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Tag: Master

Time: Your Friend or Your Foe?

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How long does it take to get to where you want to be?

The answer for most people is ‘Too long!’ In our culture of instant gratification, the likelihood that it can take years to become a millionaire is enough to keep most from ever trying.

The truth is few businesses make money in the first four years. In fact the average business takes two years to lose money, two more years to pay back the money it lost, and three more years to become profitable. In other words, it typically takes seven years for a business to succeed.

For a lot of people that’s way too long, but for most fields of study, work, or career, it takes about seven years to become a master. Seven years seems like a long time, and in some ways it is, but in seven years how much older will you be regardless?

One of the prime rules for success also happens to be one of the hardest to swallow. I choked on it for a while, maybe because it’s so painfully obvious and avoidable: that time is going to pass anyway. Seven years from now, seven years will have gone by. Three years from now three years will have gone by, so whatever you know you’re supposed to be doing anyway, get on with it!

Put your head down, pull out every stop, and pay any price you can to get into the top 10% in your field. Then you’ll remain one of the highest paid people in your field for the rest of your life.

But here’s another important point to remember: the pay-off is not when you get to your goal. If you think that’s the case, you are setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. You only get to a goal once, yes, then what? Then the next, and the next, and then your head is always looking ahead instead of where you’re at right now.

The pay-off is every step of along the way. Every step you take toward becoming better, you feel yourself improving. It raises your self esteem. It releases endorphins in your brain which make you happy. Every step you take toward the goal makes you happy and gives you energy. It’s people who are not moving in the direction of becoming better who are negative, unhappy, miserable complainers.

We constantly have to work on ourselves. Your life only gets better when you get better, and there’s no limit to how much better you can become. Conversely, it’s your weakest skill that is holding you back. Your weakest key skill in your field sets the height of your income.

Time is on your side, and it’s not. Time, in reality, doesn’t really care what you do or don’t do. It’s going to keep moving (or not “moving,” depending on how Zen you want to get here!) regardless of whether or not you get up and stop wasting it, or stop pushing things off, or stop making excuses. Time can be your friend or ally, but never your enemy. The real enemy is usually within.

What one skill—if you developed a mastery of it—would help you the most to increase your income? What would help you the most in terms of learning a skill within your career or business right now?

https://bit.ly/ClickAndBeFree

Nothing Has Meaning … Till You Say It Does

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We’ve all either seen, experienced or heard of someone who made the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. The consequences can vary anywhere from entertaining, to frustrating, even tragic. The everyday tragedy, though, is that so many people continue to assess a negative perception on life’s circumstances when they could just as easily do the opposite.

One of the most important spiritual laws of money, success and happiness is positive focus while also understanding that we live in a universe of duality—up/down; light/dark; black/white; right/left; in and out. You can’t have a back without there being a front. Yin cannot exist without Yang.

That duality is always going to be in everything, no matter what. You’re not going to get some good into your life without there being a downside, and vice versa. So what do we do? It’s our choice. If you see the negative side of things because that’s what you choose to look at, then all that exists for you at that time will be what?

You see the positive side, though, and what will exist for you? You and I know none of this is new, but how many people actually live this way? We get sucked into the mind Frick and we get into a habit of seeing things on the negative side, and we think that that’s what is. That’s the hilarious part. We think that what we see is reality. No! It’s your reality! You just made it your reality. Nothing has meaning until we give it meaning.

The sound is not loud, and it’s not quiet. It is vibrations going out. That’s it. You paint the picture. ‘It’s loud for me.’ For you; sure! You make it anything you want. It’s nothing until you make it something. You’re going to decide. You color things light, and then they’re light. You color them dark, they become dark. They aren’t anything. You make them something.

So what would you like to start coloring things? Light! Positive! What if it turns out to be a disaster? What do you do? You realize it’s not a disaster. It’s a nothing. It’s a neutral. You get to say, “I am going to color it that after this ‘disaster’ something good might happen.”

You’re the one in charge up here. Your thoughts aren’t anything. They’re just flickers of energy and they mean nothing until you let them mean something. You have to have empowering thoughts.

Now let’s get something straight … we know that it’s impossible to never have negative thoughts, right or right? Are we going to let that stuff live inside us? Of course we will. It’s going to happen, but the question is how long will you stay stuck in them?

What determines that? Your habits! That’s all it is. Change your habit by practicing positive focus. You practice and you move on.

Now we want to hear from you. Can you think of a situation where a pattern of negative focus cost you something? What was the specific lesson you took away from that? What practices did you implement to start cultivating a pattern of positive focus?

Opportunities Might Be Your Enemies

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There are so many sayings we say—most of the time without thinking about it—that make absolutely no sense. Yet we say them out of habit and routine, not realizing just how silly we sound.

For example: “Harv, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” Well, what the hell’s the point in having the cake then?

Or how about this one: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Well, isn’t that exactly what the Trojans should’ve done?

The point here is that success building requires a lot of deprogramming from so many common beliefs and assumptions we’ve come to take for granted as true, even though a lot of the time it’s the exact opposite. We learned last week that a viable way to jumpstart an enterprise is to buy your product by selling it first.

Let’s take a look at another Rule of Opposites: Put all your eggs in one basket.

Most people will tell you otherwise. Why? Because if you put all of your eggs in one basket and something happens—like dropping it—you’ll lose everything. But I have a solution for that; take bloody good care of that basket!

We already know that no one’s reaching the next level without taking risks, yes? But the way we’ve come to think about our eggs and baskets is fear-based; fear of losing.

This truth is already established—if you want to be rich, you’ve got to be great at something. And to be great at something, you’ve got to focus on that something. For goodness sakes that’s where you put all of your eggs!

Rich people are focused. Poor people scatter their energies. Everything is one thing. It’s hard enough to make it in one business let alone divvying it up into dozens of different places!

‘But Harv—I’m constantly coming across great opportunities!’ This brings me to another Rule of Opposites:

Opportunities can be obstacles!

Opportunities can be obstacles if they take your focus away from what’s in front of you right now. That takes your time because you entertain them, maybe do some research and find out a bit more, and there you go again.

If you’ve got something semi-decent growing, put the blinders on and go for it. Not one person ever got wealthy to begin with in more than one business at a time. One business. One basket.

So you’ll have to choose, but then the next question is, ‘How do I choose?’ Look, pick one. It doesn’t matter because it’s the habit that’s the problem. Pick one to focus on. Worse comes to worse, even if you do mediocre with it, you can always let that one go when it’s finally done and get something going that does work—eventually without you. Then you can diversify and add more.

Choose one and get freaking good at it. Got it? I’m not saying you can’t buy real estate on the side. I’m just saying watch out. Every minute you do the other one you are losing time and energy that could have gone into your one basket.

There’re a lot of opportunities within your business. Make sure you’re doing well with one thing. First get rich and then you have the opportunity to go into other things. Get rich first!

Now it’s your turn! Can you identify one new opportunity within your business right now?  Will you take action and explore it ASAP?  Share your thoughts below and let me know if putting “all your eggs in one basket” just might be a lucrative opportunity for you.

Go Hard or Go Home

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I’ve seen that mantra in several different contexts, in particular to athletics or anything with a kind of “edge” to it. It comes off a little severe, like something those guys who pound each other in cages on Pay per View would say. Train hard, push hard, work hard, fight hard. Otherwise, what’s the point?

In general, people recognize the truth in the phrase ‘Go Hard or Go Home.’ If you’re going to do something, either be the absolute best you can be or don’t do it at all. Well, not everything. You can enjoy the heck out of playing golf, but you don’t have to be a PGA player to get something out of playing. You do it strictly because you want to, no reasons needed.

Consider, though, the difference between something you do for fun versus something you’re doing for your life, like working toward financial freedom, or living more healthy. Being an average golfer is fine, but there’s no such thing as an average millionaire. You’re either a millionaire or you’re not, and quite frankly there aren’t as many millionaires as there are wanna-be millionaires.

In other words, you can’t just “okay” yourself to riches. You’re either going to master wealth, or you’re not.

That’s where the warrior mentality is critical for the mind of the millionaire. The warrior always chooses to be a master. A warrior has to! There is no other option. For a real warrior, mastery can make the difference between life and death. Not that being anything less than rich equals being dead, but the same kind of must-mentality is … a must!

Mastery isn’t as much a skill as it is a matter of discipline, desire, and commitment to taking your life to another level. Most people are not living anywhere near their potential because they’re playing in the minor leagues. Major leaguers, no matter what job or industry, are making lots of money because they’re not afraid of themselves, the work, the responsibility, making the necessary changes, of playing big, and they believe they must play big in order to win big.

Does it take more work to play in the majors than in the minors? Not necessarily. It takes more practice for sure, but sometimes all it takes are minor adjustments to your thinking and how you apply your skills in order to make big changes.

If you want to master anything, you’ll have to do at least some things differently. Your standards must change, your thinking needs to change from “This is okay” to “I can do much better,” and you’ll need to find reasons why there’s room to get bigger rather than reasons why not.

Can you be a master at everything? No, nor does anybody need to be. You need, instead, to prioritize, choose and focus on those things you really want for yourself. Whatever you choose, know that you’re going to master it or not take it on. If you aren’t willing to see your potential and hold yourself to it, then you won’t master much.

You will always get what you’re willing to settle for. The hardest part isn’t actually becoming a master. It’s deciding that you’re going to be one in the first place, and not going backwards from that moment on.

Now it’s your turn!  Are you playing in the major leagues or still down at the minors?  If you are mastering your life, what was the turning point to get you to make the shift up?  If you are still in the minors, what will it take to get you to play bigger?  Share here—someone just might read what you write and be inspired to live a better life.