Archives for September 2018

The real secret to success is consistency – doing certain things every day that help move you forward in achieving your goals which lead to the realization of your dreams.

Successful people create consistency by adopting daily habits that are tied to their goals and dreams.

Habits force consistency. Since success requires consistency, habits automate success.

How do you create consistency?

Ask yourself this question:

“What are the five most productive things I can do today to help me realize my dreams and the goals behind my dreams?”

Write down those five daily productivity tasks. You can, if you like, include them on your daily to-do list or schedule them as if they were appointments, on Outlook or on your phone.

No matter what happens during the day, make it your #1 priority to do those five things.

To turn these five productivity tasks into habits, you must engage in them for 90 days.

Why 90 days?

It’s all about how the brain creates habits. It takes time to create habits because the brain must build the neural infrastructure that makes habits possible. Like building a house, the brain marshals its resources to construct a habit.

Here’s how habits are created inside the brain:

Step #1 – New Neural Synapse is Born

During the first 30 days of repeating an action or thought, specific neurons form a sort of alliance with each other and begin sending regular, repeated chemical signals to each other. This frequency creates what is known as a synapse.

Step #2 – Basal Ganglia Takes Notice

After another 30 days, the basal ganglia, the command and control center for habits, becomes aware of this newly formed synapse and out of curiosity, grows a tendril which it sends it into the newly formed synapse to find out what’s going on. Using this tendril, the basal ganglia will continuously monitor the newly formed synapse in order to determine if this is something that should become a habit. What cements the basal ganglia’s decision to transform this synapse into a habit, is the frequency with which the neurons communicate with each other.

Step #3 – Basal Ganglia Marks Synapse as a Habit

After another 30 days, the basal ganglia’s tendril will determine that the synapse is communicating frequently enough to warrant transformation into a habit. The basal ganglia then instructs the tendril to grow branches, much like tree branches, into the synapse area, physically connecting those branches to the various neurons that make up the synapse. The moment the tendril branches touch those neurons, the physical infrastructure to form a habit is in place and those neurons and that synapse will be forever marked a habit.

Once your Daily 5 Productivity Tasks become transformed into habits, you will engage in them without effort. They will become automatic.

This Daily 5 Habit Creation Strategy will create the consistency you need to help move you forward, little by little every day, towards accomplishing your goals and, ultimately your dreams.

“Experience is always the hardest teacher because the test is given first and the lesson is given afterwards.” John Maxwell

Making mistakes helps us learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Mistakes are like scar tissue on the brain. We rarely forget the mistakes which cost us a great deal of time, money or damage one of our long-standing relationships.

Instead of ruminating about what we do that is wrong, however, we should instead take a page out of the book of the most successful entrepreneurs from my Rich Habits research – the Self-Made Dreamers.

There were 119 Self-Made Dreamers in my Rich Habits Study. These were individuals who devoted their lives to a dream. Sometimes, however, that dream was a nightmare. Especially in the beginning.

The early part of every Dreamer’s journey is riddled with mistake after mistake. The real fear is the fear of failure – too many mistakes and you run out of money, which means you run out of time.

So, the Dreamers in my study took their mistakes very seriously. They went to great lengths to figure out what they did wrong. Through this arduous mistake analysis, they gained knowledge from their mistakes. With this new knowledge, they went back at it.

Eventually, they got it right, meaning they figured out which actions produced the results they desired. Then they did something that cemented their ultimate success – they documented exactly what worked and what didn’t work.

This is called a Process. And, as I found in my study, successful entrepreneurs become successful entrepreneurs because their studious analysis of their mistakes give rise to processes that became integrated into the very heart of their business.

Every time a new workable process is discovered, these Self-Made Dreamers meticulously document every detail of it. And then, everyone who works with them, is then required to follow each new process.

These tried and true processes become organization-wide habits.

The self-made millionaire-Dreamers in my study continued this experimentation-driven, process-finding approach until they had a wealth of proven processes that solidified their business model and, eventually made them multi-millionaires. The average Self-Made Dreamer in my study accumulated $7.4 million over 12 years, following this formula for success.

Successful entrepreneurs don’t hate their mistakes. They love their mistakes. After all, if it wasn’t for those mistakes, they’d never stumble upon the processes that help them transform their dream into reality.

So, if you’re an entrepreneur, love your mistakes. Mistakes are what dreams are made of.

Hardwired by evolution into every human is the desire to be part of a herd.

In the early days of humanity, being part of a herd = survival. With a herd, there was always someone within the herd on guard for predators or danger and also herd members who identified opportunities that could be beneficial to the herd.

In short, herding enabled humanity to flourish into the billions.

As a result of the benefits of herding, individuals therefore seek out herds.

A typical individual is often a member of multiple herds. There’s the family herd, the neighborhood herd, the work herd, the school herd, the people we party with herd, political herds, etc.

As I’ve mentioned often in my writing, speaking, podcasts and media interviews, habits spread like a virus throughout our social networks. A herd is a social network. Therefore, we forge habits that are common among our diverse herds.

So, if you want to forge habits that help improve your life, your health, your finances or your ability to succeed, you must find a herd of people who have the habits you desire. Herding is one of the most effective paths to habit change.

And herds are everywhere.

The boards of local community non-profits are often comprised of the most successful people in the community. These successful people will expose you to habits that will help you become successful.

In your local gym, you will find individuals with good health habits. These health-minded individuals will infect you with their healthy habits.

The Optimist Club is a non-profit group whose members seek to associate with other upbeat, positive individuals focused on running or funding sports programs for children within their community. If you want to forge the habit of a positive mental outlook, join a local Optimist Club.

Toastmasters International is a speaker club. Members of Toastmasters seek to develop or improve their speaker skills. If you want to forge good speaker habits, join a local Toastmasters.

Find your herd and the habits will follow.

If you’re pursuing success, there are many things that are outside your control. These unexpected consequences of pursuing success show up in the form of obstacles, pitfalls, incorrect assumptions, unexpected delays, higher expenses, recessions or other economic downturns, people who don’t deliver, etc.

But there is one thing that is completely within your control and if you convert that one thing into a habit, it will give you a measure of control over your life and an edge over your competition.

What if I told you that that singular 22 minute a day habit could:

• Extend your life
• Improve memory
• Increase your IQ
• Reduce disease
• Improve mental health
• Improve brain health and
• Reduce stress

With all of those benefits, would you say that it was a habit worth having?

The answer is obviously yes.

A recent study by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that 150 minutes a week of aerobic exercise, just under 22 minutes a day, produced those benefits listed above.

A study by the University of British Columbia also found that daily aerobic exercise boosts the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning.

Other studies have linked daily aerobic exercise to reduced stress, decreasing the production of cordial (stress hormone) and, thus, the risk factors associated with cancer, Type II Diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Is 22 minutes a day too much to ask for a better brain and a longer, healthier, happier life?

It’s your life. Take control of what you can control.

Wealth comes in many shapes and sizes. In my Rich Habits research, I discovered that there were essentially three paths individuals took in order to intentionally become rich:

1. Save & Invest
2. Become a Virtuoso
3. Pursue a Dream

Save & Invest
Less than 22% of the rich people in my Rich Habits study fell into this category. The Savers/Investors in my study took an average of thirty-two years to accumulate an average of $3.4 million. They had zero debt and the passive income generated by their wealth was enough to meet or exceed their standard of living.

Under this strategy, you would need to save a minimum of 10% of your income and invest those savings prudently.

In order to save, however, you must first figure out a way to live below your means. The figuring out part is actually pretty easy – you reduce your standard of living so the costs to live are 90% of your income.

This is easy when you are 22 years of age and single. It’s a much harder thing to do, however, if you are in you mid-40’s and have three kids to support. As any parent with kids knows, kids cost money. And that need for money, often comes out of the blue and only grows over time – think collge.

What makes this path so purposeful is that it is within the reach of just about everyone. Unlike the two other paths (Becoming a Virtuoso or Pursuing a Dream), it does not require any special skills, innate talents, excessive risk or some outrageous work ethic. The only requirements are saving at least 10% of your income and prudently investing those savings. In short, it requires discipline.

Become a Virtuoso
Approximately 27% of the rich people in my study were Virtuosos in their career, industry or profession. They were among the best at what they did. These individuals either worked for large, publicly-held corporations, in which a significant portion of their compensation was stock-based compensation or they ran small businesses that were highly profitable. It took the average Virtuoso in my Rich Habits study about 20 years to accumulate an average of $4 million.

A Virtuoso is someone who has unique, advanced skills and/or knowledge. Society will pay a premium to Virtuosos because they perceive the product or service Virtuosos provide to be superior, adding more value to their lives.

So, how do you become a Virtuoso?

Virtuosos do the following things:

• Knowledge-based Virtuosos constantly maintain or acquire knowledge. They do this primarily by reading but also employ other means to acquire knowledge (listening to audiobooks/podcasts, watching videos to learn something, seeking feedback, etc).
• Skill-based Virtuosos engage in deliberate and analytical practice on a daily basis. Deliberate practice requires that you practice several hours a day to improve and perfect a skill. Analytical practice requires that you dissect and analyze every component of the actions involved in a particular skill. Analytical practice typically requires third party feedback, such as from a coach or mentor.
• Virtuosos communicate what they know either by writing articles, books or blogs or by standing in front of people and sharing their knowledge as a speaker. This communication forces them to better understand what they know.

Pursue a Dream
Approximately 51% of the rich people in my study were individuals who pursued some big dream and were able to turn that dream into a reality. Their dream eventually provided them with an enormous amount of income, profit or gain. Dreamers, in my study, accumulated the most wealth in the shortest period of time – an average of $7.4 million over and average of 12 years

Pursuing a dream was the hardest path to riches, according to my data. The beginning part in the pursuit of any dream requires an enormous investment in time, meaning you have to put in long hours. It was also the path that required the most risk. This risk was in both time and money. In the pursuit of a dream there is no guarantee that the time and money invested will pay any dividends down the road.

The point in all this is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. If you’re risk averse, it does not disqualify you from becoming rich. If you have no dream or you’re not interested in saving your way to wealth, become a virtuoso in what you do for a living. If you are not a saver or a virtuoso, pursue some dream that makes your heart sing.

If you want to be rich, the only important thing is to pick one path and stick with it for many years. The one common denominator all paths towards wealth share, is time. It takes many years to become rich.

In my book, Change Your Habits Change Your Life, I introduced my readers to one of the tools successful entrepreneurs in my Rich Habits Study used that helped transform them from ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires. This tool is something called Dream-Setting.

Dream-Setting is a process in which you:

1. Define your ideal, future life, via a script of 1,000 words or more. In this script, you go out into the future five or more years and paint a picture with words of every facet of your ideal, future life. The home you own, the neighborhood you live in, the income you earn, the money you accumulate, the car you drive, the amazing people who are your closest friends, the places in the world you travel to, etc.
2. Bullet point each dream within your script.
3. Build goals around each dream.
4. Pursue each goal until it is achieved.

As you realize each dream, you climb your individual Dream Ladder. When you reach the top of your ladder, only then are you living the life of your dreams.

Clearly, the hardest part of this Dream-Setting process is pursuing and achieving the goals behind your dream, or the Goal Pursuit & Achievement Process (step #4), imbedded within this Dream-Setting Process.

Step #4’s Goal Pursuit & Achievement Process is the hardest part because it requires that you:

1. Develop the knowledge and skills which enable you to pursue each goal and
2. Take action on each goal.

Each of these two Goal Pursuit & Achievement Processes, requires effort. Effort = Time. Somehow, you must find the time to pursue and achieve the goals behind your dreams.

What makes devoting time to your goals so hard, is that many who are pursuing their dreams and the goals behind their dreams, have jobs which limit how much time they have to engage in this Goal Pursuit and Achievement Process.

So, what do you do?

You must create a daily routine in which you block off time, every day, to dedicate to this Goal Pursuit & Achievement Process.

This routine can be as little as one hour a day. What makes this routine so effective, is when you habitualize it, meaning, when you transform it into a daily habit. You need to create a daily habitual routine in which you, day after day, go at each one of your goals.

Your daily routine = the scheduling system that transforms each of your dreams, and the goals behind your dreams, into reality.

This is why I harp so much on habits. Daily habits, built around your goals, make success possible.

Your daily routine is nothing more than a series of daily habits you engage in every day that enable you to achieve each one of your goals and ultimately, each one of your dreams.

Let me give you a real-life example.

When I began my Rich Habits Study in early 2004, I had just taken over as CEO of my company. I had responsibility for eight employees and close to one thousand clients. This new job required an enormous commitment of my time, meaning long hours. I also had three young children and a spouse I desperately wanted to spend time with.

So, I found the only time available – 4:30 am – 6am on workdays and 4:30am – 8am on weekends. For nearly four years, my daily routine was waking up at 4:30am and devoting time to my Rich Habits Study. Because I only had that limited time, the study took four years. But, after four years, it was done.

Since then, I continued to employ this daily morning routine to help me write five books over a seven year period. Like so many of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, a simple daily routine helped transform me from a nobody into a world-wide bestselling author, in a relatively short period of time.

If you are pursuing a dream and time is your enemy, you must create a routine and then you must habitualize that routine – schedule it every day. This is what successful high achieving dreamers do. That is what the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study did. They created and followed a consistent schedule, or daily routine.

Consistency transforms dreams into reality. The tool to create consistency, is your daily routine.

In my book Rich Habits, I shared one of the many Rich Habits that related to the relationships we keep:

I Will Surround Myself With Positive, Upbeat, Success-Minded Individuals.

According to my Rich Habits Study, the basis of the research behind my book, 93% of the 177 self-made millionaires in my study said they intentionally surrounded themselves with success-minded people. Even more interesting, 90% of those 177 millionaires said they avoided associating with toxic people.

Toxic people are typically those with a negative outlook on life. They are pessimistic, negative types who possess bad habits, limiting beliefs, they gossip and create havoc with their relationships.

Jim Rohn has a famous quote related to this: “’You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

The point Rohn was making is that those who surround you, your inner circle, influence the circumstances of your life in ways you may not fully comprehend.

Everyone has an Inner Circle. Inside this circle are family members, friends, colleagues at work, and other significant others who you interact with frequently.

You Inner Circle is something that has evolved over time, meaning it was not something you intentionally created. As a result, individuals who have slipped into your Inner Circle may not necessarily share your dreams, goals, ambitions, desires, beliefs, habits, thinking, work ethic, etc.

In fact, some of those residing in your Inner Circle may actually be toxic, meaning they can negatively impact the pursuit of your dreams and goals. They can infect you with their negative beliefs, bad habits, poor work ethic, etc. They can de-motivate you.

In short, these toxic Inner Circle members can de-rail your pursuit of success. And, because they will drag you down and de-motivate you, these toxic Inner Circle members should never be privy to your dreams, goals or aspirations.

The only people who you should share your dreams, goals and aspirations with are individuals who are the opposite of toxic. Individuals who can actually help you in the pursuit of success.

For this very reason, it is critical for you to intentionally build another Inner Circle, or rather a Winner Circle.

You Winner Circle will be comprised of individuals who are upbeat, highly motivated, enthusiastic and possess a positive mental outlook. These are can-do types who will become your biggest cheerleaders.

Your Winner Circle members will encourage you in the pursuit of your dream. They will help keep you motivated about the goals behind your dream. They will have good habits which infect you, helping your dreams and goals become a reality. They will lift you up and keep you going.

Your Winner Circle are the only people with whom you will share your dreams, goals and aspirations.

Be careful who you share your dreams, goals and aspirations with. Be very selective. 

The pursuit of success isn’t easy. It is filled with obstacles, pitfalls and problems. It requires relentless persistence. Many who pursue success, unfortunately fail and I believe it is, in large part, due to the fact that they are surrounded by too many people telling them to quit; to give up the fight.

You therefore need to surround yourself with people, your Winner Circle, who will help you navigate those obstacles and pitfalls and who can also help you find solutions to problems. You need to surround yourself with people who encourage you to keep fighting on and to never, ever quit.

If you are pursuing success, build a Winner Circle and only share with them your dreams, goals and aspirations. Never share your dreams, goals and aspirations with anyone who might discourage you from that pursuit.

In November, 2017, DHM Research released the findings of a study on 1,000 American adults. In this study, one-third had created a script, or blueprint of their ideal, perfect, future life. Two-thirds, did not follow any script or blueprint.

What happened?

The one-third who scripted out their lives went on to thrive and succeed. The two-thirds who did not follow any script or blueprint, struggled in life financially and otherwise.

When you create a blueprint of your ideal, future life, you toggle on all sorts of neural mechanisms within the subconscious: the Reticular Activating System, the Insula and the Thalamus.

According to researcher Gerd Gigerenzer (Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious), the unconscious brain (limbic system and brain stem) is far superior to the conscious brain (cortex). It has the ability to take in important information from the external environment that is unseen by the conscious mind.

This unseen information is extracted from the environment via the five senses. The Reticular Activating System (RAS), Insula and Thalamus then process portions of this information and allow it to be received by the cortex.

The unseen information taken in by the RAS, Insula or Thalamus, is information that they deem important. Information is considered important when it is tied to some dream, the goals behind a dream or a life plan (blueprint).

All other information, information not tied to dreams, goals or some blueprint, or not critical to survival, remains unseen – intentionally blocked by the RAS, Insula and Thalamus from entering the conscious mind (the cortex).

This is why having a blueprint is so important. It activates powerful areas of the subconscious mind and allows the subconscious mind and conscious mind to work together, helping you create the life you desire – the life defined by you in your blueprint.