Conditioning, conditioning, conditioning. It’s not just a mantra for athletes. In the Millionaire Mind, we go marathon – the distance of life – not a race to a million. It’s not something to train for occasionally. It’s something we live consistently, yes?

Even if we’re not always at peak level – and there will be times when we’re just not – there’s something that’s motivating us, something that’s fueling us. What we’re fueling up with will determine whether or not we go the distance.

The juice that fuels us is our motivations – why we’re doing what we do. And there’s really only two ways to go here. You’re either doing what you do based on a positive energy juice or negative energy. Both can be extremely effective. Both can get you far, but the difference in the end: are you going to arrive where you intended to go, and what kind of condition are you going to be in when you get there?

People who run on negative energy juice do things like make pretty decent amount money but get rid of it because it was angry energy that got them there; they were rebelling against something, or someone (usually a parent). Except when they get rid of it now they’re BROKE and angry! They got rid of the wrong one.

Others are so fearful that there will never be enough money – or they will never be enough – that the insecurity shifts their focus away from the other areas of life. Their insecurity erodes their physical, mental, and emotional condition.

Fear can be useful when it comes to getting our butts in gear when we know we have to get it done. But when we’re acting on imaginary pain – pain based on negative conditioning that fuels negative motivations – that kind of fear acts more like an obstacle to our happiness rather than an efficient fuel source.

How about these for motivations: joy and purpose! Loving what you do! Contributing to something beyond yourself and the money is the result. Good or good?

If you’re not juiced by joy and purpose, it ain’t gonna work, not for the distance anyway. You can get short burst of success based on anger or fear, but these create stress. You might win the game financially for a short period of time, but you won’t be rich on a spiritual, emotional and mental level.

You cannot have enough money to not be angry anymore. No amount of money will lessen fear because fear is the habitual fuel and money is the prop. You can never alleviate the fear with more money or more of anything. What you have to alleviate is the fear itself. Change your fuel! We want money and happiness. The only way that can happen is if you’re running on supportive juice, not fuel that’s going to lead to a crash and burn.

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If you’re going to make money, come up with a couple of motivations that are supportive. There’s always family, obligation, more toys or material things—but what are some motivations that really touch the core of our greatest joys in life? What are some different types of juice that relate to happiness beyond “I have to do this” or material comforts? We want to hear from you!

 
To Your Success,

Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, at their roots, have had historic importance worldwide for thousands of years. Many ancient peoples celebrated the Winter Solstice with different kinds of festivals and rituals with themes of death, birth, gifting, praising, etc.

Some historians trace New Year traditions back to the Babylonians of 4,000 years ago. For them, this time of year meant paying off debts or returning borrowed items, a different way of “resolving” their issues.  There was a sense of accountability as well as celebrating what’s to come. We have our parties and Auld Lang Syne too, yet our resolutions tend to focus on ourselves: losing weight; quitting smoking; or making a million dollars—being better or more than we were before.

You don’t need New Year’s to remind you to stay on track toward your goals. Success-building is a daily routine, yes or yes? The fact is, though, that most people are not going to keep their resolutions. Some surveys suggest only about 8% will stick to their resolve by year’s end, and a whopping 45% will fail by the end of January!

While the reasons range from fear of success or failure to resolving the wrong things for the wrong reasons, maybe we should resolve instead to grow every day, one day at a time. This is what it really means to be present. It’s not a coincidence that we use the same word to recognize the now-moment as we do to define a gift.

The seed of all the great things in our lives—who we are; who we want to be; what motivates our desires, what determines whether or not we achieve success—is happening right now. Everything. If we want quality answers that are meant to ease our anxieties about the future, it means we have to ask quality questions now, which is the quality of present moment awareness. As our awareness expands so does our vision, our ability to be in tune with what is happening—what will happen—as our intuition guides us in spite of uncertainty.

Our ancestors wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for planning and anticipation of the inevitability of change, guiding their ability to plant, harvest and know when not to. Nor would they have had reasons to ritualize endings, beginnings, celebration of success or reflect on past mistakes if it weren’t for planning for the change of seasons. It’s in our best interest to plan as much as we can to work toward what we want to see happen. The truth is, though, we don’t always know what’s coming around the corner. We can take educated guesses, but there’s no such thing as absolute certainty.

In the end, all we ever really have is now, and this is where we will find our richness. Now is when we can reflect, think, make decisions, act or not act—not tomorrow. There’s always only now. Giving yourself to the present moment is the best gift of all—it’s the resolution that lasts a lifetime, every minute of every day. It’s in the present that all things become possible.

From the entire Harv Eker International Team, Happy Holidays and have a great start to another year of growth, learning, happiness, success, and richness!

For Your Freedom,

 

Be grateful!

We hear it all the time, at least in a community of fellow seekers who want to grow their financial success building as much as their spiritual peace. Life has its highs and lows, but the one thing that’s the same no matter where we are on the wheel is that there are always many things to be grateful for.

It’s easy to be grateful when it doesn’t really require a ton of effort, like saying “please” or “thank you.” It’s easy to be grateful when things are going great. But what about when things aren’t going quite as planned?

Everyone’s been there. The mind starts going into “what’s wrong,” or what’s not enough, what’s too much to deal with, too much to do in order to overcome an obstacle and reach a goal. In some ways it’s natural, but when it becomes a habit then the pity party is simply a safer choice.

The truth is it takes much more courage to appreciate what we’ve got—no matter how little it may seem—than it is to surrender to the scarcity model and let ourselves off the hook for taking action because something isn’t enough.

Our egos will tell us that if we spend too much time being grateful for what we have, we won’t try to get more, and we’ll become stuck with being “content” instead of happy.

Wanting what we currently have has nothing to do with somehow tricking ourselves into “settling.” Just because you’re buying an economy car now that’s practical but not so hot-looking doesn’t mean you won’t want a Ferrari three years from now when you’re rich. It’s not hard to be grateful for that fact that you have four wheels to drive that gets you where you need to go. There are plenty of people in this world that don’t have that, with consequences we couldn’t imagine.

It’s the lack-based protective mind that continuously hungers for more, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter. The scarcity model, constantly looking around, overlooks and discounts what’s right in front of us. We have to constantly remind ourselves to look for “what's right” in our lives instead of “what's wrong.”

Then we’ll be less likely not to forget to show our appreciation to the people who are closest to us; our family, friends, loved ones, co-workers, employees. Then there are teachers, postal workers—all the people that make our daily lives more convenient and enrich our larger communities. And let’s not forget to say “thank you” to the Universe for our many blessings.

Gratitude particularly holds true when it comes to finances. To have abundance, be grateful for and properly manage whatever wealth you have now, even if you don’t think it’s much. Why? If you’re not appreciating what you already have, that means you’re not maximizing what’s available right now. If you can’t do that, why should the Universe believe you can handle more?

Now it’s your turn: Who and what have you not fully appreciated?  What are some of the things that you think we tend to take for granted? Below list the people and things in your life for which you are grateful. Show your appreciation to the people who mean the most to you for all that you have.


For your freedom,
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Notice how the universe supports us in living. We are intended to have the perfect combination of gases so we can breathe, and food that just grew from the ground for our picking well before we became agricultural communities. These are not flukes of nature. To deny this is to deny that the universe is on purpose-and to deny that everything in it, including us, is on purpose.

Purpose is a tricky term. After all, how can anyone be sure that they are living their purpose?

There are two types of purposes. The first is the purpose of life, which consists of three sub-purposes, if you will. There are a number of fill-in-the-blanks to the statement, “The purpose of life is to …” I think, though; there are some core basics to the purpose of life.

One important purpose for us all is to add value—to this planet, for this generation and those that follow. Adding value could easily include procreation, to nurture and love a being in hopes that they will do the same for others.

Another purpose of life is to learn and growto evolve our consciousness, which includes spirituality.

A third component is not just simply enjoying the fruits of our labor, nor just strictly enjoyment in terms of material satisfaction and pleasure, but that we also enjoy the journey, which could very well (probably, for most) entail some trial and tribulation. In other words, to appreciate everything.

By no means do I think that those are the only three important purposes in life, though I think they are fairly basic to everyone on the planet.

The second type of purpose, though—our personal purpose, or mission, is obviously going to be unique for each and every one of us. This kind of purpose includes all the other purposes in life that we can think of, but it mostly focuses on that first—adding value to others and to the planet.

In the Hindu tradition this translates to dharma, or duty. Author Carolyn Myss calls it our sacred contract with the divine, a belief that each person has their dharma to fulfill on this earth, to help make the earth whole; a specific calling, a specific piece of the puzzle to help define the bigger picture.

God forbid, but if we lost an eye or a limb, we could go on, yes? But things just wouldn’t be the same either. That’s what it’s like for this world to not be gifted with those who aren’t living their dharma. Others can survive without your piece of the puzzle, but it’s just not the same.

We not only have unique talents but unique ways of expressing those talents. This is the way we become rich spiritually and financially—by matching those unique talents and forms of expression with the needs of your fellow human beings.

Live your life based on your mission. Honor your dharma. Fulfill your sacred contract. Everything else in life is built on the truth of your purpose. It will bring you happiness, fulfillment, meaning, and success.

You are not only important in this world, you are essential! If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here.

What’s your dharma? How did you come to recognize and know that it’s true for you? Help yourself and/or others come to greater understanding of themselves. Leave me your comments below!


For Your Freedom,

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There’s an interesting exercise in ethics I’ve taught commonly called Lifeboat Ethics, based on true stories where people on a sinking ship have to decide who should get a spot on a lifeboat and who should go down with the ship and face—at best—extreme uncertainty of whether or not they’ll survive; most likely, they face certain death.

I was always curious about the people who volunteered to give up their right to petition for a seat on the lifeboat. Why are they doing that?

‘Because it came from my heart’ is one I heard a lot—the idea of sacrifice for another. That’s kind, but is that coming from truth or a desire to be seen as “self-less” for reasons that have more to do with, say, a learned behavior of other people’s expectations that may not actually be serving their truest interests?

Here’s another one: single, unmarried people gave up their seats to people who had families. They didn’t want other kids in other people’s families to have to grow up without parents like they did.

In other words, other people’s kids and families were more important than their own well being.

Does that ring true? How does that kind of thinking work out outside of this theoretical game?

The thread that runs through all these answers is that the people who gave up their seats considered other people more important than them. For those who think, “I’ll give up my seat for others,” well … it’s pretty obvious that complacency could actually kill you!

Secondly, you’re a thief, literally. That’s because you’re robbing the world of your gifts.

Never forget that you have plenty to give. Every single person on this earth does.

In our Lifeboat Ethics experiment, a vast majority of people who chose others to live did so because the people www.healthandrecoveryinstitute.com/adderall-adhd/ they chose to live were able to articulate specific value in some kind of way—the contributions they would make not only to themselves but also to the world.

The criteria for such a choice were the clarity with which they were able to state their case and the commitment to their purpose.

Don’t ever let someone try and take your seat from you! I’m not talking about Hunger Games, fight to the last person standing. I’m saying come from an authentic place where you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, how you’re supposed to contribute to this world, and why it’s important that either you or your mission (bigger than you) needs to live.

There’s only one entity that can take your life from you, and that’s the One that gave it to you in the first place. It’s not up to you or anybody else to take you out.

Your contribution is essential. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t be breathing right now. Nobody takes your seat again.

When you are inspired by a great purpose, all your thoughts break their bonds and transcend limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great wonderful world. Dormant forces—your faculties and talents—come alive. You discover yourself to be a greater person, far greater than you ever dreamed you would or could be.

Okay, now it’s your turn! Given the same choices as our “volunteers” in Lifeboat Ethics, would you still give up your seat? For what reasons? Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. I love hearing (and even learn) from each and every one of you so make sure to leave me a comment below!

For Your Freedom,

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“If I could teach my children only one thing, it would be the skill of marketing. For with that skill, they could be successful at anything they chose for the rest of their lives.”

That’s a quote from financial advisor Howard Ruff. It speaks for itself — if you can market yourself, you will always have potential buyers for whatever it is you have to offer.

This is what scares so many people, though. They think you have to know everything about marketing in order to be good at it.

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret:

I don’t know everything about marketing, not by a long-shot! I don’t have time to know everything, nor do I need to, nor do you!

However, there are some critical secrets to great marketing and that includes the four most important words in marketing.


The Four Most Important Words In Marketing

1. PRESENTING

You’ve got to let people know what you have — your Unique Selling Proposition.

Without marketing, nobody knows that you or your product exists. If they don’t know about it, they can’t buy it.  And if they don’t know why they might want it, they certainly won’t.

2. POTENTIAL

Make sure there is a real possibility of a transaction happening.

If they can’t or won’t buy it, you make no money.

3. EAGER

Create desire for your product or service.

At its most basic, marketing is presenting products or services to potential consumers to make them eager to buy from you. It’s about the psychology of putting yourself in front of others effectively and creatively.

4. BUY

If people don’t buy your product, all this is for naught.

Sometimes it helps to go back to the basics, especially core basics. This has to be engrained in every cell in our bodies


Marketing Equals Money

Marketing equals money, and this principle works for all businesses!

If you are a great marketer, chances are you will make great money. And if you are a poor marketer, chances are you will struggle financially.

The good news is marketing is a learnable skill and there aren't that many different strategies and principles that you need to know to become an expert at marketing. You just need to know the right elements that will have the biggest impact on your business and your bottom line.

Which is why I created my free web class, The 500 Million Dollar Secret, to give you the key elements I used to get rich.

Click here to register for the class and select a date and time that works best for you. See you there!

The_80/20_Principle

How great that you can live your mission and not ever worry about how you’re going to make money! What does or will that look like for you? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below!

For Your Freedom,

The time and date is set. You made sure you arrived early because you wanted to do everything you could to make a good first impression. It’s your favorite “after-work” haunt so you’ll feel right at home.

You’ve rehearsed your intro, keeping things light and hopefully funny, but you’re anticipating the words that’ll give you an opportunity to really get the conversation going. At the end of the day, though, you just hope you like them and they like you.

Sounds like going out on a first date, yes? My partner and I “date” as much as we can, but a first date has been so long for me I’m not sure I’m the guy you want dating advice from!

I do know something about creating great first impressions with potential clients or business partners. Just like any other human connection, there are things we can do to give ourselves a chance of making a great impression and set ourselves up to get what we’re looking for.

In fact, most of the top marketers in the world hardly ever talk about product! They talk to get people to like them, so when the moment comes the selling is easier.

The one thing that’s critical for everything in life—not just in negotiations but in making a connection with anyone—is to create affinity. Affinity is closeness, warmth, and likeability. People generally act based on emotion (Something to remember when marketing!), and then they justify their decisions with logic.

In other words, people will usually give a much better opportunity to someone they like.

I’m not talking about flattering butt-kissing. That’s fake affinity. More than likely most people will sniff that out and get turned off quickly. Genuine affinity means genuinely intending to make an honest and real connection with the other person.

We do it all the time and probably don’t think about it much: finding something in common. I’m like you is another way of saying I like you. Take this to another level by stating your intention for a win-win situation early and often. It’s as simple as saying something like, “I want to make sure this works for you.”  

Also, think about how disempowering the word “but” can be in a conversation. Think about what it feels like when you are trying to get your point of view across to someone, and they respond by saying, “Yeah, but …” It’s as if everything you just said was negated. It stings. Avoid “buts”.

These things work great for when you’re trying to convince your partner to see the movie you want to see, or get your kids to eat their vegetables, or get a vendor to give you the pricing you’re looking for.

There is another level to this, though, a spiritual warrior component. Your intention has to be genuine caring for what the other person wants, and the focus and confidence to know that you can create the win-win. How Zen can you get?

Over the next week or so, use due discretion and try to make connections with strangers if the moment is appropriate. You don’t have to try to “get” something from them. Just create affinity. Use phrases that show you understand. If you disagree, make your point without saying “but”. Do this with people that you know! Let us know what happens!

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That’s the easy part—it only seems difficult sometimes if we feel guilty about wanting what we want or scared of what others might think. Once you get over stuff like that, knowing what you want isn’t that hard.

Among the many things we all want in life, more money tends to be in the Top 5. Money makes life a little easier, at least financially. You can do more things with more money. That leads to another connected want on most everyone’s list—greater happiness, which includes less stress about financial security, more personal time, more freedom, greater joy.

These are things that lots of people say they want, but most people aren’t financially secure and barely get by while working jobs. This job might be “more money” than they were making before, but is that the road to financial freedom or simply retirement, and how long will it take to get there playing the money game like we were taught?

And is that a joyful way to live?

That second key to getting what we want in life is the “Why”: why do you want what you say you want? Does it really mean something to you? Is that someone else’s imposed thoughts echoing in your head or your own, from your spirit?

I always wanted to be free. I love doing what I do, but the worst thing I could think of is being forced to do this. I wouldn’t love it anymore. People just don’t like to be forced to do things. You want to do it from choice.

That choice has to be backed by reasons that are honest, true and excite you to your core, like a kid who can’t stop jumping up and down and clapping in anticipation of pure joy.

In my experience working with thousands of people, more than 50% of the people that do this one simple action doubled, tripled or even quadrupled their income within a year:

Write down want you want. It must be clear and it must be absolutely important to you. Write at least five reasons why you want what you want, especially in terms of wanting more money. Put that sheet of paper on a wall you can’t avoid.

You want to see miracles in action? You’re not sure Spirit exists?  Think the Universe is trying to support you if you would just get out of the frickin’ way? Do this!

It’s unbelievable, but you have to do your part, and it starts with putting it right up there front and center in your consciousness.

Now give us stories of your miracles in action. Did a door that you didn’t expect open for you after making a life-changing decision? Were there times when your income jumped drastically? What choices were you making at that time? What goals are you proud to have checked off your list?

Share your stories! Together we can continue to grow and learn with each other!

For Your Freedom,

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Last month we explored how sometimes we just need to be able to identify what we’re frustrated at in order to begin addressing it. When there are consistent frustrations in a business, we can usually address them by putting systems in place that minimize inconsistencies and produce more of the results we’re really looking for.

It’s another one of those no-duh, no brainers that may not appear like much until those frustrations build to the point of blinding us from the most direct solutions.

But we now want to articulate the impact of that frustration on our business condition. How does this thing impact you? What results aren’t you getting? What’s happening? What’s not happening that you want to happen, or don’t want to happen?

We don’t want to be working on anything that doesn’t really matter. If you’re frustrated because your partner starts their day later than you do, does it really matter as long as the work is getting done? But if that lateness means missing calls from earlier time zones, that could have an impact, yes?

So it’s one thing to name a frustration, and it’s another to know exactly what that frustration translates into toward your bottom line. You’ve got to probe, measure, and quantify that frustration. You might find at the end of the day, you’re really getting bothered over something trivial—or you could find that your frustrations are indeed warranted.

If you have a complex system you’re looking at, this process can take months. So how about a more simple formula?

“The real problem in my business is the absence …” It could be a system that will cost effectively generate leads rather than be a costly guessing game every time. Or a system that staff can follow consistently rather than doing it their own way each time, producing mediocre or inconsistent results. Or it could be the absence of a system for strategic planning rather than primarily responding to a competitor’s moves.

It’s just a generic way of focusing. You’re not actually formulating a system yet. What you’ll find is some of these things that you describe can actually be purchased as software programs, or you can easily hire consultants who do them much better than you would. But once you’ve figured out what the problem actually is, reformulating starts to become easier.

“The real problem in my business is the absence of a system that will …” Fill in the blank with that generic system solution and then write down your original frustrating condition.

You should start to feel a shift in your energy in terms of some of these things that are frustrating you. The question that you simply have to ask now is: Is this frustration worth fixing? Is this frustration that you named—if it’s not stemming from within you—something you have to address quickly or is it lower on the priority scale?

Do you really want to remedy this frustrating condition or would you rather just live with it? That’s the question that you have to answer.

What do you think? What are some frustrating aspects of running a business that you’ve encountered, and how did you remedy them? Did you find value in naming and understanding the impact of those frustrations? Were some of them really nothing? Make sure to leave me a comment and let me know your experiences with frustrations in business (and how you handled them) – or even how you handled frustration and overcame it in other parts of your life!

For Your Freedom,

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When we get frustrated by our conditions, we inevitably end up becoming frustrated with ourselves. It can take us over and we tend to run with it. It can creep into every aspect of our lives, from how we relate to the people around us, to how it will impact our business.

If the frustration builds for too long, pretty soon we might forget altogether what the hell we were frustrated at in the first place, yes?

This happens in business all the time, especially when in the early stages of the business, cash flow can fluctuate maddeningly, which then leads to all other kinds of frustrations from payroll to profits.

There’s an energy attached to frustration that sucks the life out of your business, and if you’re not dealing with this as a business owner, it’s only going to go downhill from there.

Moving back away from whatever the problem is, step one toward a solution is simply being able to classify your frustrations. Is it with your team? Your results? A process that doesn’t seem to flow efficiently?

Some typical early-stage business frustrations include time (there never seems to be enough of it), feeling like you’re too bogged down with menial detail-work instead of bigger-picture tasks, or relying on people to get things done that don’t follow through. Just to name a few.

This is where the importance of systemizing your business processes plays a huge role. First you name your frustration, and then you develop the system to address it.

So if you’re having problems with freeing up your time yet ensuring that essential tasks still get done, then the real problem is the absence of a system that will hire the right people rather than you doing it all yourself. That way, not only is your time freed up, but the right people will also help micromanage the way processes continue to develop and flow.

The good news is that frustrations within your business are fairly easy to identify and deal with, though they may take time. Inner frustrations, on the other hand, not only take more time and energy to deal with, but may also be harder to identify in the first place. You could be mad at yourself because you’ve done something poorly for so long, and you get frustrated about not seeming able to turn the corner. Or worse, you externalize that frustration toward everybody else—the customers, the suppliers, the vendors, the client; everybody but yourself.

We know the power of blueprints, so we won’t address that here.

When it comes to outer frustrations that we can identify, though, the questions are much simpler. What’s my frustration? What’s the gap in the system? What system is missing altogether?

If your frustrations begin with ‘I’, it’s about you. It’s inner directed. If it’s about ‘them’ or ‘those people’ or ‘those lousy clients’ or ‘those suppliers’ or ‘that lousy machinery’ or ‘that way' of doing something, it can then be addressed systematically and objectively.

What do you think? Have you experienced similar or even different kinds of frustrations, and how did you address them? Did systemizing play a role? Leave me a comment and let me know your experiences and how you overcome those frustrations (or are still working on identifying/overcoming them).

For Your Freedom,

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