Archive for category Start Thinking
Think Like a Millionaire
Posted by davev in Start Thinking, Take Action on August 18th, 2010
Attitude is Everything
The most important attitude for financial success is long-term thinking. Successful people think a long way into the future and they adjust their daily behaviors to assure they achieve their long-term goals. In a longitudinal study done at Harvard University in the 50s and 60s, they studied the reasons for upward socio-economic mobility. They were looking for factors that would predict whether or not an individual or family was going to move upward and be wealthier in the future than in the present.
They studied factors like education, intelligence, being born into the right family, or having the right connections. In every case, they found individuals who had been born with every blessing in life who did poorly. They also found individuals who had been born or come to this country with no advantages at all who had been extremely successful. What was the distinguishing factor?
They finally determined that there was only one key attitude that mattered. They called it “Time Perspective.” Time perspective refers to the amount of time that you take into consideration when planning your day to day activities and when making important decisions in your life.
Time Perspective
People with long-time perspective invariably move up economically in the course of their lifetimes. When you spend weeks, months and years developing your skills and ability and expanding your experience in order to be successful, you have long-time perspective. The average professional person has a time perspective of 10, 15 and 20 years.
Begin to see that everything that you are doing today is part of a long-time continuum, at the end of which you are going to be financially independent or financially unfortunate. People with short-time perspective think only about fun and pleasure in the short term. They have what economists call “The inability to delay gratification.” They have an irresistible tendency to spend every single penny they earn and everything that they can borrow.
When you develop long-time perspective, you develop the discipline to delay gratification and to save your money rather than spending it. The combination of long-time perspective and delayed gratification puts you onto the high road to financial independence.
Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do to develop the attitudes of financially successful people:
First, think long-term about your financial life. Decide exactly how much you want to be worth five years, ten years and twenty years from today. Write it down. Make a plan. Take action on your plan every single day.
Second, develop the ability to delay gratification. Instead of buying something on impulse, put off buying decisions for a day, a week or even a month. Decide in advance to “think it over” before you buy anything. This can change the way you spend money almost immediately.
Why Money Is Good
Posted by davev in Start Thinking, Take Action on August 10th, 2010
The way you think about money will determine how much of it you accumulate more than any other factor. Your attitude toward money affects your emotions and your motivations.
Do You Feel That You Have Enough?
In psychology, money is what is called a “deficiency need.” This means that it only motivates you when you feel deficient in it, when you don’t feel that you have enough. Above a certain level, when you feel that you have enough, it is no longer a motivator. Put another way, when you have enough money, you don’t think about it very much. But when you have too little, you think about it all the time.
Determine Your Attitude Toward Money
The effect money has on your emotional life depends on your attitude toward it. If you feel that you have too little, money can become an obsession for you. It can dominate your thinking, feelings and actions. Arguments over money are a major reason for marital breakdown. Problems with money are the primary reason for business failure, the ruination of friendships and psychosomatic illnesses of all kinds. It’s not uncommon for people to even kill themselves over money problems.
Practice the Reality Principle
The Reality Principle applies especially to matters of money. This principle states that, “You must deal with life as it is, not as you wish it were, or could be.” Most people live in a world of partial self-delusion, with regard to money. They wish, hope, and pray about their financial futures while at the same time, deep in their hearts, they know their dre ams will never mat erialize. In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, one of the characters says quite happily that he is quite capable of believing several impossible things before breakfast each day. In the same way, many people believe quite impossible things about money and then they wonder why they are having so many financial problems.
Overcome Deep Seated Beliefs
One of the most common obstacles to achieving financial independence is a deep-seated belief that somehow money is wrong and that people who have a lot of it are inherently evil. This belief is not based on any factual foundation. It goes back to early childhood conditioning when the growing child is often told this because of other people’s desire to rationalize away their own financial failures.
Money Is Good
The fact is that money is good. It takes money to buy homes, cars, clothes, food and most of the good things in life. Money has an energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well. Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others. At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to improve your attitude toward money:
First, be perfectly honest to yourself with regard to money and to the amount you want to acquire in life. Pretending that you don’t care about money when you really do will only make you unhappy.
Second, begin today to think about all the wonderful things that you could have in your life if you had more money. Then, begin to think of all the things that you could do to increase the amount you earn and the amount you keep.
The Causes of Money!
Posted by davev in Start Thinking, Take Action on July 30th, 2010
Never Worry About Money Again
You must aim to reach the point where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. The good news is that financial independence is easier to achieve today than it has ever been before. We live in the richest country at the richest time in all of human history. We are surrounded by more wealth and affluence than ever before. Your job is to get your fair share.
Financial Success Is Not An Accident
The Law of Cause and Effect applies to money as much as to any other subject. This law says that financial success is an effect. As such, it proceeds from certain, specific causes. When you identify these causes and implement them in your own life and activities, you will get the same effects that hundreds of thousands, and even millions of others have gotten. You can achieve whatever level of affluence you really want if you will just do what others have done before you to achieve the same results. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.
Your Beliefs Determine Your Success
There is perhaps no other area where universal laws are more in evidence than in the acquiring and keeping of money. In America today, there are several million men and women who have started with nothing, or deeply in debt, and achieved financial independence. Their attitudes and behaviors have been studied in great depth. We now know the keys to wealth creation better than ever before. And what we know is that your most cherished beliefs on the subject of money will be the primary determinants of how much you acquire and how much you keep over the course of your working lifetime.
Your Primary Aim in Life
Your primary aim in life should be the achievement of your own happiness. However, happiness is something that exists naturally in the absence of fears, doubts and negative emotions. One of the factors that most deprives you of happiness is worry about money. And, by the way, when we talk about money worries, we’re not referring to your having too much. The problem is virtually always that people feel that they have too little money and their lives are suffering as a result.
Build a Financial Fortress
Perhaps the greatest single fear, the one that causes you more distress and unhappiness than anything else, is the fear of failure. In the area of money, you experience this as the fear of poverty and the fear of loss. Since one of the deepest needs of human nature is security, any threat to your security, real or imaginary, can cause you tremendous stress.
You can only free yourself from the fears of poverty and failure by achieving a specific level of financial worth and then by building a fortress around it so that you are safe and impregnable. This achievement of financial independence is a key responsibility of adult life. No one else will do it for you.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to implement the Law of Cause and Effect in your financial life:
First, begin today to implement the causes of financial success in our society. This requires that you spend less, save more, invest carefully and strive toward financial independence.
Second, study other people who are financially successful who have started from little or nothing. Find out what they did to become financially independent and discipline yourself to do the same things.
Eating the Elephant
Posted by davev in Start Thinking, Take Action on December 7th, 2009
By Brian Tracy
You have heard the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is, “one bite at a time.” This metaphor applies to achieving any big goal, as well. How do you achieve a huge goal? You accomplish it one step, one task, one measure at a time.
Identify Your Most Valuable Task
Ask your boss, “What one thing do I do that is more valuable than anything else?” Whatever his or her answer, look for ways to perform more and more of that task and to get better and better at doing it. It is absolutely amazing how much you can accomplish if you break your tasks down into bite-sized pieces, set deadlines, and then do one piece at a time, every single day.
Continuous and Never Ending Improvement
If you want to increase your hourly rate and your income, look for ways to get a little bit better at the most important tasks you do, every single day. Read one hour per day in your field. Listen to audio programs on your way to and from work. Take additional courses whenever you can. These activities will propel your entire career onto the fast track. When you invest an extra one or two hours per day in self-improvement, the cumulative effect on your greater ability to get results can be extraordinary.
Save Your Pennies and the Dollars Will Save Themselves
If you want to become wealthy, begin to question every single expense. Set a goal to save $3, $5, or $10 per day. Put this money away in a savings account and never touch it. As it grows, invest it carefully in well-chosen mutual funds or index funds. Make daily, weekly, and monthly saving and investment into a habit, and keep it up for the rest of your working life.
Become a Learned Person
If you read fifteen minutes each evening, rather than watching television, you will complete about fifteen books per year. If you read the classics of English literature for fifteen minutes each day, in seven years you will have read one hundred of the greatest books ever written. You will be one of the best-educated and most erudite people of your generation. And you can achieve this just by reading fifteen minutes each evening before you go to bed.
Increase Your Income
If you are in sales and you want to increase your income, keep careful track of how many calls, how many presentations, how many proposals, and how many sales you are making each day, each week, and each month. Then set a goal to increase your number of calls, presentations, and proposals per day. Set a goal to increase your number of sales each week and each month. Every day, measure yourself against your own standards.
If You Measure It, You Can Manage It
In each area of your life, analyze your activities carefully and select a specific number that, more than anything else, determines your level of success in that area. Then focus all of your attention, all day long, on that specific number. The very act of focused attention will cause you to perform better in that area, both consciously and unconsciously.
Action Exercise
Set a minimum, specific amount for daily, weekly, monthly saving and investment, discipline yourself to put away those amounts.
Take Those Rocks Out of Your Head!
Posted by davev in Start Thinking on December 2nd, 2009
Your thoughts can no more tell you what is true about your possibilities
than can a set of stream-side boulders know the nature of the waters
that rush by them.
The Secret of Knowing Without Thinking
Imagine for a moment what your life might be like if you never again were to pick up a complaining thought or feeling. Think of how your days would flow without carrying the additional weight of those inner voices always telling you, “I’m too tired,” or “This is too much for me!” The weight of the world would be replaced by a new sense of freedom. Fresh, new energies would flow.
If this is the kind of inwardly carefree life you really want, then look closely into these next two ideas that together tell one story of freedom: leaving troubled thoughts right where you find them is the same as not picking up what troubles you. And if you can leave just one of these weary thoughts behind you, then you can leave two, and three, and four, and fifty!
Most people tend to worry that if they don’t worry, something bad will happen to them. But what they don’t see is that these worried thoughts they’ve picked up by mistake are the very storm they fear will come!
You may wonder, “But what happens if I make a mistake? How can you tell which thoughts and feelings are the right ones to leave where you find them, and which ones do you pick up? What if I choose wrong?” You needn’t worry about such questions. Here’s why.
There’s a way to know, without ever having to think about it, exactly which of your own thoughts and feelings are your friends, and which are foes — a totally thought-free way to understand which of your thoughts are practical and necessary for everyday life, and which are stealing your life with unsuspected self-compromise. It’s true. You possess unsuspected powers of perception just waiting to be awakened. The following technique will help you get started.
Stop reading this for a minute and allow your eyes to fall on something familiar in the space where you are. Notice how your mind immediately gives that object a name. Having done this part of the exercise, keep your attention on whatever you’ve selected, and then continue to watch how more thoughts come into your mind about what you’re seeing.
Now, while you’re witnessing both that object and your growing stream of associative thoughts and feelings about it, just drop these thoughts and feelings.
You can still see the object, and you still know what it is — but now you are knowing without thinking. This is your introduction to an unconditioned relationship with life.
In this form of higher attention, of knowing without thinking, you can see that the meaning of the object before you has not changed. The difference is that now its meaning speaks directly, silently to you — instead of you listening to your thoughts tell you about its meaning.
When it comes to seeing a chair or a pencil, this new kind of thought-free state may not seem too profound. But this practice can, and should, be enlarged to encompass your whole life.
The benefits behind the ability to understand something, or someone, without having to go into thought, cannot be over estimated. You may not be able to think your way out of a nagging problem, but you can see your way clear of it. This special kind of inner seeing is safety. Waking up to yourself is the same as letting go of all those self-defeating thoughts and feelings that have been telling you how to win.
