. TASK INFLATION – Procrastination is driven by inflating the work required for tasks. We dread taking action because we exaggerate how much time it will take to complete the task. We exaggerate the imagined physical or mental effort it will take to complete the task or goal.
3. LACK OF PASSION – Procrastination is driven by a lack of passion. We simply like to do the things we like to do and we put off the things we do not like to do. You always find time for the things you are passionate about.
4. OUR BRAIN IS LAZY – Procrastination is, in part, neurological. Taking action on something you don’t want to do requires that you exert willpower. Willpower engages your pre-frontal cortex (conscious part of brain). This engagement requires that the brain marshal additional fuel (glucose) that powers your brain. The brain does not like to use glucose. That’s why it created habits. Habits limit the consumption of brain fuel and take willpower and discipline out of the equation. Your own brain is begging you not to engage in any and all activities that need willpower to get you started.

Most people are average. What I mean is that most people do what they have to do in order to pay their bills, raise a family and keep their jobs. But every now and then you run into an exceptional person. Exceptional people are typically upbeat, enthusiastic, intelligent individuals who are doing something unusual, different, dramatic and, well, exceptional.

So what do you do when you run into one of these individuals? If you’re like most average people – not much. You might stay in touch with them in the beginning, maybe even a year or two, but eventually you forget about them and move on with your life. That’s a Poor Habit.

But if you’re like most self-made millionaires or someone who will be one day, you wrap your arms around them and never, ever let them go. You build a long-term relationship with them. You stay in constant communication with them. You turn them from relationship saplings into redwoods. That’s a Rich Habit.

You see, relationships are the currency of the wealthy. When self-made millionaires run into exceptional people they adopt them, like children. They become part of their inner circle. Self-made’s understand that there may one day come a time when they can mutually benefit one another and help elevate each other’s success.

Do you know any exceptional people? Do you stay in constant touch with them or do you have the Poor Habit of letting them slip through the cracks? If you’re struggling in life, you probably are letting them slip through the cracks. If you want to be successful in life, never let exceptional people slip through the cracks. Adopt them. Stay in touch with them constantly. Forge the Rich Habit of turning exceptional people who breeze into your life, into long-term relationships. Successful people never let exceptional people slip through the cracks.

It’s an unfortunate byproduct of pursuing a dream. There are individuals out there who prey on dreamers. They come disguised in many forms. All forms feed into your dream. They all seem sincere in their desire to help you move forward in realizing your dream. You buy into their sincerity, believing that they are truly interested in developing a long-term relationship with you; eager to guide you along the path towards success. But their sincerity comes at a cost. Typically, it’s a financial cost. They can help you realize your dream, they tell you. You just need to pay them X dollars and, magically, they will help make your dream come true. When the check clears, they stick around for a predetermined amount of time. And then they slowly disappear; fading away like a morning fog, leaving you no closer to realizing your dream. These Dream Gypsies, despite their words, are not interested in developing a long-term relationship with you, they are not really interested in helping you realize your dream. Their’s is strictly a short-term heist. The moment they decide your dream is taking too long, they move on. We dreamers often fall for their promises and are left poorer as a result. But, in time, we wise up. We learn from our mistakes. And when the next Dream Gypsie comes along, we are able to spot them a mile away and are able to avoid being taken advantage of a second time.

If you’re not careful, Dream Gypsies can stop your dream in its tracks by wasting your time and your money. If you’re just starting out on your success journey, you need to be on the lookout for Dream Gypsies. In the beginning of any pursuit of a dream, you need to hold on to whatever money you have for dear life. Trust me, you’ll need every dollar.

So, how do you unmask Dream Gypsies? There’s a process. During your march to success, you will encounter many people who seem sincerely interested in helping you. Some of them may profess having certain skills, certain contacts and that special something that you lack, which they convince you is holding you back from realizing success. Before you engage any one of these so-called experts, ask them how many of their clients have become successful. Then ask them for the names and contact information of five of their “successful” clients by the end of the day. The “end of the day” mandate is critical as it does not give them enough time to find those five individuals who will vouch for them. If they are Dream Gypsies, you will likely never hear from them again.

Dream Gypsies can throw a wrench into the pursuit of your dream. Don’t let that happen. Your dream is far too important. Be wary of anyone who promises you success. There is only one person who truly believes in your dream with all their heart and soul and there is only one person who will make that dream come true and that is you. Spend your money wisely as you pursue your dream and avoid Dream Gypsies at all costs. The right people will eventually come along. It just takes time and persistence.

No one likes to fail. In fact, our education system has gone to great lengths to institutionalize the punishment of failure. They call it the grading system. When you fail in school, you get a failing grade. As a child, you are indoctrinated by the education system to see failure as a bad thing. Children who get bad grades, fail too much, could even get left back. This creates fear. So, we are taught by our teachers to fear failure and so we spend our entire adult lives avoiding risk because we fear failure.

But I learned from my Rich Habits study of 177 self-made millionaires that failure was the most direct path towards success. Failure forces you to change and grow. Sure, failure is painful, but the lessons you learn from failure stick. Failure leaves scar tissue on the brain. You never forget your failures. And that’s a good thing. Failure forces you to learn what to do and what not to do. When you fail, you are forced to learn what went wrong and then change what you are doing, making failure temporary. If you refuse to change, then that failure becomes permanent. Here are some things I discovered about failure from my study:

• Failure forces you to change your habits.
• Failure forces you to change your perception.
• Failure forces you to change who you associate with.
• Failure forces you to change your thinking.
• Failure teaches you to value and manage your time better.
• Failure teaches you how to deal with people.
• Failure forces you to manage your money better.
• Failure gives birth to insight and creativity.
• Failure makes you wiser.
• Failure increases awareness.

Those who fail become different people. The education you get from failure stays with you forever and becomes the foundation upon which you build future success. The more you fail, the stronger the foundation and the greater your success will be. In order to succeed you must vanquish the institutionalized belief that failure is something to be feared. Your teachers were wrong. Failure is the path to success.