Archives for March 2018

Between the mid 1800’s and early 1900’s there were a number of Americans who amassed great wealth: John Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller.

The Astor, Vanderbilt and Carnegie wealth evaporated within two generations. Yet, the Rockefeller wealth continues to grow.

Inscribed in stone at Rockefeller Center is the mantra of the Rockefeller family:

“For every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.”

Certainly, John Rockefeller’s wise creation of trusts has kept future generations from squandering that wealth (they are now entering their 7th generation, with 170 heirs and an $11 billion fortune). But, there is much more to the Rockefeller story than trusts.

Those trusts are passing along more than mere wealth. They have institutionalized many of the values and habits of John Rockefeller, which are passed along to every heir.

The family meets twice a year to share the values and habits passed down to them by John Rockefeller. Additionally, at age 21, every heir is invited to these family education sessions to learn the values and the habits of John Rockefeller.

One of the foundational habits passed along is charity – the importance of giving back to the community.

Another foundational value or habit is teaching heirs good money values – essentially how to live within your means. The means being provided by the trusts.

As I’ve articulated often in my writing, parents are the primary source of good and bad habits. When parents inculcate good habits in their children, their children thrive as adults.

However, when parents pass along bad habits to their children, their children struggle in life, financially and otherwise.

The Rockefeller trusts exemplify the enormous importance of parents passing along to their children habits that will help them to excel in life.

One of the common themes I unearthed in my five year Rich Habits Study was that the vast majority of the successful, wealthy, self-made millionaires in my study master the basics.

They master the basics by disciplining themselves in three areas: fundamentals, needs and moderation.

Fundamentals

Those who become expert in what they do, perfect the fundamentals. They consistently practice the fundamentals until those fundamentals become so ingrained in them they can perform them in their sleep.

Needs

• Value Spending – Those who accumulate enormous amounts of wealth spend their money on things that are important to them – their needs: A home in a safe neighborhood, a good education, well-made cars, etc.
• Avoid Want Spending, Save and Invest – They delay gratification by eschewing want spending for value spending, save the excess and then invest that excess. They engage in want spending only after they have accumulated enough wealth, enabling them to spend the earnings from their wealth on things they want.

Moderation

They are masters at moderation. They moderate everything about their life.

• They Moderate Their Emotions – They are even tempered. They don’t become overly excited or excessively melancholy. This enables them to build strong, powerful relationships with others. People like doing business with them because they feel comfortable around them. They feel comfortable around them because they are consistent in their emotions – no wild emotional swings which only tends to make people feel uncomfortable.
• They Moderate Their Behavior – They don’t overeat, drink in excess, spend money in excess, or engage in activities, in excess. They don’t waste their time. They don’t spend hours every day watching TV, reading Facebook, reading books of fiction or engaging in activities that are unproductive.
• They Moderate Their Thinking – They shoot for the moon but are grounded in reality. They understand that life is a marathon, not a sprint. They manage their expectations about life. They expect adversity, obstacles, problems and are therefore mentally prepared to deal with them.
• They Moderate Their Work-Life – They make the time to spend with family and friends. This enables them to maintain and grow the relationships that matter to them.

If you want to succeed in life you must master the basics.

When an archer misses the bull’s eye, it is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim, you must improve yourself.

——- Gilbert Arland

Do you get frustrated when you fail to make a sale, fail to land that big customer/client, flop an important presentation or speech, blow an assignment or project, lose at some competition?

It’s easy to blame. Blame the customer/client. Blame the prospect. Blame the room or equipment for a bad speech, etc. It’s much harder to self-reflect, to look inward and acknowledge that you are to blame when something doesn’t go your way.

The reality is that when things don’t go as planned, you are ultimately to blame.

Lack of preparation, failure to acquire more information/facts or a failure to practice your craft over and over again until you are a virtuoso at what you – these are the real reasons you miss your target; the real reasons you fail.

Being great requires growth. And growth comes from relentless, daily study or daily deliberate practice.

You have to work at improving yourself every day. You must get better at what you do on a daily basis.

Daily self-improvement is a habit forged by every successful individual. It is a prerequisite for success.

When you become a virtuoso at what you do, you hit your target every time.

Genius, by definition, is the possession of exceptional intelligence, creativity and curiosity.

Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs all possessed these traits in abundance and all three changed the world in which we live.

In fact, these qualities, this genius, is what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Genius is also what separates exceptional human beings from ordinary human beings. And that’s too bad because all human beings are born with these genius traits hardwired into their DNA. We are all inherently intelligent, creative and curious, thanks to our genes. We just have to know how to turn up our genius.

Research shows that intelligence, creativity and curiosity dramatically increases in the presence of positive emotions and decreases just as dramatically in the presence of negativity. Positivity, through a process called methylation, turns on certain genes that increase intelligence, creativity and curiosity. Studies also show that negativity, through a process called demethylation, turns off those same genius genes.

Positivity lights the fuse and negativity snuffs it out.

Intelligence, creativity and curiosity push us to learn, solve problems and explore. These traits, when put to use, make us feel happy and alive.

Happy, upbeat people are able to tap into their inner genius and are more productive than unhappy, negative people. Positive people are the beneficiaries of those flashes of genius that are commonly associated with creative genius-types.

So, if you want to turn up your inner genius, get positive. Positivity lights the fuse to inner genius; a genius innate to every human being.

When life is good, when things are going well, it’s hard to tell the difference between those relationships that matter and those that don’t.

But life isn’t linear. Everyone, even successful people, experience downturns in their lives.

It is when things go off the rails that Rich Relationships come to the rescue.

Rich Relationships are those relationships you’ve built over the years with other upbeat, success-minded individuals. Rich Relationships do not abandon you in your time of need. If fact, they do the opposite – they help pull you out of the abyss, financially, emotionally and through their contacts.

The relationships you should be building today should be with those individuals who have displayed courage and commitment to their relationship with you when things were not going as planned.

How many of your relationships could you honestly count on in a time of need? Make a list. Study that list. Those are the individuals you should be devoting your time to in forging strong relationships. Those who do not make the list, should be the ones you devote the least amount of your time to.

The foundation of your success is built upon the relationships you forge with other success-minded individuals who are committed to helping you achieve your goals and dreams; who are committed to your success.

Surround yourself with Rich Relationships and invest your time in those relationships.

You are the architect of your own happiness and you are the architect of your own sadness.

You are the architect of an abundant life and you are the architect of a life of scarcity.

You are the architect of your life.

Until you accept this fundamental fact of life, you will never truly have any control over your life.  Like leaves on a fall day, you will float in the air aimlessly, without direction, driven by the wind.

The habits that you forge, are that wind. The hidden power inside each one of us, is the ability to direct that wind in any direction of our choosing, by choosing habits that move us forward in life toward the life of our dreams.

I have a binder filled with page after page of the studies I’ve summarized over the past nine years. These summarized studies are all interrelated. Each study relates, in some way, to the benefits derived from various habits.

One such habit, aerobic exercise, has so many benefits, I thought I’d highlight them:

• Reversal of Mild Cognitive Impairment – The first stage of Alzheimer’s disease is known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Several studies of older individuals with MCI concluded that when these individuals engaged in aerobic exercise thirty minutes a day, four days a week, they showed a reduction in MCI.
• Prevents Alzheimer’s – Other studies have documented that individuals who regularly exercised aerobically throughout their lives were 88% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. One longitudinal study even found that only 5% of women who exercised aerobically throughout their lives developed Alzheimer’s, compared to 32% of the women who did little to no aerobic exercise.
• Younger Thymus – The thymus is responsible for manufacturing immune cells called T-Cells. It typically begins to shrink around age 20, thus producing fewer and fewer T-Cells as we age. Those who exercised aerobically, however, had thymus glands of a twenty year old – meaning, aerobic exercise keeps your thymus youthful, your immune system healthy, and these two things enable you to live a long, healthy life.
• Healthier Hearts – Various studies show that those who exercise aerobically during their lives have stronger, healthier heart muscles.
• Better Cardiovascular Systems – Studies show that those who exercise aerobically have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels and other favorable heart metrics across the board than sedentary people.
• Less Depression – Those who exercise aerobically have lower levels of adrenaline and cordial, stress hormones that have been linked to stress-related diseases and increased depression.
• Better Guts – Those who exercise aerobically have higher concentrations of butyrate, a type of fatty acid that helps keep you gut healthy, lowering inflammation and increasing energy production.
• Lower Cholesterol – Regular aerobic exercise, in many studies, lowered LDL (bad cholesterol) and increased HDL (good cholesterol).
• Reduction in Type 2 Diabetes – Various studies show that regular aerobic exercise increases insulin action and glucose tolerance, significantly reducing the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.
• Youthful Skin- Individuals over age 40 who engage in regular aerobic exercise have healthier skin than their sedentary peers. Many in various studies had skin comparable to 20 – 30 year-olds.

If you want to live a longer, healthier, more youthful life, forge the aerobic exercise habit. It’s never too late. Studies show that aerobic exercise reverses many of the aging effects that lifelong bad habits produce. Aerobic exercise, in effect, makes old people, un-old.

In the mid-2000’s, Australian researchers Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng conducted a study on a group of people. For two months this group hit the gym three times a week for weight training and cardio.

Employing a well-known visual tracking test, which measures your ability to focus and concentrate, they tested the group of participants’ willpower before and after the two-month exercise program.

The results?

The participants increased their ability to focus and concentrate after engaging in the two-month exercise regimen.

But, surprisingly, the two-month exercise program revealed some other unexpected and surprising results. There was a massive decrease in bad behavior and a massive increase in good behavior, post exercise regimen:

• Cigarette smokers went from 14 cigarettes a day to just 3.
• Healthy eating habits increased.
• Junk food consumption went down.
• Impulse spending decreased.
• Overspending declined.
• Participants devoted more time to their friends.
• TV consumption went down.
• Missing or being late for appointments decreased in frequency.
• Procrastination was reduced.
• Daily household chores surged.

In short, like throwing a pebble in the water, the act of establishing just one good keystone habit (exercise) triggered a Ripple Effect which gave birth to other good behaviors (habits).

Keystone Habits are infectious habits that act like catalysts, giving birth to other related habits.

This is why it is so important to forge good habits – good habits lead to more good habits. This is also why it is so important to eliminate bad habits – bad habits lead to more bad habits.

Achieving greatness boils down to one simple formula:

Doing Something You Are Inherently Good at, Which Adds Value to the Lives of Others and For Which You Have a Passion.

Innate Talent

Innate talent is something that comes easy to you. It is something you do better than others.

Value

When whatever you do adds value to the lives of others, they will gladly pay you a premium for any service or product you provide which improves their lives in some way.

Passion

When you love what you do, you happily devote every available waking moment to doing that which makes your heart sing. Those who find their passion in life become expert in what they do. They devote the most time to their careers and, as a result, become the best at what they do.

All of those deca-millionaires/billionaires you read about in the newspapers, or on the Internet, or listen to on the radio or in podcasts or whose interviews you watch on TV or some Internet video, have achieved enormous success by following this formula for greatness.