Michael Yardney, the Donald Trump of real estate in Australia and Tom Corley, bestselling author of Rich Habits, Rich Kids and Change Your Habits, Change Your Life discuss the work ethic of the wealthy.
Archives for July 2016
Use Anger and Disgust to Improve Your Circumstances
July 22, 2016 by 1 Comment
According to Psychologist Rick Hanson, we are hardwired for negativity. The brain reacts far more strongly to negative experiences than positive ones.
Anger and disgust are two of the most powerful negative emotions we have. They also happen to be two of the most powerful triggers for habit change. Emotions, good or bad, stir us into action.
The key is, what action do you take? Is it constructive action or destructive action?
Anger can, on a dime, immediately transform us from couch potatoes into action taking machines. Those who are able to take their anger out in a constructive way, improve their lives. Those who take action that is destructive damage their lives.
Example: someone you know calls you fat. Do you lash out at the person and destroy that relationship or do you get off the couch and start exercising.
Disgust can also force you to alter your behavior for good or bad. Disgust can drive you into constructive behavior or send you spiraling into depression, further exasperating your circumstances.
Example: you’re naked, looking in the mirror, and you become disgusted with how overweight you are. You can react in a constructive way and decide that you are going to lose weight by changing your eating habits and adding a new exercise habit. Or, you can become depressed about your life, driving you to eat more of the foods that caused you to become overweight in the first place.
With anger and disgust, how you react, constructively or destructively, can improve your life or make it worse. When you use anger and disgust constructively, it can transform your life for the better.
So, the next time you get angry or become disgusted with your life, take a breath and do something constructive about it.
Successful people use anger and disgust to help them create the life of their dreams. Unsuccessful people use anger and disgust to drag them further down in life.
What to Do When You Hate Your Life
July 21, 2016 by 3 Comments
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…]
One New Habit Can Change Your Life
July 21, 2016 by 2 Comments
Sounds ridiculous. How can one new habit completely change your life?
One of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, who at the time of our interview was worth $17 million dollars, explained to me how one new habit transformed him almost overnight into a money-making machine.
Here’s his story.
He was struggling in his business and out of sheer disgust he decided to adopt one new habit of reading every day for a month. He said he had always hated reading to learn, so he set the bar low – 10 minutes of reading to learn every day in one area – selling.
On the first day he forced himself to a small desk in the basement of his home. It was more a picnic table than a desk. He pulled out a book on cold-calling and began reading. For the first few days, he absolutely hated it. But he kept at it.
After those dreadful first few days passed, the habit slowly began to form. On the fifth day, he read for 20 minutes. On the tenth day, thirty minutes.
By the end of the month he moved on to another book and was reading for over an hour a day. He documented many of the ideas he picked up from his reading in a notebook and began experimenting with some of those ideas in his business. Some of the ideas paid off and for the first time in his life his sales started to grow.
As the month came to an end, he felt compelled to attend a seminar on selling. He liked the seminar and then signed up for another one. Soon, he was attending one seminar a month. He filled his notebook with more selling ideas from the seminars and experimented with those ideas. Sales continued to grow.
He continued to read to learn and attend seminars over the years. And his sales continued to grow and grow and grow. And each year his business grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
After ten years, he realized he was a millionaire. After twenty years, a multi-millionaire. After forty years he was worth $17 million and sitting in front of me, a self-made millionaire, answering my questions. The self-made millionaire sitting in front of me during my study was a very different man than the man he used to be, the man who struggled in his business.
That one small habit change, reading just 10 minutes a day, had a domino effect on his life. It helped him form other habits, seemingly unrelated to his new reading habit: daily exercise, eating right, no more sitting on the couch watching TV at night along with many other habit changes. All contributing to his evolution into a self-made millionaire.
Our ritual behaviors are interconnected because all ritual behaviors are habits and all habits are controlled by the same parts of the brain. When you change just one habit, it bleeds out, affecting other habits.
The key to massive change is not massive change. It is small change. Small changes to our behaviors ripple through our brain and foster other small changes. Eventually, all of those small changes add up to massive change. All it takes is one habit.
Drag yourself to your one new small habit and stick to it for thirty days. You will hate it in the beginning. But, in time, you will love the effect that one small habit change has on your life and that one small habit change will spread like a virus, affecting other behaviors in a positive way and transforming your life.
You Deserve a Life Filled With Abundance
July 20, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Every time I tell someone the title of my book they’re curious. That’s because “Strategies for Cats” is a metaphor. Yes, it is a story about “Kitty”, a homeless cat who receives a life filled with abundance, and I guess I could have used a person instead of my cat, but you may not fall in love with her like a lot of readers already have. [Read more…]
Likeability Fuels Success
July 20, 2016 by Leave a Comment
In my book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, I highlight one of the most important factors to success – the importance of being liked. According to my Rich Habits Study:
- 95% of the self-made millionaires in my study indicated that being liked was critical to their success.
- 91% of the poor in my study felt being liked was not important to success.
- 94% of the self-made millionaires avoided gossip because they believe gossip caused people to dislike them and, thus, destroyed relationships.
- 70% of the poor engaged in gossip regularly.
- 86% of the self-made millionaires avoided associating with people they did not like.
As it turns out, the rich in my study were on to something big. According to a Columbia University study by Melinda Tamkins, success in the workplace is guaranteed not by what or whom you know but by your popularity. In her study, Tamkins found that, “popular workers were seen as trustworthy, motivated, serious, decisive and hardworking and were recommended for fast-track promotion and generous pay increases. Their less-liked colleagues were perceived as arrogant, conniving and manipulative. Pay rises and promotions were ruled out regardless of their academic background or professional qualifications.” (Pam Holloway – The Secret of Likeability). [Read more…]
The Power of Likeability
July 20, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Ninety-five percent of the rich in my Rich Habits Study indicated that being liked was critical to their success. Conversely, only 9% of the poor felt being liked was important to success.
As it turns out, the rich were on to something big.
You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “there’s safety in numbers”. One of the key factors responsible for the incredible success of the human race has been our ability to form social groups.
In the early days of human existence, those who were not part of a group became food for predators. Isolation almost certainly spelled death.
Being part of a group was so critical to our survival a a species that it became hardwired into our DNA over the past ten million years.
When someone says, “I like you”, either directly or indirectly (gossip), it changes how you view that person.
Success has many moving parts. Being liked is one of those moving parts. It’s fundamental to success. When you are able to get people to like you, it alters their behavior towards you.
You can get people to do almost anything you want if you tell them you like them. Our brains put people who like us on a pedestal.
If you like someone, let them know. They will be happy to help you as you march along the path towards success.
Two Reasons You’re Miserable
July 19, 2016 by Leave a Comment
If you spent as much time as I have, as a fly on the wall of the rich and the poor, you’d come to understand, as I do, what makes them tick.
You’d learn that pursuing something you are passionate about geometrically increases your chances of becoming rich and successful.
You’d learn that persistence separates those who succeed from those who fail.
You’d also learn a lot about why the rich are happier than the poor.
When you boil it down, happiness and unhappiness come down to two things:
- Expectations and
- Control
When your expectations are met, you are happy. When your expectations are not met, you are unhappy.
When you feel like you are in control of your life, you are happy. When you feel like you are not in control of your life, you are unhappy.
Most of the rich in my study were happy because they pursued their dreams and goals with a relentlessness that bordered on fanaticism and eventually realized their dreams and goals.
But, along their march towards realizing their dreams and goals, they often struggled. They struggled in achieving goals and overcoming obstacles.
Failing to meet a goal or overcome an obstacle, caused them emotional anguish and made them unhappy.
So, through trial and error they learned the importance of pivoting. They adjusted their goals and lowered their expectations in order to reflect the reality of the situation, so they could overcome those obstacles that stood in their way and realize their goals.
When they made this adjustment, the ups and downs leveled off. Their expectations began to match their results.
Lowering their expectations enabled them to meet their expectations and that made them happy.
That happiness supercharged them with more passion, which enabled them to continue their relentless march towards success.
Eventually that relentlessness paid off – they succeeded.
And that success gave them a feeling that they were in control of their life, which made them happy.
Meeting expectations and feeling you are in control of your life are the two main variables that create a happy life. Failing to meet expectations and feeling as if you are not in control of your life result in an unhappy life.
Parent Habits Become Children Habits
July 19, 2016 by 10 Comments
Why is there so much unrest in America’s inner cities? The experts are quick to point the finger of blame at a variety of causes: low wages, racial discrimination, Police gone wild, America’s shrinking manufacturing base, U.S. companies moving oversees, China stealing our jobs, illegal immigrants stealing our jobs, poor education system, the rich exploiting the poor, insufficient taxation of the rich, etc.
But none of these pundits ever address the real source of this unrest – bad parenting.
America’s growing discontent among the poor of the inner cities and the growing disparity nationwide between the rich and the poor is a reflection of how America’s have’s and have-not’s were raised by their parents. [Read more…]
