Archives for July 2018

When I was nine years old my Mom gave me $1 and asked me to go to the store to get milk so that my Dad would have milk with his dinner.

I went to the bathroom and then walked the two miles to the grocery store to get the milk. When I got to the store, I couldn’t find the dollar my Mom had given me. I lost it somehow. I got back home to see my Mom standing at the door, waiting for me.

“You left the money I gave you in the bathroom,” she said in a stern voice. “Now hurry back to the store before your father gets home.”

I ran to the store as fast as I could, got the milk and ran back home. Unfortunately, my Dad had already gotten home from work and was finishing up his dinner.

“If your head was not attached to your neck, you would have left that in the bathroom too!” he yelled to me.

Whatever message my Dad was trying to convey to me, the message I got was that I was stupid.

That single event created a limiting belief for many years.

From that moment on, I believed I was stupid, and so, I got into the habit of not doing my homework or studying.

As a result, I struggled academically.

My struggles, however, ended in 8th grade thanks to my very attractive science teacher, Ms. Summers.

After handing me the results of yet another failed science test, Mrs. Summers asked me to stay after class, as she wanted to talk to me.

I had gotten so used to these after class meetings that they no longer bothered me in the least. They were all the same lecture – “you’re not doing your homework and you’re not studying enough”.

In my mind, homework and studying for tests was a waste of time because I was stupid. My teachers just didn’t understand that.

But Mrs. Summers did something very different. She didn’t criticize my school work habits. Instead, she told how smart she thought I was. She said she actually thought I was one of the smartest kids in her class.

Part of me wanted to turn around to see if there was someone standing behind me, Mrs. Summers was actually talking to, other than myself.

Mrs. Summers concluded our talk by telling me she was so confident in my intelligence that she expected I would get the highest grade in the class on the next test.

I remember going home on the bus that day. All I was thinking about was studying for that science test. I studied for hours every night for that test.

A few days later, when Mrs. Summers handed me the test results, at the very top, in very large numbers was written “99”.

I had received the second highest grade in the class.

Mrs. Summers made me stand in the front of the class and held up my test score for all the class to see. Then she wrapped her arms around me, hugged me tight and told everyone in the class how smart Tom Corley was.

I’ve had many emotions in my life but that emotion ranks among the highest. And it’s still with me to this day. I’m feeling it right now, as I write these words.

Emotions are very powerful things. And emotions happen to be one of the most powerful catalysts for creating beliefs.

A belief is formed one of three ways:

1. Internal Statements – Self-Talk
2. External Statements – Statements made by those who exert a major influence over our lives, such as parents, teachers, friends, family, etc.
3. Emotional Events – Achieving a goal, failing to achieve a goal, winning, losing, failure, success, etc.

Occasionally, the influencers in our lives (parents, friends, teachers, supervisors, etc.) can unintentionally cause the creation of limiting beliefs.

“Dan is no good at math”, “Lauren is clumsy”, “If Tom’s head wasn’t attached to his neck he’d forget it in the bathroom”.

Destructive criticism can morph into a a negative belief if the person doing the criticizing is someone you respect, love, like or admire.

Conversely, compliments can morph into a positive belief if the person doing the complimenting is someone you respect, love, like or admire.

At the core of almost every belief, is an emotion that gave it life.

Once a belief is accepted, habits generally follow.

My newfound belief that I was, in fact, smart changed my study habits for the rest of my life. I went on to become a solid B+ student the rest of my academic life. I was even able to pass the CPA exam, get a Masters degree in taxation, and pass the ten-hour long Certified Financial Planning test on the first try.

Your daily habits are joined at the hip, with your beliefs. If you want to change bad habits, you must change the limiting beliefs behind them.

Major life changes always require a catalyst.

Sometimes it’s a dream that inspires you with so much passion, you completely change course in life.

Sometimes it’s an audacious goal that pushes you to work hard towards the realization of that goal. That work forces you to develop new skills and acquire new knowledge that forever changes your life.

Sometimes it’s a break up that causes you to seek personal self-improvement, completely changing you physically and mentally.

Sometimes it’s a job loss that forces you to make a shift in your career, which completely changes the trajectory of your life.

And sometimes it’s just plain disgust.

Disgust may be the single biggest catalyst there is, which forces change.

I like to think of disgust as the Dead End that pushes your back up against the wall, requiring that you do something different.

You reach a dead end when you decide you are simply disgusted with yourself, your circumstances, your relationships, your poverty or your mediocrity.

Disgust forces you to self-assess. This self-assessment often leads to massive changes in your life.

But what if you’re not disgusted with your life and are simply disappointed about your life circumstances?

How do you trigger disgust?

The Dream-Setting exercise of creating a script of your ideal, future life, holds the key to releasing this emotion.

Creating a script of your ideal future life and comparing it to your current life will cause disgust because it creates a conflict deep inside your subconscious mind.

That script activates certain regions within the subconscious mind, whose new mission or directive is to deliver to you the circumstances you described in your script.

The Reticular Activating System, Insula and Thalamus work in unison with the five senses, searching your external environment for people, opportunities and information that can help direct you to the path that leads to the life you desire.

Reviewing your future life script at the start and end of every week will reinforce your desire to change your life and keep your subconscious on alert, searching for the right path to take.

It takes time, but it works.

Steve Jobs did it. Ronald Reagan did it. Chris Gardner did it.

Successful people, at some point, reinvent themselves.

Sometimes it’s a gradual process, as was the case with Jobs and Reagan. Sometimes it’s an overnight transformation by virtue of one lucky break, as in the case of Gardner.

Regardless, what initiates the transformation is always the same thing – a clear vision of the new path towards your new life.

What causes this massive transformation?

Asking yourself one simple question: “Who do I want to be?”

When you have a clear vision of who you want to be in the future, you are able to back engineer your life.

You create a clear vision through a process called Dream-Setting.

To begin the Dream-Setting process, start by painting a picture with words of your ideal future life. This could be five, ten or twenty years from now. This script is the blueprint of your new future life. Re-read your script a few times each week. This creates a scratch your subconscious will feel compelled to itch.

At some point it will stop itching and communicate to you, through intuition, what you need to do. Sometimes that communication is subtle, like a feather. Sometimes its pronounced, like a hammer. Everyone hears their inner voice differently and at different volumes. But you will never hear that inner voice, if you are not clear on your destination.

This Dream-Setting process helps you to create that clear vision of your destination. This clear vision stimulates certain regions of your subconscious mind: Insula, Reticular Activating System, Thalamus, Brain Stem and various other regions.

In order to activate these regions, you must define exactly what your future life looks like:

• What you do for a living.
• How much money you make.
• Who you work with.
• Where you live.
• What your house looks like.
• What car you drive.
• How much money you have in your bank account.
• How you spend each day.
• Where you go on vacation.
• Places you travel to.
• Etc.

Transformation is a process. A big part of that process is visualizing exactly what you want your future life to be.

Once you have a clear vision of your ideal future life, portions of the subconscious mind  are toggled on and go to work seeking people, opportunities, and internal/external information to help you get where you want to go.

Until you know where you want to go, those subconscious powers remain dormant and your inner voice, silent.

Inherited wealth is fleeting.

One of the myths I frequently dispel is the myth that most wealthy people inherited their wealth.

The reality is, most wealthy people are first generation rich.

In my Rich Habits Study, 76% of the wealthy created their own wealth.

In other studies, 80% seems to be the magic number.

A 2015 Williams Group Wealth Consultancy Survey, in which more than 3,200 high-net-worth families were studied, found the following:

• 70% of rich families lose their wealth by the second generation;
• 90% of rich families lose their wealth by the third generation;
• The average recipient of an inheritance purchases a car within 19 days of the inheritance.

Why is it so hard to hold on to inherited money?

When you are given money, it has less value to you than when you are required to work to earn it.

Building wealth takes a long time. The few who are able to forge habits that create their wealth, take great pains in holding onto their wealth.

This human tendency to spend money that you did not earn is one of the reasons Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have greatly limited how much wealth their children will inherit.

Don’t buy into the myth that the wealthy inherited their wealth. It’s a myth. Most wealth in America is earned wealth. And this is a good thing.

Fear, whether conscious or subconscious, holds most back in life.

It’s very much like a boat’s mooring lines, tethering you to the dock, preventing you from venturing too far in life.

The key to overcoming fear is to take small steps, or dip your toe in just a little. Once you realize your fears are unfounded, it gives you courage to keep pursuing dreams or goals that were previously halted by your fears.

Baby steps allow you to face your fear incrementally, bit by bit, until your confidence grows to the point where you are able to cut those lines and free yourself from your fear.

Here’s How To Free Yourself From Fears

1. Make a list of your top four biggest fears.
2. Each week for a month, focus on just one fear.
3. Do some little thing that forces you to face that fear every day for seven days.
4. Move on to your next fear and repeat steps 1 – 3.

The purpose of this exercise is to prove to you that your fears are blown way out of proportion. It will help you forge the habit of overcoming fear. As your confidence grows, fear retreats.

How much you eat may very well determine how long you live.

In a report issued by Roderick Bronson and Ruth Lipman of the Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University in Boston, reducing your normal intake of food by 40% yields a 20% longer life span.

Eating less does three things:

1. Reduces DNA damage
2. Increases DNA repair and
3. Reduces free radical genetic mutations

Free radical mutations are the result of the mitochondria (power plants inside each cell) breaking down glucose and converting it to ATP, the primary fuel of every cell. During this violent conversion process taking place inside each cell, electrons can be pulled off their molecules and, like a Mexican jumping bean, bounce around inside the cell causing damage. If the wandering electron bounces off the nucleus inside the cell it can damage the DNA that resides inside that nucleus. This can result in mutations that lead to diseases like cancer.

Every time we eat, this metabolic process creates free radicals. So, the less you eat, the less free radical waste you create.

Also, the longer you go without eating, the more time each cell has to clean up this free radical mess. This is why I am such a big proponent of intermittent fasting – fasting for at least 12 hours a day. Intermittent fasting help your body eliminate toxins that accumulate and clean up this free radical pig pen within each cell.

With less toxins and fewer free radicals roaming around inside your cells, your cells have less stress, less exposure to potential DNA damage and, thus, less opportunity for mutations to occur that can lead to diseases such as cancer.

Your brain loves novelty.

When you engage in new activities, or take up a new skill, your brain rewards you with a boost in Dopamine, the happiness neurotransmitter.

Why does the brain love novelty?

Because the brain is selfish. It likes to do anything that helps it grow bigger and stronger.

Every time you engage in a new activity and then practice it, you create a new neural pathway. Neural pathways are a series of neurons (brain cells) called into action to communicate with each other. When you repeat new activities, these neurons communicating with each other begin to form a permanent neural pathway, thus growing the size of your brain.

This is why it is critical for older people to engage in new activities – new activities keep older brains active and growing.

Those who want to grow their brains should engage in a new activity periodically and repeat it until it becomes a skill. This can take anywhere from 18 days to 254 days. Each new activity that becomes a skill, creates brain mass and keeps your mind active and your brain healthy.

Blood’s major purpose in the body is to carry nutrients (glucose and oxygen) to the cells and to carry waste out through our lungs in the form of carbon dioxide.

When we exercise aerobically we increase blood flow throughout the body. The more aerobic exercise, the greater that blood flow. This means more nutrients and more waste removal.

Exercise also increases blood flow into the Dentate Gyrus. The Dentate Gyrus is part of our brain’s Hippocampus, a region involved in memory formation and neurogenisis (birth of new neurons).

Weight-lifting or resistance exercise stimulates the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDFN). BDFN is miracle grow for the neurons inside our brain, helping them not only stay healthy but increase in size.

Lastly, when you lift weights and/or engage in aerobic exercise, this increases the myelin sheath (insulation) around the axons of each brain cell. The thicker the myelin sheath, the faster and more powerful the electrical signals sent by brain cells to one another. This increases how fast you are able to think, a key attribute of those with high IQs.

For those who are pursuing success, you will face obstacles, impediments, seemingly intractable problems and many issues that require you to think better and faster. Exercising every day gives you that slight edge that can make a difference between failure or success.

Eighteenth century French philosopher, Denis Diderot, became rich after writing Encyclopedie, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedia’s at the time.

His wealth enabled him to satisfy a want he had – to buy a very expensive robe. Soon after buying the robe, he decided to replace all of his clothing in order to match the beauty of the robe. This escalated into a series of purchases that included art for the walls of his home and other accessories.

Diderot, realizing his folly, wrote about this Spiral of Consumption in an essay titled, “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown.”

Diderot explains how new consumption often leads to a Spiral of Consumption that can enslave you and rob you of your wealth.

This psychological tendency is known as Want Spending and Lifestyle Creep. We see it at work with celebrities such as Johnny Depp and Connor McGregor, whose reckless spending has eroded their wealth.

The only way to stop this Spiral of Consumption, known as Want Spending, in its tracks is to replace envy or greed with gratitude or gratefulness.

Gratitude shifts your thinking from negative (envy/greed) to positive (gratitude/gratefulness). It is like a stop sign that prevents this Spiral of Consumption from addicting you to Want Spending, and bleeding you of the hard-earned money you’ve accumulated.