Archives for October 2018

Successful people forge habits which help automate success.

Those habits inch them closer and closer to success and because they are a slow, methodical process, success takes many years.

The source of habits comes from many places – parents, mentors, their team (habits spread like a virus throughout your social networks), books they read about other successful people, school of hard knocks, etc.

But a recurring theme among self-made millionaires is how they set themselves on the path towards habit change. These success habits, or Rich Habits, can be sourced to something called Power Decisions.

These are decisions or choices that, in effect, set you on the path to success. When you make a Power Decision, it is always a decision to take action on something you are passionate about:

• The Power Decision to pursue a dream.
• The Power Decision to partner with the right individual or individuals.
• The Power Decision to pursue some vocation.
• The Power Decision to forge specific skills that transform you into a Virtuoso.
• The Power Decision to start a side gig, while employed.
• The Power Decision to quit a full-time job and go into business for yourself.
• The Power Decision to change careers.
• The Power Decision to take on some major creative initiative (writing a book, creating an app, design something that could be monetized, like an online website, to blog about something that interests them, to become a speaker, coach, etc).

In the moment, Power Decisions do not necessarily appear to be life changing. But they almost always are. They spur you on to engage in activities that take you down rabbit holes; rabbit holes you then spend the rest of your life in.

Power Decisions are always the result of some passion that is unleashed and set free. That passion builds through action – action fuels even more passion.

Power Decisions force you to grow, to gain knowledge, to improve your skills and to build relationships with people who help you grow and who create Opportunity Luck by opening closed doors.

And that’s where habits come in. In order to gain knowledge, improve skills and build relationships with the right people, you must forge habits that make that growth possible on a daily basis.

Power Decisions, therefore, force habit change and help automate growth, carrying you inch by inch up the mountain of success, until you eventually become the person you need to be in order for success to visit you.

When you make a Power Decision, everything about your life changes. Power Decisions force habit change and those habits make success possible.

One of the hallmarks of very successful people is that they are:

• Adept at assessing personalities.
• Surround themselves with upbeat, positive, optimistic, outgoing, open-minded, can-do personality types and
• Avoid Toxic, negative, closed-minded personality types.

Researchers from Northwestern University recently re-defined the nature of personality types by sifting through data from more than 1.5 million respondents of the following personality surveys: John Johnson’s IPIP-NEO Questionaire, myPersonality Project respondents and the BBC Big Personality Test database.

According to the study, individuals fall into one of four personality categories:

1. Average – Somewhat high-strung and extroverted. These individuals display nervous, compulsive and obsessive traits while at the same time are very outgoing. Most people fall into this category.
2. Reserved – Not particularly outgoing, somewhat agreeable (get-along types), trustworthy and do not get nervous or anxious.
3. Role Models – Laid-back, mellow, outgoing, open-minded and dependable, trustworthy types.
4. Self-Centered – Very outgoing, however these individuals display personality characteristics which make them unreliable, disagreeable, closed-minded, confrontational and their lives are filled with drama.

According to my Rich Habits research, successful individuals would seek out individuals who possess both the Reserved and Role Model characteristics. They would also avoid individuals who fall into the Self-Centered personality profile.

You will only be as successful as the individuals you surround yourself with. It is therefore paramount to understand the various personality characteristics of others – you must become adept at assessing personalities and build a team with the personality traits that make success possible.

If you want to succeed in life, you must learn what to do and what not to do.

This learning is also known as personal growth. One of the hallmarks of the self-made millionaires in my study is that they forged daily habits which automated daily personal growth:

• Reading to Learn – 30 minutes or more every day.
• Deliberate Practice – Practicing certain skills every day until they create muscle memory.
• Analytical Practice – Practicing certain skills every day and having another expert with similar advanced skills evaluate you and provide feedback. Think coach or mentor.
• Novelty – Engaging in or experimenting with new activities in order to learn or develop new skills. The brain loves novelty and rewards this effort by boosting dopamine, one of the happiness neurochemicals produced by brain cells.
• Pursuing Dreams/Goals – The pursuit of a dream and the goals behind your dreams forces you outside your comfort zone. In order to realize your dreams/goals, you must take action. Oftentimes, especially in the beginning, that action leads to mistakes and failures. But those mistakes and failures force you to learn and grow.

Conversely, one of the hallmarks of poor people and unsuccessful people, is that they eschew personal growth for Do-Nothing Habits, like watching TV, wasting time on the Internet (think Facebook/Instagram/YouTube, etc.), partying, the pursuit of recreational activities, etc.

Learning what to do and what not to do takes time. But there is an Easy Way and a Hard Way:

1. The Easy Way – Find a success mentor and learn from their mistakes and failures. This means you avoid making mistakes and failing by following their sage advice and direction. Making mistakes and failure costs you valuable time and money. Mentors save you from wasting your time and money.
2. The Hard Way – Taking action and learning, through the school of hard knocks, what works and what doesn’t work. This is the hard way because it often costs you time and money to learn what not to do. It is also an emotional roller coaster ride. Negative emotions result when things go wrong and positive emotions result when things go right. The Hard Way requires an enormous amount of persistence and patience.

Either way is a path to success. If you are unable to find mentors, the Hard Way may be your only option.

But mentors are everywhere. They populate the boards and committees at local community non-profits. They can be found where your work, at local community colleges, at places of worship, in books, on the Internet, on blogs, in podcasts, in Ted Talk videos, etc.

A January 2008 study on 973 pairs of adult twins, many of whom were identical, found that 50% of happiness was genetic. The remaining 50% was dictated by your behaviors, environment, associations, finances and other factors.

In this study, the researchers established six components that were indicators of happiness:

#1 Self-Acceptance – Essentially, this is about liking who you are.

#2 Life Control – Having control over the direction of your life.

#3 Personal Growth – The daily pursuit of self-improvement and growth as a human being.

#4 Positive Relationships – Surrounding yourself with upbeat, optimistic, loving, happy people.

#5 Pursuit of Goals – Regularly creating and pursuing goals that are important to you.

#6 Autonomy/Independence – Being self-reliant and not dependent on others for maintaining your standard of living.

These six factors are influenced by your behaviors, actions, habits and the relationships you decide to surround yourself with.

Is it possible to increase each of these six factors?

The answer is yes. In my book, Change Your Habits Change Your Life, I devote a great deal of content to Happiness Habits – daily habits which boost these six factors. Here’s some of that content:

• Daily Exercise
• Daily Learning
• Rich Relationships – Eliminating or minimizing exposure to toxic people and forging relationships with upbeat, positive, enthusiastic individuals.
• Practiced Positivity – Read upbeat content, meditate, listen to inspirational music, watch inspirational videos meditate, looking for things to be grateful for, etc.
• Pursuing Dreams and the Goals Behind Your Dreams.
• Saving Money and Investing Those Savings Prudently – Saving 20% or more of your income and investing it prudently will eventually make you financially independent.

When you have Happiness Habits, you automate happiness. Make happiness a habit!

There’s a path that leads from the street to my front yard. I put it there many years ago, right before the college graduation party we were throwing for my middle child, Kirsten. I wanted a place for some of the party people to walk after parking their cars in our cul-de-sac. There are about twenty 12 x 12 paver stones. Really nice looking stones.

Well, I was sitting on my front stoop the other night. I looked at each one of those stones and thought how they very much seemed to me to represent the chapters in my life.

The first stone, working my way through college. The next stone for meeting my future wife. Another for marriage. The following stone, getting that big job at Arthur Andersen. Right after that was the stone that represented going to graduate school at night. Another for starting our family. There was a stone for our first main home. One for my relocation to Rhode Island. There was also the stone for the failed start-up that almost put me into bankruptcy and divorce.

There were three subsequent stones for each one of my kids graduating college. I am very proud of those stones.

Their were happy stones and sad stones.

The last stone on my path is the one I love the most. It’s the stone that represents the dream I decided to pursue so many years ago – to become a successful writer. What a beautiful stone!

We are all walking a path in life. Each step, a new chapter. Some chapters are good and some not so good.

But, the chapters we will remember most are the ones that represent the dreams we decide to pursue.

The pursuit of happiness is the one common denominator of all human beings. People will spend their entire lives in the pursuit of happiness.

But, if you don’t know the true path towards long-term happiness, you can get lost along the way and pursue false paths to happiness.

Recreational drugs, alcohol, sex, excessive recreation/entertainment, and other similar pursuits can offer a temporary boost in certain neurochemicals (dopamine and oxytocin) which create a short-lived euphoria often misinterpreted as happiness.

Those chemically-induced false happiness activities always return individuals to their geneticly-predetermined happiness baseline. That return to baseline happiness, that crash, that reversal of euphoria, drives many individuals to return to those activities which caused the artificial spike in happiness. Unless intentionally controlled, this pursuit of false happiness becomes a habit and a cycle of happiness-unhappiness that can lead to addiction.

There’s a better way. In my study of the rich and poor, I discovered that there are five activities that lead to true, long-term happiness:

1. Doing Something That You Love – This could be the pursuit of a dream, sports activities, a hobby, exercise, music, art, etc. When you engage in activities that make your heart sing, happiness follows.
2. Adding Value to the Lives of Others – When you engage in activities that improve the lives of others, that satisfaction, that happiness, sticks. Even better, when those activities can be monetized, you are able to build a career out of helping others and enjoy a lifetime of happiness.
3. Spending Time With Those You Love – Spending time with our closest relationships give us great satisfaction, or happiness. The more time we spend with our loved ones, the happier we are.
4. Happiness Events – Weekends with family/friends, spending time with family/friends at your vacation home, a cruise, a trip to Europe, a night out with loved ones – all of these things represent happiness activities. The more happiness activities you can fill your life with, the happier you will be.
5. Removing Worry From Your Life – Worry makes you unhappy. Removing worries, makes you feel happy. Example #1 – Financial Struggle: If your job does not generate enough income, you will struggle to pay your bills. That struggle creates unhappiness. So, you go to school at night and after several years get a degree or some certification which allows you to get a higher paying job, ending your financial struggles. That creates happiness. Example #2 Obesity – Your obesity has resulted in Type II Diabetes. So, you decide to exercise and watch what you eat. You lose weight and your blood sugar levels return to normal, ending your Diabetes and its associated health problems. That creates happiness.

You might notice a common theme in the above – activity. Always seek activities which create a sense of fulfillment and at the end of that activity you will find true happiness.

When was the last time you played the lottery?

If the answer is “this morning”, you might want to keep reading.

The media likes writing stories about lottery winners because the masses like reading about their stories. For those who consistently play the lottery, the stories offer a sort of validation.

But when you peel the onion, the fantasy about winning the lottery is really all about a mindset that embraces instant gratification, instant rewards and instant wealth, without enduring any of the hardship pursuing wealth actually requires.

If you look carefully at any of those lottery-winner stories, one thing you would notice is that hardly any of the winners are CEOs, senior executives, successful entrepreneurs, successful professionals or other successful types.

Why?

As I learned from my five-year study on the rich and the poor, successful people don’t play the lottery because they don’t have a lottery mindset.

What is the lottery mindset?

It is the idea that there is a shortcut to wealth; that it is possible to become instantly wealthy by virtue of random good luck.

The problem is, those who have the lottery mindset are not living in reality. The lottery mindset is a fantasy with odds that boggle the mind.

In the 25-year history of the Iowa Lottery, for example, only 110 people won $1 million or more. That equates to about 4 millionaire-lottery winners a year. In 2006, there were 50,529 millionaires in Iowa. If you do the math, only about .0079% of all Iowa millionaires are, therefore, lottery winners. Not a very promising path to wealth.

But this lottery mindset is not just about playing the lottery. It’s about embracing uneducated risk and speculating with your money.

People who frequent casinos, have a lottery mindset. The recent masses jumping on the bitcoin bandwagon, have a lottery mindset. People who invest in start-ups they know little to nothing about, have a lottery mindset.

The lottery mindset brainwashes you into believing that there is an easier path towards wealth. One in which you are not required to do the requisite heavy lifting, that success requires.

Those with a lottery mindset do not pursue their dreams. They do not set goals. They do not step outside their comfort zone, experimenting and learning new things. They do not engage in daily self-improvement as a whetstone in developing expert knowledge or skills.

The demographics of those who buy into this get rich quick lottery mindset are typically poor people who see the lottery as the only available means by which they can level the playing field and become rich. Winning the lottery is the result of random luck, of which the rich have no advantage over the poor.

The lottery mindset brainwashes you into believing that there is an easier path towards wealth. One in which you are not required to do the requisite heavy lifting, that success requires.

But according to my research, there is no easier path. Wealth is a byproduct of success and success is a byproduct of doing certain things every day that help move you closer and closer to success.

In my most famous books, Rich Habits and Change Your Habits Change Your Life, I share the habits many millionaires have in common. For those who haven’t read any of my books, here’s a quick overview of seven of those Rich Habits:

#1 Success Requires Goal-Driven Actions/Behaviors

Goals are the construction crew self-made millionaires use to build their financial empires. In my research, these self-made millionaires created goals around their dreams and then spent as many as twelve years pursuing those goals.

#2 Success Requires the Pursuit of Some Dream

One of the three paths to wealth that I uncovered in my research was the pursuit of a dream. In the context of wealth creation, dreams are ideas that you can monetize. Dreamers are typically entrepreneurs who are very passionate about their dreams and fanatically spend every available moment thinking and taking action on their dreams.

#3 Success Requires Sacrifice

Typically, this sacrifice involves the expenditure of time, especially in the early stages, which limits how much time you are able to spend with close family and friends.

#4 Success Requires Practice

In order to succeed you must become a Virtuoso at what you do. This means you must practice what you do every day. There are two types of practice: Deliberate Practice, which requires daily repetition and Analytical Practice, which requires third party feedback, as in a coach or mentor.

#5 Success Requires Relentless Persistence

One common refrain from all of the self-made millionaires in my study was that it would take death or some long-term disability to stop them from the pursuit of success. Their fanatical obsession in turning their dream into a reality imbibes them with the Rich Habit of persistence.

#6 Success Requires Daily Study

Reading to learn thirty minutes or more every day in order to gain critical career-centric knowledge was a common attribute among the self-made millionaires in my study.

#7 Success is Fueled by Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise increases the myelin sheath around the axons of brain cells, which helps boost your IQ. Aerobic exercise also increases the flow of oxygen into the brain, which helps clean and strengthen brain cells. Lastly, aerobic exercise produces greater neurogenesis – the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus portion of the brain. Due to this aerobic exercise Rich Habit, the self-made millionaires in my study had vastly superior cognitive abilities, which helped them solve problems, be creative and overcome obstacles.

There are no shortcuts in life to accumulating wealth. That’s the real secret to becoming rich, if there is one.

The lottery mindset is either a cop-out for those who are unwilling to do the heavy lifting success requires or a Hail Mary pass for those mired in poverty and feeling helpless.

You’re not helpless. Poverty can be overcome. I know. I interviewed 72 self-made millionaires who were raised in poverty and who overcame that poverty by forging habits that eventually led to success and wealth.

Happiness makes life worth living. In the absence of happiness, life is a zombie existence.

Every human being strives for happiness. This desire to be happy, directs our behavior.

For some, that behavior favors short-term happiness at the expense of long-term happiness (immediate gratification). For these individuals, they pursue activities that create immediate happiness. Unfortunately, short-term happiness is fleeting.

For others, they pursue activities that produce long-term happiness. The pursuit of long-term happiness, however, requires sacrifices most are unwilling to make (delayed gratification). For those individuals who are willing to make sacrifices today, happiness, when it eventually comes, lasts for many years, perhaps even a lifetime.

So, there is a war waging within each of us pitting the desire for immediate happiness today, against the sacrifice-dependent desire for long-term happiness tomorrow.

Those who have created a script of their ideal, future life use that vision to create and pursue goals that will help them realize the dreams that produce their ideal, future life.

The pursuit of goals, however, comes at a cost – sacrificing today’s time and money that could otherwise be used to create immediate happiness.

Having a clear vision of where you want to end up in life, gives you superpowers. Those with a clear vision of their future life, are able to marshall the willpower and internal resources to overpower the desire for short-term happiness as you pursue activities that will pay dividends down the road which produce long-term happiness.

It’s a choice each individual makes – short-term happiness (immediate gratification) vs. long-term happiness (delayed gratification).

Two of the three paths to wealth are:

1. Becoming a Virtuoso and
2. Pursuing a Dream

(The third path is the Saver/Investor path).
In both cases, the determinant of success hinges upon how much value you add to the lives of others.

Most people have a “what’s in it for me” attitude about doing business with others. And most people are not successful and thus, not wealthy.

Successful people have a “what’s in it for you” attitude. And that attitude is a game changer.

It shifts the focus from all about me to all about you, from selfishness to selflessness, from taking to giving.

Wealth is merely a byproduct of success and success is a byproduct of how much value you add to the lives of others.

But how do you know if you are adding value to the lives of others in such a way that it elevates you above your competition?

To answer that, you must answer the following questions:

• Does what you do improve the lives of others in some way?
• Does what you do exceed the value provided by your competition?
• Does what you do consistently exceed the expectations of those you serve?
• Are you able to charge your customers, clients, etc. a premium for that value in the form of higher prices, fees, etc.

If you were Apple, the answer to all of those questions would be YES.

Developing a niche is a great way to get a YES to each one of those questions. Niche’s require that you become a virtuoso.

Pursuing a dream is another way to get a YES, as well. Successful Dreamers are typically entrepreneurs who have a unique product or service that sets them apart from everyone else in their industry.

Pondering the direction of your life is a Rich Habit. It’s a Rich Habit because it creates awareness. Pondering requires that you ask yourself questions about your current life circumstances. Asking those life questions forces you to answer them:

• Are my current life circumstances what I expected at this point in my life?
• Am I making as much money as I expected?
• Why don’t I make more money? What’s holding me back?
• Do I have as much in savings/investments that I expected to have at this point in my life?
• Am I saving as much as I expected I would be saving at this point in my life?
• Am I healthy?
• Do I exercise as much as I should? If not, why not?
• Do I eat healthy most of the time?
• Do I have strong relationships with others?
• Am I investing in those relationships like I should?
• Do I love or at least like my job?
• Do I work with people I enjoy being around?
• Do I work hard enough?
• Is there something I really would rather do to earn money?
• Do I regularly set goals?
• Do I achieve my goals 100% of the time?
• Do I have bad habits? If so, what are they?
• What habits should I have that I don’t?
• Do I treat others right?
• Do I treat my family right?
• Am I happy most of the time?
• Am I angry too often?
• Am I grateful for what I have?
• Do I envy what others have?
• Do I spend too much money?
• Do I waste my money of unimportant things?
• Am I charitable with my time and money?
• What non-profit organizations should I devote some of my time to?
• How much money do I spend every month on housing, my car(s), entertainment, alcohol, drugs, gambling? Am I spending too much on those things?
• What do I spend my time on every day?
• How much of that time is wasted time?
• Do I waste too much time watching TV, Netfilx, YouTube, etc.?
• Do I waste too much time trolling the Internet?
• How many books have I read the past few years, other than for recreation?
• What am I doing to improve my life circumstances?
• Who do I want to be?
• What makes my heart sing?
• What do I want my obituary to say about me?

When you ponder, when you ask yourself life questions, the answers to those questions creates an itch that must be scratched. Life questions, irritates the subconscious, which then goes to work, behind the scenes, to seek solutions and correct the imbalance. Intuition, or that voice inside your head, soon follows, newly directing your behavior.

Unfortunately, most people won’t devote any time pondering and asking questions about their life because, deep down, they know they will not like the answers.

Ignorance is not bliss. When you ask, and you shall receive ……… wisdom.