Archives for June 2019

How long does it take for the average rich person to become rich? Ten years, twenty years?

How about thirty-two years.

That’s how long it took the average self-made millionaire, according to my data.

It took 38 years for 52% of the self-made millionaires in my study to accumulate their wealth and 42 years for 21% of them to get there.

Only a handful, 4%, became wealthy in less than 27 years.

Let me share some of my data with you.

Seventy-six percent of the wealthy in my Rich Habits Study (http://richhabits.net/rich-habits-study-background-on-methodology/) were self-made millionaires. Thirty-one percent came from poor households and 45% came from middle-class households.

What’s compelling about the data I gathered, is the age in which these self-made millionaires actually rang and bell and struck it rich.

Here’s the breakdown:

• 1% (2 out of 233) became wealthy before the age of 40
• 3% (6 out of 233) became wealthy between age 40 and 55
• 16% (38 out of 233) became wealthy between age 46 and 50
• 28% (66 out of 233) became wealthy between age 51 and 55
• 31% (73 out of 233) became wealthy between age 56 and 60
• 21% (48 out of 233) became wealthy after the age of 60

The romanticized notion of getting rich quick always finds an eager audience. We are stimulated by stories about the young and the wealthy. The immediate success of youthful billionaires like Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brinbut, play to our get rich quick desires.

It turns out, however, that getting rich quickly is a very rare phenomenon.

It’s clear from my Rich Habits research data, that accumulating wealth takes a very long time. It just doesn’t happen overnight.

In fact, 80% of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study did not become wealthy until after age 50.

What’s even more of an eye opener is that 27% of my Rich Habits millionaires failed at least once in business.

The path to riches is a long, winding and upward climb. Those few who do make it, are disciplined, gritty, persistent and patient.

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!

In my Rich Habits study I learned that all self-made millionaires who pursued a dream (Entrepreneur class of millionaires) have 6 common success traits:

1. Passion
2. Persistence
3. Laser Focus
4. Patience
5. Hard Work Ethic and
6. Desire to Learn.

What’s even more interesting is that, according to these wealthy individuals, they never knew they possessed these traits until they became passionate about pursuing their dream.

Passion unleashes hidden or dormant success traits; traits you never knew you had.

When passion is activated, it toggles on all of the other success traits.

Inside each one of us are these dormant success traits. Passion is the key to bringing them to life.

Find your passion and you will unleash the dormant success traits that make success possible.

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!

Habits come in all shapes and sizes.

Some habits are more powerful than others and have more of an impact on your life than others. These types of habits are known as Keystone Habits. Keystone Habits have a ripple effect, triggering the formation of complimentary habits.

Some are stand-alone habits, or Ordinary Habits. These habits have very little impact on other areas of our lives.

Good habits create happiness, prosperity, success, sound health, strong relationships, increase your knowledge/IQ, create longevity or help promote an upbeat and positive mental outlook. Daily exercise, eating healthy, nutritious foods, reading to learn and volunteering with non-profits are examples.

There are also bad habits that create unhappiness, bankruptcy, contribute to failure, poor health, toxic relationships, ignorance, procrastination or make us negative and depressed. Watching too much TV, eating in excess, smoking, drinking in excess and not having control over your emotions are examples of bad habits.

Awareness and tracking of your daily habits is the key to changing them. Once you know what your habits are, you can change them. Adding new habits then becomes much easier and gives you a feeling of control over your life.

The circumstances of your life are dictated by your habits. Good habits, good life. Bad habits, bad life.

Never underestimate the awesome power of habits. The brain created them for a reason. They are a tool. Use this tool wisely. Your life circumstances will mirror your habits.

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!

A good night’s sleep supercharges your brain.

Neuroscientists have made some incredible breakthroughs in the past ten years. One thing they have been trying to connect the dots on is the relationship of sleep to brain function.

What they are discovering is fascinating.

Sleep accomplishes so many important things, that it is fast becoming clear sleep may be the most important thing you do with respect to your health and your success.

I’ve written previously about the importance of sleep vis-a-vis memory formation – the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex send signals back and forth to each other, thousands of times during the REM portion of sleep. Like a well choreographed dance, this process converts short-term memory to long-term memory.

Well, another incredible recent discovery is that sleep enables offline communication between the conscious mind (aka neocortex), which all but shuts down during sleep, and the subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem).

This is important because the subconscious mind is continuously taking in sensory data, behind the scenes. This massive subconscious information accumulation is completely invisible and inaccessible by the conscious mind.

Sleep, however, opens up the doorway between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind via the longitudinal fissure, part of the corpus callosum, which separates the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

When you experience intuition, that little voice inside your head, this is actually the conscious mind sharing with you, information it received from the subconscious mind while you were sleeping.

The limbic system and brain stem, aka the subconscious mind, has been around millions of years longer than the neocortex (conscious mind). Because of this, the subconscious mind is far more evolved and, thus, far more advanced and powerful than the conscious mind. Its ability to gather information from the environment, via the five senses, is far more comprehensive than anything the conscious mind is capable of gathering.

In short, the subconscious sees things that the conscious mind can’t see.

Any information the subconscious gathers, and deems important enough to share with the conscious via intuition, will therefore be information it considers critical to your health and your success.

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!

Rich or poor, there are four common spending mistakes that sap your wealth. The key to growing and maintaing your wealth is avoiding these spending mistakes.

Want Spending

Want spending is buying what you want, when you want it, without considering the consequences. Want spending is driven by envy, an emotion that is fueled by negative thinking.

The remedy to envy is gratitude. Gratitude is the gateway to a positive mental outlook, shifting your focus from what you want to what you have and from a scarcity mindset to an  abundance mindset.

Spontaneous Spending

Spontaneous spending is driven by four factors:

1. Emotions – When you feel very optimistic about the future, you could find yourself engaging in Spontaneous Spending. You assume the future will be brighter, that your income will be higher income, that your sales will increase, etc. When you allow emotional highs to influence your thinking, you can fall into the trap of Spontaneously Spending your income, eschewing it for savings. When you feel sad or depressed, spontaneous purchases can act like a temporary salve, lifting you from sadness temporarily. The remedy is to be constantly vigilant regarding your emotions. Be like Spock – control your emotions. This keeps your prefrontal cortex in control of your brain.
2. Decision Fatigue – Everyone has about 3 hours of Willpower Energy. Willpower Energy is greatest after a good night’s sleep. When willpower is high, your prefrontal cortex is in complete control of your brain. When willpower is low, you lose discipline over your spending. This is why supermarkets place products at the checkout lines. They know that you have depleted your Willpower Reserves, and that you are suffering from Decision Fatigue. Their hope is, in your weakened state, you’ll make a spontaneous purchase. The remedy is to shop immediately upon waking up from a night’s sleep, after taking a nap or after a light meal. These three things restore your willpower reserves.
3. Inner Circle – If those inside your inner circle suffer from poor spending habits, they will infect you with their habits. You will find yourself emulating their habits and, thus, their behaviors, thinking and emotions. The remedy is to change who is in your inner circle, from spenders to savers.
4. Impairment – Drugs and alcohol impair your thinking and lead to spending mistakes. Never spend money when you are impaired. The remedy is to wait until the effects of the drugs or alcohol fade, before making any spending decisions.

Lifestyle Creep

When you increase your spending to match your increased income, you are falling victim to Lifestyle Creep. Lifestyle Creep is typically incremental. You incrementally increase your spending, as your income rises, without realizing it. The remedy is to fix your savings rate. Example, saving 20% of your income, always. This acts as a buffer, preventing you from spending too much and keeping you on track with growing your wealth.

Supersizing Your Life

When Connor McGregor fought Mayweather in 2018, he received a $30 million guarantee. Upon receipt of his guaranteed money, he purchased a $17 million yacht. Because he didn’t have enough money left over from the guaranteed money to pay his income taxes, he had to  withdraw money from existing wealth to pay the tax man.

Supersizing Your Life is driven by a sudden significant increase in income or wealth. Example: large bonus, significant raise, inheritance, etc.

The remedy? Same house, same spouse, same car. Refuse to upgrade your life when your income or wealth rises significantly.

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’ve written often about the four different paths the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study followed in accumulating their wealth. Here’s a good overview of those four different paths:

4 Paths to Becoming a Self-Made Millionaire – http://richhabits.net/4-paths-becoming-self-made-millionaire/

One of the four path’s is the Saver-Investor Path.

What makes this path so unique is that it virtually guarantees financial independence without the need to climb the corporate ladder, develop mad skills or take courageous risks.

The only requirements in pursuing this Guaranteed Path to Wealth are two: Time, Consistent Saving and Consistent Investment.

Time

It took Guaranteed Millionaires about 32 years to become wealthy.

Consistent Saving

The savings component requires living below your means and consistently saving 20% or more of your net, take home pay.

Consistent Investment

The investing part requires consistently investing what you save and doing so prudently.

The consistent part means regularly putting your savings to work.

The prudent part requires that you do your homework for every investment and continuously monitor and manage those investments.

There are several vehicles in which the Guaranteed Millionaires in my study invested their savings:

• Retirement Plans – 401K Plans, 403b Plans, 457 Plans, IRAs, etc.
• Equities – Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, etc.
• Real Estate – Rentals, Triple Net Leases, REITs, etc.

The Guaranteed Millionaire Path is available to almost everyone. The key to pursuing this path is living below your means.

In order to live below your means you must create a standard of living where your living costs are 80% or less than your net, take home pay. This requires making sacrifices, working a second job (or side gig) or both.

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!

As many of you know, my habit research has taken me down the brain science rabbit hole. Habits, after all, are brain-driven.

In order to help me better understand the how and why of habits, I’ve studied nearly 20 books on brain physiology, NeuroScience, Neuroplasticity, Epigenetics as well as countless studies on these related subjects.

Every now and then I stumble across something in my daily study that stops me in my tracks. Long-term memory formation is one of those things.

During the day, the brain stores facts and other information it comes into contact with, via its five senses, in an area of the brain called the Hippocampus. Think of the Hippocampus as a temporary short-term memory dumping ground.

During sleep, the Hippocampus loops the information it acquired during the day back and forth to the Prefrontal Cortex. If the Prefrontal Cortex deems the information to be important, it will store that information somewhere in the brain for future retrieval. This is known as Long-Term Potentiation, or long-term memory.

If you do not access that new long-term memory on a regular basis, the neurons responsible for storing that memory, weaken. Eventually, the memory will fade away and the neurons will be repurposed for something else.

The Cerebellum, is a part of the brain that stores memories related to motor movement. The more frequent the motor movement, the stronger the neural synapse holding that memory will be inside the Cerebellum.

Every time you write down a fact or any new information, the Cerebellum is called into action. Like the Hippocampus, it will temporarily store that new information. If you repeatedly write down that same information, the neurons holding that information inside the Cerebellum grow stronger.

The act of writing down information also serves as notification to the Prefrontal Cortex that you desire to retain that information as part of your long-term memory.

So, the act of repeatedly writing down information you want to remember, actually forces both the Prefrontal Cortex AND the Cerebellum to separately store that information as long-term memory, essentially doubling your retention.

Pretty cool!

When you understand how to hack the brain, you boost your brain power. When you boost your brain power, you also boost your odds of success.

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!

“Courage is admired so much because it is lacking in so many.” Dr. Ben Carson

The courageous know that they will fail and make mistakes, yet they pursue their dreams and goals anyway. Failure and mistakes cost time and money and this results in setbacks and disappointment.

Most are unwilling to incur these costs and the emotional roller coaster ride that is part of pursuing a dream or big goal. So, we admire the courageous few who follow their dreams or pursue big goals because it requires taking risks most are unwilling to take.

But courage is not something endowed by a creator or embedded in your DNA.

Courage is a habit.

The 145 self-made millionaires in my study (82%) who pursued some dream did so because they made courage a daily habit.

The process of making courage a daily habit is really a simple one.

Tackle one fear at a time. Start with small ones. This helps you build confidence and empowers you to tackle bigger fears down the road. Eventually, overcoming fear will become a habit – courage will become a habit.

We only have one shot at life. Most fritter it away, too afraid to pursue big dreams and audacious goals, that make life worth living.

Don’t be afraid to pursue a big goal or life dream. The older you get, the more you will grow to regret not taking a chance on yourself. You deserve to have the life of your dreams. Don’t let fear hold you back.

Make courage a daily 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!

The pursuit of dreams, sets you free. That freedom comes from facing and overcoming adversity.

The pursuit of a dream forces you to grow in knowledge and skills. And as your knowledge and skills grow, so too does your confidence.

Limiting beliefs that previously held you back, fall to the wayside as you crash through one obstacle after another in pursuit of your dream and the goals behind your dream.

Fears, doubts and other long-held limiting beliefs all melt away and are replaced by new positive beliefs born from overcoming adversity.

Passion for your dream endows you with the resilience to overcome obstacles.

Somehow, you find the working capital to forge ahead.

Somehow, you gain the knowledge you need.

Somehow you develop the skills you need.

Somehow you forge relationships with others who will open doors for you.

Your dream is your WHY. Your WHY wakes you up every morning, inspiring and motivating you.

The HOW is really not important. It will eventually be revealed to you.

When you relentlessly pursue something big and meaningful, that you are fanatically passionate about, everything you need in order to succeed eventually manifests itself.

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!

Fear holds most people back.

It holds them back from taking risks.

It holds them back from stepping outside their comfort zone.

It holds them back from pursuing dreams and audacious goals.

It holds them back from forging new skills and building Rich Relationships.

Those who pursue a course that is very much off the beaten path; a course most would advise against because it has such a remote chance of success, have chosen to pursue greatness.

Greatness is an evolution. It is the byproduct of daily growth.

To the outside world, the pursuit of greatness is invisible until an individual pursuing success, succeeds.

Conquering your fears creates passion. Passion inspires you to take action and endows you with persistence. The persistent, eventually get lucky.

Those who never quit have made the choice to be great.

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!