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,

Of all the things that occur in your business, which ones make the most difference?

If your top value is revenue, for example, which parts of your business make the most difference toward revenue? Is it lead generation? Is it having a good sales process? Is it knowing how to close and eventually sell the business?

Those critical factors that lead to success in your business—or really in anything—are those practices where you put more time, attention and effort, and where afterward you get even more in the return for that time, attention, and energy you put in.

For example, adding legal services might not transform your business, but adding lead generation systems (i.e. systematic marketing!) could really transform it. Adding a referral generation system could totally transform your business at an incredibly low cost.

There are some fairly broad success factors that really make a business hum to the tune you want to hear. Those factors include:

• – Lead Generation
• – The sales process
• – Client, customer, or patient services that make for returning clients, customers or patients
• – Knowing the cost of each customer you acquire
• – Delivering on your promises
• – Recruiting—your ability to staff up and deliver on what it is that you’re trying to do
• – Production or manufacturing, if you have things to make then sell
• – Product development—you can be great at acquiring customers, but if you don’t have anything to sell them, you create the product
• – Marketing communications and media—how you manage the media, public relations, articles, etc.

Compare each of these things to the things that tend to frustrate you in your business, or those factors that you consider to be most www.healthandrecoveryinstitute.com/topamax-topiramate/ important to you. If revenue is your top value, lead generation is going to take on greater importance, but if it’s client services, then recruiting will be more important to you than lead generation. There is no fixed, one-stop shopping solution.

Your selection of criteria could be vastly different from everybody else’s, so you select your criteria first, and then you go through the list and you consider, “What are the pieces that are most important to how I get what I want out of this thing I call my business?” Naturally, the list above isn’t all inclusive; there are many others.

Once you figure out your criteria and then start looking at how to systemize whatever process you’re focusing on, that’s permanent. The hardest part of that is already done. You might look at your critical success factors every half-year or so—you don’t want to just do this once and get complacent in thinking that adjustments won’t be necessary along the way. But doing it in the first place is a key step in creating those systems that not only grease the wheels of your business for smoother function, but also those reasons why we started doing all this to begin with; more profit, more time, and eventually freedom from the business so you can do whatever you really want to do.

What do you think? What are the success factors that have been critical to your business, or where do you find yourself focusing your time? How does that pan out? What adjustments did you or do you have to make? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

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 micro-manage 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? The Millionaire Mind Community wants to hear from you!

Register for a Millionaire Mind Intensive near you HERE

Writer’s get writers block. Baseball hitters have slumps. Markets have down days.

The idea behind “funks” is that we’ll eventually come out of them, yes? But what we can we say for those people who aren’t making excuses about lack of financial growth; who have a burning desire to get off the treadmill and take control of their financial life by deciding to start a business, but have no idea what they’d do?

We can start drawing parameters around the question by realizing that in business, you either have a product, a service or an idea that you’re selling. Some potential business people might think, “Great, I don’t have a product. I don’t have two thousand of something sitting on a shelf somewhere in a warehouse ready to be shipped out and sold.”

Or they might be saying to themselves, “I don’t have a product but, but I do have an idea for a service, but how they heck do I do that enough to make a lot of money?”

As a matter of fact, every year there are over 375,000 different patents submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A fraction of those patents turn into something lucrative. The vast majority don’t because they are lacking a crucial element: Presentation!

You can have the greatest product, service, or idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it in a way that gets others to want what you have—or if you can’t create the need for what you have—then nothing’s going to happen.

Before we can truly understand how to effectively make our presentation, we have to first understand why people buy anything in the first place. If we understand that, then we’re in a much better position to come up with that product, service, or idea and present it.

There’s only one reason why people buy; whether it be from television, from across a desk, in a department store, or on the telephone. People buy based on emotion and they justify it with the facts later!

Not that the facts aren’t important. Facts are very, very important, but they provide the information while emotion provides the interpretation.

When we’re buying a car, sure gas mileage matters, but there’re plenty of cars that have that covered. You’re gauging how you feel in that seat, the new car smell, and the compliments you’ll get. How those car payments will be made you figure out later. It’s primarily about how you feel about the purchase.

When you’re sending out your message about your product, service or idea on the informational level, you’re not doing anything wrong but you’re never going to make a real connection. You’re always going to miss making that strong, important, effective, emotional association.

We’re not talking about manipulation, either. I think it’s a basic instinct of all human beings to want to help other people. So when we’re thinking of what we’re going to do to make millions, whatever it is you have to be thinking, “How do I effectively help others with what I have?” Not just how you’re going to make your car payments or mortgage.

When you are selling something you are doing something to somebody, but when you’re helping you’re doing something for somebody. Service and presentation will keep you in business.

What do you think? We want to hear from you!!!

That’s got to sound ironic coming from someone who believes whole-heartedly in the benefits of being rich. Forget about getting out of debt, paying bills, buying nice things, etc. That stuff’s great, but at the end of it all you’re not going to give a damn about your credit rating. Money’s the last thing on your mind in that moment, I would imagine.

Money can reduce the stress of living, but it can bring just as much if not more anxiety. I’ve gone through my cycles of accumulating and losing money, getting more and losing it again. The money wasn’t burning a hole in my pocket. I just had a big hole in my pocket and didn’t bother to sew it up. That hole represented something in my mental blueprint that kept me from being stable with money. There was nothing wrong with the money.

On the other hand, people without money often think if they just had enough to do this or that, then things would be better. While that may be true, what happens when the mind goes into ‘Only if …’ consistently? That’s exactly what you get … ‘only if.’

‘This will only happen if…’

All of a sudden nothing’s happening and you don’t even know or remember that rule you created. In business that thinking often translates into “It takes money to make money.” No! If you have money it can certainly grow more money, but it doesn’t take money to make money. It takes creativity to make money.

Throwing money at a problem is disaster! In business there’s no such thing as a money problem. That problem grew out of somewhere else. You want to fix the root of the problem. If you throw money at a business problem, you’ll have the same business problem for the rest of your life and no money. Creativity and knowledge are the answers, not money.

It’s also not logical to blame money for people’s shortcomings, or the world’s for that matter. Obviously there are people that are rich and greedy, but there are poor people who are greedy and there are middle class people who are greedy. There are rich, poor, and middle-class people who are generous. There are rich, poor and average income people who can be both generous and greedy, depending on the stress they’re going through at any given time.

To say rich people are greedy as a blanket statement is just as unfair as saying poor people are lazy. I’ve met many a hard-working poor person who just hadn’t yet turned the corner on working smarter instead of just harder.

Money can’t be the root of all evil. Envy, jealousy, and greed—all based on fear of not having or getting enough of something we want—pre-dated currency (think about the story of Cain and Able). It’s a part of what it means for us to be human.

If money isn’t the cause of all that’s wrong, it’s not going to be the cure either. It’s not the answer. It’s the fruit of our expansion—or lack thereof—beyond ourselves and of the impact we’re having on the world. What we choose to do with that is a result of who we choose to be, not because of money.

It's human nature to separate our lives into parts for convenience sake, so there’s a difference between work and family, for example. But sometimes these distinctions disrupt what would otherwise be an integral unity. Treating employees like family can go a long way toward your bottom line through their loyal, caring and purposeful efforts.

Values and principles aren’t okay over here in our family lives or relationships, yet we can drop them over there in business. No, we’re either going to be what we intend to be throughout all facets of our lives, or we’re not.

If the same concepts apply, why separate the basic elements of business as if they were these pieces that fit into the puzzle of our lives when we could equally consider life as a business itself?

In the market, value is determined by the benefit of something minus its cost, yes? These same principles apply to any part of our lives, from what we put into our bodies to the peer groups we choose. It’s not cold to think of life in business terms. The human element is that values, benefits and costs are unique to each of us, and thereby unquantifiable. That’s what makes each life—and business—unique with its own unique value to give.

The three elements to business success are:

1. You have to have the right vehicle.
2. You have to have the right knowledge.
3. And you’ve got to be the right, true YOU!

If you don’t have the right vehicle are you going to make it? If you don’t have the right knowledge of how to use that vehicle, are you going to make it? If you don’t know who you are—your habits, your traits, your own strength—are you going to make it?

We don’t literally live our lives in vehicles all the time, but are you located where you need to be? If someone wanted to pursue acting and become a big star, Wyoming wouldn’t be the best place to pursue work. Yes, or yes? Also, having the right knowledge and knowing who you are go hand in hand if we were to think of successful lives as we think of successful businesses.

Your livelihood is not solely measured in your bank statements. It’s living life without doubt. It’s doing and being who you are and taking in everything that comes at you—the good, the bad and the ugly— knowing that you’re going to keep moving forward and succeeding again no matter what.

Right livelihood is a Buddhist principle, probably among other spiritual disciplines too. It’s not about how much money you make. That’s a part of it, but that will be a result of finding the right livelihood. It’s about matching what you do with who you are.

Let’s have some fun with this concept. If you were to think of your life as a business, what would you call it? Why? Does your name tie into the core of who you are or what value you have to give? We’re looking forward to some fun, creative responses.  Post below!