Archives for April 2019

Is it bad to want to be rich?

Let me ask that question a different way.

Is it bad to want to be successful at your job or in your business?

If your knee jerk reaction is to say, “yes, it’s wrong to want to be rich,” what you’re really saying is it’s wrong to want to succeed in life.

You see, wealth is just a byproduct of success. It’s one of the perks of being successful.

So, if you profess to hate the rich, your subconscious assumes you hate success, since wealth comes from success.

When I asked the millionaires in my Rich Habits Study if they always wanted to be rich, 53% of the self-made millionaires said yes.

The desire to be rich was an important mindset for the majority of self-made millionaires. It drove them to grow, to learn, to take calculated risks, to forge good habits and eliminate bad habits. It forced them to dream, to reach and to step outside their comfort zone.

The desire to become rich is not a bad thing. It can motivate you to do extraordinary things you would not otherwise attempt to do.

Conversely, a disdain for money is almost certainly a financial death sentence.

A study conducted by Kansas State University found that those who had positive feelings about money were more likely to attain wealth and those who had negative feelings about money were more likely to become poor.

According to the study, most of our beliefs about money can be traced back to how we were raised. Parents, the study said, were the source of many of our beliefs about money.

Parents with positive beliefs about money, raised children who would one day become rich.

Parents with negative beliefs about money, raised children who would one day become poor.

While most wealthy people don’t necessarily worship money, they certainly admire it a great deal.

According to my Rich Habits Study, the vast majority of the wealthy believed that wealth was good. They saw it as a cure to the many ills in life.

According to my data, being rich eliminated 67% of your problems in life. That’s 67% fewer things to worry and get stressed out about.

Worry and stress, according to numerous health studies, depresses your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to cancer, heart disease and many other diseases.

Therefore, becoming rich means less worry and stress which, in turn, reduces the incidence of of cancer, heart disease and many other health issues.

Despite what you may have learned as a child, the desire to become rich is not a bad thing. It’s just another false myth, or limiting belief, that will absolutely hold you back in life.

Seek out wealth. Seek out success. Seek out prosperity.

Wealth isn’t a zero sum game. Your becoming rich does not require that another person become poor. There is an abundance of money out there.

The thing that will most definitely limit your access to that money, however, is the negative, limiting belief that wealth is bad.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Fifty-four percent of the millionaires in my Rich Habits study said that optimism was a critical factor in their success.

Since optimism seemed to be so widespread among the rich in my study, understanding optimism became a sort of side-hobby of mine.

I sought out studies on optimism in an effort to better understand this positive emotion. What I learned was that optimism has many benefits, besides wealth creation.

Optimists Live Longer

Telomeres are the caps at the end of each chromosome. Numerous studies have found a direct correlation between the length of Telomeres and life expectancy. The longer your Telomere, the longer you will live.

Becca Levy is a Professor of Epidemiology/Psychology at the Yale School of Public Health. She is also the lead author of a prominent study on Telomeres. Levy found that those who were more upbeat and positive had longer Telomeres and better health.

Optimists Are More Successful

Martin Seligman was a Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1980’s, he created a Style Questionnaire that MetLife’s new salesmen were all required to complete. The responses to the Questionnaire helped Seligman classify each salesman as skewing more towards optimism or pessimism.

After two years of selling, Seligman compared the success of each salesman to the answers on the Questionnaires. What he found was eye-opening – the MetLife salesmen who skewed towards optimism outsold the pessimists by 20% in year one and 50% in year two.

Optimism Increases Your Concentration & Memory

In 1998 and 2001, B.L. Frederickson conducted two studies, measuring cognitive ability and risk tolerance. What he found was that those who were more optimistic had a greater degree of risk tolerance and, this increased positivity dramatically boosted their ability to focus and concentrate – two very important traits of success.

An increased ability to focus is critical to long-term potentiation – creating long-term memory.

Optimism is Contagious

In a Farmington Heart Study, in which twenty years of data was analyzed, James Fowler, lead study author, found that emotions, such as optimism, spread throughout your social networks – they infect everyone within your inner circle, including your children.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Good timing, right place at right time, knowing the right people, things dropping in your lap, opportunity of a lifetime.

Luck is fundamental to success. And to a large extent, not entirely within your control.

The fact is, in many cases there is no behind the scenes, great design responsible for the success of self-made millionaires.

But, what is a common thread of all self-made millionaires, something completely within your control, is taking action, taking a chance – seeing an opportunity and going for it.

Opportunities can come and go. If you do not take action on them, they fade away. Other different opportunities may manifest themselves down the road, but really, there is no second bite at the apple.

The truth is, success depends on jumping on an opportunity when it presents itself.

Sometimes the path chooses you.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

I am your constant companion.

I am your most valuable asset or greatest liability.

I will pull you up to the peak of success or drag you down to pits of failure.

I will do your bidding and be under your control.

Half of the things you do every day, I am responsible for – I do them quickly, without thought or effort.

I can be managed – but only if I am not ignored.

Show me exactly how you want something done and, after a little practice, I will do it automatically the same way, every time.

I am the servant of all great successes and, alas, of all great failures.

Those who are great, I have made great.

Those who are failures, I have made failures.

I am not a machine, though I work with the precision of a machine, plus the intelligence of a person.

You may use me to create wealth, or use me to create poverty – it makes no difference to me.

Pay attention to me so you can control me, and I will place the world at your feet.

Ignore me and I will destroy you.

Who am I? I am Habit.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

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

When you engage in daily exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, you increase blood flow throughout the body, including the brain. The more you exercise, the greater the blood flow.

This means more nutrients and more waste removal, improving the health and performance of every cell in your body, including brain cells.

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

When you are pursuing success, you must have a good memory in order to avoid making costly mistakes – mistakes cost you time and money, both precious commodities in the early stages of any venture.

Exercise also stimulates the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDFN).

BDFN is often referred to as miracle grow for brain cells. It helps maintain healthy brain cells and also increases the girth of the Myelin Sheath, the insulation surrounding the axons of every brain cell.

When your Myelin Sheath is robust, this increases both your ability to absorb new information and your ability to think quickly on your feet, two very critical factors necessary in the pursuit of success.

The last point I’d like to make is this – because aerobic activity reduces stress, improves the health of all cells in the body, keeps weight off and strengthens the heart muscle, all of this results in an increased life expectancy.

So, aerobic exercise not only helps you succeed, it adds more years to your life, giving you many more years in which to enjoy the success you worked so hard to create!

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

The self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study used various strategies to increase retention of facts and figures they deemed critical to their goals and dreams.

I’ve tried several of those strategies, but the one I found to be the easiest and best at improving my memory was one that Abraham Lincoln used.

Abraham Lincoln was considered one of the most electric speakers of his day and many of his speeches have gone down in history as among the best of any president.

Lincoln, wrote almost all of his own speeches even as president, an incredible accomplishment considering he was embroiled in a Civil War that occupied most of his waking hours. One of the reasons Lincoln was such a prolific speaker has to do with a habit he formed long before he became president. [Read more…]

Successful, wealthy people visualize future successes, who they want to be and what they want to do and have. They focus on achieving their goals and realizing their life dreams.

Their visualizations are always positive, upbeat and focused on changing their circumstances and creating a future, ideal life.

They seek solutions.

You could summarize the Rich Visualization as Forward-Looking.

Those who do not succeed in life and struggle financially always dwell on their past mistakes, past failures, relationships gone bad, money lost, etc.

They are filled with regret. They focus on their problems, rather than focusing on solutions to their problems.

Their visualizations are always negative and downbeat and anchored in the past.

You could summarize this Poor Visualization as Backward-Looking.

You become what you focus on.

If your focus is Forward-Looking, you take action on goals and dreams which transform your life in a positive way.

If your focus is Backward-Looking, you become stuck – unable to find solutions to your current problems.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

The self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study had habituated important social skills that helped them forge and grow relationships with those who matter – other sucess-minded people.

Having good social skills acts like a magnet, drawing the right kind of people to you – people who are influencers and who can open doors for you.

In my book, Rich Kids, I shared many of the social skills self-made millionaires learned from their non-rich parents; skills which eventually morphed int habits that helped them build relationships with individuals who became part of their core inner circle. Here’s a short summary, from Rich Kids, of some of the most important social skills:

1. Look everyone in the eye for no more than 5 seconds at a time, then divert your glance for another 5 seconds. Staring into others eyes too long, makes them feel uncomfortable. This diverting practice helps keep conversations relaxed and going.
2. Ask questions about the lives of others. The Universal Law of Self Interest is hardwired into every human being. People are constantly thinking about themselves. When you focus the conversation on the other person, they immediately begin to like you. Ask them questions about their birthday, their hobbies, their interests, the schools they attended, where they grew up, current family background (married? kids?), where they live, dreams or goals they are pursuing.
3. Properly introducing yourself to new people at social events, is critical to building new relationships. Smile and shake their hand while looking them in the eyes. Write down their name in a notebook you carry (writing improves memory retention by marshaling the powers of the cerebellum). In one sentence explain who you are and why you are at the event. Then immediately shift to asking questions about your new future friend.
4. Be polite – Yes, Please, Thank You, May I, etc.
5. Smile – A lot. Smiling relaxes those you are talking to. Authentic smiling makes you appear uber-friendly.
6. To Don’ts: Don’t interrupt others who are talking to you or others. Don’t look at your cell phone while others are talking to you. Don’t look around the room, while others are talking to you. Don’t curse or use inappropriate language.

Success is a process. At the heart of that process are good habits. Forging good social skill habits is important to building relationships.

And Rich Relationships are the currency of the wealthy.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

So, you want to be rich.

Well, you’re standing in a very long line.

But, you may be standing in the wrong line.

You see, there are four primary paths to becoming rich. But not every path is the right path for you.

Each of us is different, genetically. Each of us was raised in a different household. Each of us grew up in a different neighborhood. Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. Each of us has different interests. Some of us like numbers. Others words.

Everyone’s different.

And because everyone’s different, each path to creating wealth, is different for each person.

So, let’s explore the four different paths to riches:

PATH #1 – THE SAVER-INVESTOR PATH

What if I told you that there is a guaranteed path to becoming rich? There is a path to becoming a self-made millionaire that does not require any unique set of skills, does not require special knowledge and does not require taking courageous risks.

The Saver-Investor Path is one almost any individual can take. It has only two rules that you must follow:

1. Save 20% or more of your income by living off of 80% or less of your income and
2. Consistently and prudently invest your savings.

According to my Rich Habits Study, this chosen path took 32 years to accumulate an average of $3.3 million.

This path is not for everyone. It requires enormous financial discipline and a long-term commitment.

PATH #2 – BIG COMPANY PATH

Working for a big company and rising up the ladder into senior management is another path to riches. In most cases, the wealth these self-made millionaires accumulate comes from either stock compensation or a partnership share of profits.

This path is also not for everyone. You must devote yourself to one company for a long period of time. And there are risks. The biggest risk is you could be fired.

A secondary risk is profitability. If the company struggles financially, for whatever reason, your time investment in the company may not be rewarded, to the extent you expected.

PATH #3 – VIRTUOSO PATH

Virtuosos are individuals who are the best at what they do or possess knowledge which sets them apart from all of the competition.

Becoming a Virtuoso requires an enormous investment in time, and often money.

Skill-based Virtuosos devote themselves to many years of Deliberate Practice and Analytical Practice.

Analytical Practice often requires the services of a coach, mentor or expert who can provide immediate feedback. This feedback, in most cases, costs money.

Knowledge-based Virtuosos must spend many years in continuous study. Oftentimes, this requires formal education, such as advanced degrees (PhD, Medical Degrees, Law Degrees, etc.).

Again, this path is not for everyone. Not everyone has the ability to devote significant hours every day practicing their skill, or the financial resources to pursue advanced degrees.

PATH #4 – DREAMER PATH

The Dreamer Path requires the pursuit of a dream. This might be starting a business. It might involve becoming a successful author, musician, actor or artist. It might be the creation of an app, product or some unique service, which provides added value to a significant number of people.

According to my Rich Habits research, this chosen path it took approximately twelve years to succeed and become rich.

This path requires a high tolerance for risk, stress and uncertainty. Not everyone has the fortitude, being a Dreamer requires.

There are other secondary, improbable paths to accumulating wealth, such as marrying into money, inheriting money or winning the lottery. These are strategies, however, that depend more on random good luck than anything within your control.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Those who are mired in negativity, have negative expectations. When you expect bad things to happen, you increase the odds of negative things happening.

Conversely, those with a positive mental outlook, have positive expectations. Positive expectations increase the odds that good things will happen.

Why is this so?

We all have something called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS, in concert with the Insula and Thalamus, work behind the scenes searching for opportunities or triggers in the environment that will help you realize your expectations.

When you have negative expectations, the RAS, Insula and Thalamus seek out negative opportunities in your environment, alert you to their existence, and this shifts your focus to those negative triggers, cueing you to take action  – action that will help manifest, or bring to life, the negative expectations you seek.

When you have positive expectations, the RAS, Insula and Thalamus seek out positive opportunities in your environment, and stimulate you to take action on those opportunities – action that will help manifest the positive expectations you seek.

The law of attraction, therefore, is a physiological reality. Your thoughts are not actually attracting good or bad opportunities, but rather opening your eyes and prodding you to focus on them.

So, if bad things keep happening to you, don’t just chalk it up to random bad luck. It may be bad luck you are creating due to your negative expectations.

This is why it is critical to forge the Rich Habit of thinking good thoughts and expecting positive outcomes. Positive thoughts and positive expectations put your RAS, Insula and Thalamus to work for you and not against you.

When you set big goals or pursue a dream, this reprograms your RAS, Insula and Thalamus to go to work seeking out opportunities in your environment that will help you to achieve your goals and dreams.

In short, what you expect, you get. If you expect bad things, bad things will happen. If you expect good things, good things will happen.

If you allow yourself to think negative thoughts, those thoughts become seeds that will bear the fruit of negative consequences.

If you make a habit of thinking positive thoughts, those thoughts become seeds that will bear the fruit of positive consequences.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!