Category Archives: Growth Mindset

Goals, Systems, Habits…Oh My

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To live the life you want, you must know what you you want!

To live a rich and fulfilling life, it important to have goals that aligns with those things you value most and habits, or a system, to achieve those goals. You must be able to distill those goals into a few seconds of spoken words you’ll remember.

Studies show that people who can clearly craft a narrative for their personal goals—and mentally and emotionally embrace their goals—have a better chance of reaching those goals.

It is recommended that people create several lists of goals: one for emotional, another for finances and another for health. State your goal for the current year, in the near future (years three and five), and further out (years seven and 10).

For example: A current emotional list includes going out for dinner with friends every month. In year five, the gal could be to take a dream vacation to Tahiti. In year 10, the goal could be to become debt-free or financially secure.

It’s about creating your own vision and speaking your goals aloud, which makes it much easier to stay focused on them. Having goal clarity is essential to motivation. Consequently, in order to get motivated to achieve your big dreams, you need to be clear on the next step or two. You’re finding clues and guides along the way. This is the process and emotional experience of pursuing a big dream.

Here’s what you need to move forward:

  1. A clear direction so you actually know what to do
  2. A hard and fast timeline
  3. The right system

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.” James Clear, Atomic Habits

Most personal goals are hard to reach since progress is often slow and occur in small increments, they’re boring and unmotivating, and they’re difficult to ultimately achieve. In the end, most well-intended individuals tend to abandon their goals and revert back to the old bad or undesirable habits they were attempting to change or eliminate. It takes willpower to achieve a goal without a system and there is a limited supply of will power. Willpower is a finite resource.

Instead of creating a goal, implement a system. Implementing a system would go along towards forming a new habit. For example, with financial security and planning for retirement, you could spend time educating yourself about cash flow, net worth, financial planning, saving and investing. In short, we should focus on the knowledge we need to form good personal financial habits.

“The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.” James Clear, Atomic Habits

James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits”, wrote a practical book on how to optimize your habits and get 1 percent better every day. He believes the most important key to achieving most of our goals are habits. Habits are those automatic routines we follow every day, day after day after day. If we make small changes to these automatic daily routines we all have, then we will see huge changes in our life quality and success over the months, years and decades later which is why this book is called “Atomic Habits.” It’s about small changes that lead to powerful explosive progress over a long period of time.

Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the Dilbert comics, is an vocal advocate of building systems and says that you’ll “…be more successful by ignoring goals and focusing on building great systems in your life”.

The problems inherent in goals are many. The first and biggest problem, as James Clear points out, is that “winners and losers have the same goals.” And since winners and losers have the same goals, then your goals cannot make the difference between success and failure.

Instead of goals, it’s much better to focus on systems. Systems are the processes by which we achieve our goals. For example, if you have the goal of being an investor, then your systems may be paying yourself first with saving and investing 15 to 20 percent of your income every month and increase financial literacy by reading 5 financial and investing articles every week.

A systems-centred approach puts our focus on the process or daily habits rather than the end goal. It’s about finding ways to improve our skill of saving or investing, and most importantly finding enjoyment in the activity itself as our driving motivation.

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking.” James Clear, Atomic Habits

Goals have many built-in problems. They make us believe happiness is found in the future and sabotage lifelong progress. Focusing on systems, which are the processes and daily habits of our lives, will make us both more happier and more successful.

Sources:

  1. https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/self-help/atomic-habits/
  2. https://growth.me/book-summaries/atomic-habits/

The Wealthy Next Door

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To accumulate wealth, you should start by reading and studying the behaviors of people who have successfully accumulated wealth and achieved financial independence.

In the groundbreaking financial book, “The Millionaire Next Door: Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy”, written in 1996 by William Danko and Thomas Stanley, found that people who appear wealthy may not actually be wealthy.

Their findings reveal that people who appear wealthy tend to overspend or live paycheck to paycheck. They often overspend on symbols of wealth like luxury vehicles and large homes — but actually have modest or negative personal net worths. On the other hand, wealthy individuals tend to live modestly in middle-income communities, drive modest vehicles, and shop at Costco Warehouse.

Lessons Learned from “The Millionaire Next Door” are enlightening on how the wealthy actually spend and save. Instead of appearing to be wealthy, they tend to:

Understand that Income Does Not Equal Wealth

It is a fact that higher-income households tend to have more wealth than lower- and middle-income households. But the size of a paycheck explains only approximately 30% of the variation of wealth among households. What really matters is how much of the income is not spent on discretionary things, but is saved and invested. On average, wealthy individuals invest nearly 20% of their income. And, it finds that those in the top quartile of wealth accumulation are prodigious accumulators of wealth (PAWs), according to Danko and Stanley

Work with a Budget

The majority of wealthy individuals have a budget. Of those who don’t, they have what the authors called “an artificial economic environment of scarcity,” more commonly known as “pay yourself first.” In other words, they invest a good chunk of their income before they can spend any of it. As the authors wrote, “It’s much easier to budget if you visualize the long-term benefits of this task.”

Manage their Spend

Nearly two-thirds of the wealthy can answer know how much their family spends each year for food, clothing, and shelter. In contrast, only 35% of high-income non-wealthy answered yes to this question. The wealthy manage and track their spending.

Have Defined Financial Goals

About two-thirds of wealthy have clearly defined short-, intermediate- and long-Term goals. Many of the wealthy are retired and have already reached their goal of financial independence.

Dedicate Time To Financial Planning and Education

Creating a budget, goal setting and financial planning all take time, but the wealthy were willing to spend it. Danko and Stanley found that people they labeled “prodigious accumulators of wealth” (PAW) spend many hours per month planning their investments. In fact, they found “a strong positive correlation” between investment planning and wealth accumulation. Each week, each month, each year, the wealthy plan their investments.

Buy and Hold Smaller Homes

Your purchase of a home — and how often you choose a new one — will determine your ability to accumulate wealth. According to The Millionaire Next Door, that wealthy family has been next door for quite a while. Half of the wealthy have lived in the same house for more than 20 years.

Stay Married

The majority of wealthy people are married and stay married to the same person. Several studies have shown that people who are married accumulate more wealth than those who are single or divorced. Conversely, it’s important to partner with someone who possesses similar healthy financial behavior and habits.

Buy and Hold Pre-Owned Vehicle

The majority of wealthy individuals own their cars, rather than lease. Approximately a quarter have a current-year model, but another quarter drive a car that is four years old or older. More than a third tend to buy used vehicles.

Live Happier Lives

Bottomline, living below your means is the one sure way to accumulate wealth and to live happier. Since, there exist a peace of mind living below your means and saving money. Danko and Stanley’s research indicates that, “financially independent people are happier than those in their same income/age cohort who are not financially secure.”

Essentially, when it comes to financial security and retirement planning, adopting the lifestyle of the wealthy means you can save more toward your financial goals and destination. That’s a formula that can help anyone to accumulate wealth and achieve financial independence.

  • References:
    1. Thomas J. Stanley, and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy Paperback, November 16, 2010
    2. https://www.getrichslowly.org/nine-lessons-in-wealth-building-from-the-millionaire-next-door/

    Accumulating Wealth

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    The wealthy accumulate wealth by being frugal

    Frugality – a commitment to saving, spending less, and sticking to a budget – is a key factor in accumulating wealth, according to DataPoints’ founder, Dr. Sarah Stanley Fallaw.  Dr. Fallaw is also the co-authored “The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth“.

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    In an University of Georgia’s financial planning performance lab research paper examining the topic of “what does it take to build wealth over time”, the key findings were that those who were successful at accumulating wealth frequently exhibited the following behaviors:

    • Spending less than they earned
    • Having a long-term outlook on their financial future
    • Maintaining sound financial records
    • Keeping up with financial markets
    • Saving regardless of income level

    Essentially, her research shows that anyone can accumulate wealth if they know the right steps to take. And, if individuals possess a certain set of characteristics, they may be more likely to become wealthy, according to Dr. Fallaw, who is also director of research for the Affluent Market Institute.

    In her research, she found that six behaviours, which she called “wealth factors,” are related to net worth potential, regardless of age or income:

    • Frugality, or a commitment to saving, spending less, and sticking to a budget
    • Confidence in financial management, investing, and household leadership
    • Responsibility, which involves accepting your role in financial outcomes and believing that luck plays little role
    • Planning, or setting goals for your financial future
    • Focus on seeing tasks through to their completion without being distracted
    • Social indifference, or not succumbing to social pressure to buy the latest thing

    In order to accumulate wealth, it is imperative for investors to understand that their underlying financial behavior and habits matter significantly. DataPoints research supports the notion that, “…individuals who successfully accumulate wealth often engage in basic and identifiable productive financial management behaviors.” And, they are often “socially indifferent” to the latest “must haves” and they resist the “lifestyle creep,” which is the tendency to spend more whenever they earn more.

    To properly build wealth, financial experts recommend saving 20% of your income and living off the remaining 80%. Many wealthy individuals, who religiously follow this principle, espoused the freedom that comes with spending and living below their means.

    Reference

    1. Grable, J. E., Kruger, M., & Fallaw, S. S. (2017). An Assessment of Wealth Accumulation Tasks and Behaviors. Journal of Financial Service Professionals, 71(1), 55-70.
    2. https://www.datapoints.com/2017/04/06/tasks-of-wealth-accumulators/
    3. https://apple.news/A4YIQ2ahsSKqzUG3rh1PmTQ

    Conspicuous Spending and Skyrocketing Debt

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    “The hard truth is: the amount of money we earn is not always directly proportional to the amount of money we save because, more often than not, the more money we make, the more we spend.” David Bach, author “The Automatic Millionaire”

    Let’s face financial reality and an inconvenient truth. Whether on Main Street, Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, Americans continue to have and have long had a spending problem. Government statistics and other studies show that Americans’ spending has generally risen in the years since the 2008 – 2009 Great Recession. This trend is reflected in Americans’ general pattern of consumer spending and reflected in the rising levels of consumer, corporate and public debt which has topped a whopping $75.3 trillion in 2019 according to the stats coming out of the Federal Reserve.

    Moreover, Gallup found in an April 2018 poll that people “…want see themselves as fiscally responsible, to some degree.” Even Americans who admit that they are spending more than they earn over the past several months are more likely to claim this is only temporary, rather than their normal. Those who say they are spending less believe it is permanent, despite what the numbers reveal.

    And Americans’ have a predilection to say that they enjoy saving more than spending, which rose dramatically between the period before and the period just after the recession, has remained in place, even as the economy has improved.

    Positive Cash Flow

    Asked about their spending habits, Gallup results show that Americans are as likely to say they are spending the same amount as they used to (35%) as to say they are spending less (35%). Slightly fewer, 30%, report spending more. The takeaway is that Americans’ conspicuous spending habits will not change unless they first acknowledge it as a problem.

    On the other hand, most wealthy people understand and stress the importance of spending much less than their means. Spending less gives them financial freedom which then translates into various opportunities such as career mobility, flexibility to venture into activities outside of work, and of course the ability to increase their wealth.

    On the other hand, if Americans are spending more than what they earn, then even with a big six-figure income, they will be excessively reliant on each of their paycheck. It is very important that they are financially independent before the time comes when they decide to become self-employed or to retire. So it’s important to start saving, investing and accumulating wealth.

    Simply spending less than we earn, eliminating bad debt, managing taxes and fees, paying ourselves first, starting to save early, automatically saving and investing for the long-term, and developing smart financial habits and positive financial mindset will result in huge results over a long period of time.

    References:

    1. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20190307/z1.pdf
    2. https://usdebtclock.org
    3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/209432/americans-say-saving-spending.aspx
    4. https://www.bea.gov/news/glance

    10 Money Lessons He Wished Heard — or Listened to — When Younger | MarketWatch

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    Updated: February 23, 2020

    Jonathan Clements, author of “From Here to Financial Happiness” and “How to Think About Money,” and editor of HumbleDollar.com., is the former personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He has devoted his entire adult life to learning about money.

    That might sound like cruel-and-unusual punishment, but he has mostly enjoyed it. For more than three decades, he has spent his days perusing the business pages, reading finance books, scanning academic studies and talking to countless folks about their finances.

    Yet, despite this intense financial education, it took him a decade or more to learn many of life’s most important money lessons and, indeed, some key insights have only come to him in recent years.

    Here are 10 things he wished he’d been told in his 20s—or told more loudly, so he actually listened:

    — Read on www.marketwatch.com/story/10-money-lessons-i-wish-id-listened-to-when-i-was-younger-2020-02-12

    1. A small home is the key to a big portfolio. Financially, it turned out to be one of the smartest things he had ever done, because it allowed him to save great gobs of money. That’s clear to him in retrospect. But he wished he’d known it was a smart move at the time, because he wouldn’t have wasted so many hours wondering whether he should have bought a larger place.

    2. Debts are negative bonds. From his first month as a homeowner, he sent in extra money with his mortgage payment, so he could pay off the loan more quickly. But it was only later that he came to view his mortgage as a negative bond—one that was costing him dearly. Indeed, paying off debt almost always garners a higher after-tax return than you can earn by investing in high-quality bonds.

    3. Watching the market and your portfolio doesn’t improve performance. This has been another huge time waster. It’s a bad habit he belatedly trying to break.

    4. Thirty years from now, you’ll wish you’d invested more in stocks. Yes, over five or even 10 years, there’s some chance you’ll lose money in the stock market. But over 30 years? It’s highly likely you’ll notch handsome gains, especially if you’re broadly diversified and regularly adding new money to your portfolio in good times and bad.

    5. Nobody knows squat about short-term investment performance. One of the downsides of following the financial news is that you hear all kinds of smart, articulate experts offering eloquent predictions of plummeting share prices and skyrocketing interest rates that—needless to say—turn out to be hopelessly, pathetically wrong. In his early days as an investor, this was, alas, the sort of garbage that would give him pause.

    6. Put retirement first. Buying a house or sending your kids to college shouldn’t be your top goal. Instead, retirement should be. It’s so expensive to retire that, if you don’t save at least a modest sum in your 20s, the math quickly becomes awfully tough—and you’ll need a huge savings rate to amass the nest egg you need.

    7. You’ll end up treasuring almost nothing you buy. Over the years, he had had fleeting desires for all kinds of material goods. Most of the stuff he purchased has since been thrown away. This is an area where millennials seem far wiser than us baby boomers. They’re much more focused on experiences than possessions—a wise use of money, says happiness research.

    8. Work is so much more enjoyable when you work for yourself. These days, he earn just a fraction of what he made during my six years on Wall Street, but he is having so much more fun. No meetings to attend. No employee reviews. No worries about getting to the office on time or leaving too early. he is working harder today than he ever have. But it doesn’t feel like work—because it’s his choice and it’s work he is passionate about.

    9. Will our future self approve? As we make decisions today, he think this is a hugely powerful question to ask—and yet it’s only in recent years that he had learned to ask it.

    When we opt not to save today, we’re expecting our future self to make up the shortfall. When we take on debt, we’re expecting our future self to repay the money borrowed. When we buy things today of lasting value, we’re expecting our future self to like what we purchase.

    Pondering our future self doesn’t just improve financial decisions. It can also help us to make smarter choices about eating, drinking, exercising and more.

    10. Relax, things will work out. As he watch his son, daughter and son-in-law wrestle with early adult life, he glimpse some of the anxiety that he suffered in my 20s and 30s.

    When you’re starting out, there’s so much uncertainty — what sort of career you’ll have, how financial markets will perform, what misfortunes will befall you. And there will be misfortunes. he’d had my fair share.

    But if you regularly take the right steps—work hard, save part of every paycheck, resist the siren song of get-rich-quick schemes—good things should happen. It isn’t guaranteed. But it’s highly likely. So, for goodness’ sake, fret less about the distant future, and focus more on doing the right things each and every day.

    You can follow Jonathan Clements on Twitter @ClementsMoney and on Facebook at Jonathan Clements Money Guide.

    Ideas for Frugal Living | Three Life Lessons | Fidelity

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    “The lessons they taught us about money—about not spending more than we have, saving what we can, and splurging occasionally and mindfully”

    Three (3) lasting lessons from my frugal parent

    Frugal living can help separate the important financial expenses from the not so important. Learn helpful lessons and ideas on frugal living here.

    BY JEANNE THOMPSON FROM FIDELITY – 06/07/2019

    I’ll never forget my first “real” vacation.

    Most of our family vacations were camping trips where we slept together in a tent or a pop-up trailer and my mom cooked for my 4 siblings and me at the campsite. But the summer after fifth grade, my father decided to take me, my mom, and my 2 older sisters with him on a business trip to California.

    That trip really stood out. I remember relaxing by the pool in sunny San Diego, sipping Shirley Temples with my sisters. We were fascinated by the elevators in our big hotel and rode them up and down until we were sternly told to stop. Simply put, it was paradise.

    This trip was an unusual extravagance for my parents, too. You can’t raise 5 children on a limited income without being very frugal. And my parents, who were both first-generation Americans, were used to getting by on very little. Excess was not an option. At Christmas, my mom would save nice wrapping paper and reuse it; boxes were also recycled for many holidays to come. Folding a little piece of wrapping paper in half, writing a note inside, and taping it to a gift worked just as well as buying a greeting card. She reused everything from tin foil to plastic baggies. Her approach to money and possessions was pretty consistent: “Make do with what you have.”

    These habits and quirks used to make us laugh. Today, I appreciate the example my parents set. I resist spending money on big-ticket items. My car, for instance, is a 2010 model and has 150,000 miles on it. And most of the furniture in our house is at least a decade old (if not a few decades). I’m not about spending a lot on furniture —with a teenage son, our couch becomes a dumping ground for lacrosse equipment more often than not. I even save nice wrapping paper from time to time, much to the amusement of my kids. And because of the warm memories from that long-ago California trip, I’d much rather spend money on experiences my family can enjoy, like vacations, than on stuff.

    Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I like to believe that my parents’ mindful approach to spending lives on in my kids, who seem to appreciate the value of a dollar on some days at least. My college-age daughter takes pride in her 5-star rating on a ride-hailing app because it entitles her to discounts and coupons. My son, a high school senior, is already savvy about mutual funds and 401(k)s—thanks to conversations he tunes into at home and an intro to business class he takes at school. Both kids know that they need to budget for indulgences beyond the basics and that they’ll have to pay for them with money earned from their jobs.

    Both of my parents are gone now, but their frugal approach to working diligently and saving money allowed them to raise kids. And not only that: They put enough away to build a nest egg that funded some retirement travel to Europe, Russia, and Alaska in their golden years. By then my father came around to reasoning: “You can’t take it with you.”

    They still managed to leave something behind. The lessons they taught us about money—about not spending more than we have, saving what we can, and splurging occasionally and mindfully—are with all of us. And those occasional splurges they encouraged us to enjoy are as sweet as those long-ago Shirley Temples under the warm California sun.

    — Read on www.fidelity.com/mymoney/frugal-living-ideas-and-life-lessons

    A Man is What He Thinks

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    “A man is literally what he thinks.” James Allen

    James Allen, a British philosophical author of ‘As a Man Thinketh’, wrote, “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. As the plant springs from, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.”

    The things you choose to focus on, your thoughts, determines how you perceive the world – and influences many of the experiences you have as a result. If you focus only on the negative things in your world, the world can seem like a terrible place and your mood and outlook may suffer.

    “Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that is exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be, whether we’ll admit it or not.” Earl Nightingale

    But when you focus on the positive things in your world, you see that the world is actually full of faith, hope, love, and joy. There is kindness and beauty that inspires people to do incredible things.  Each man holds the key to their own perception and focus, good or bad. He also hold the key to everything that enters into his life. By working patiently and intelligently upon his thoughts and focus, he may remake his life, his behaviors and transform his circumstances. 

    “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” James Allen

    Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplished anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in.

    “He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.” James Allen

    The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of faith and knowledge. The people who embrace readily doubt and fear, who refuses to slay them, hinder himself at every step.

    Changing the Subconscious Mind

    Daily affirmations are techniques you use to begin he process of improving your life. Affirmations are simply statements that describe a goal or thought in its already completed state. Positive affirmation helps eliminate negative and limiting beliefs.

    Affirmations can transform an individual’s comfort zone from a limited one keeping them trapped in mediocrity to a more expanded one where anything is possible. It helps to replace your “I can’ts” with “I cans,” and your fears and doubts with confidence and aspirations.

    Affirmations are reminders to your unconscious mind to stay focused on your goals and to come up with solutions to challenges and obstacles that might get in the way.

    “These things we bring on ourselves through our habitual way of thinking,”

    Daily affirmations are simple, positive statements declaring specific goals in their completed states. Affirmations also hold a key to creating the life of your dreams. Successful people have long known that using willpower alone to energize their success isn’t enough.

    Let go of negative beliefs

    It is important to let go of and not focus on negative thoughts and images. Instead, individuals should bombard their subconscious mind with new thoughts and images that are positive and stated in the present tense.

    In closing, William James said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.”

    James also said,

    ”If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. If you wish to be good, you will be good – only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

    References:

    1. Allen, James, As a Man Thinketh: Original 1902 Edition
    2. http://www.jamesallenlibrary.com/authors/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh
    3. https://www.jackcanfield.com/blog/practice-daily-affirmations/
    4. https://www.jackcanfield.com/blog/become-a-millionaire-never-too-late/

    The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

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    Habits are choices that you continue doing repeatedly without actually thinking about them.

    The Power of Habit, written by New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg, explains why habits exist and how they can be changed. According to Duhigg, if people can understand how behaviors became habits, they can restructure those patterns in more constructive ways.

    Additionally, understanding and changing habits is one of the most important thing in developing good personal financial behaviors or eliminating bad personal financial behaviors.

    Source:

    1. https://charlesduhigg.com/books/the-power-of-habit/
    2. https://www.shortform.com/summary/the-power-of-habit-summary-charles-duhigg
    3. https://fastertomaster.com/the-power-of-habit-by-charles-duhigg/

    37 Earl Nightingale Quotes That Will Empower You to Soar High | Inc.com

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    Earl Nightingale had a passion and mission to improve the lives of other people. In his view, he concluded:

    “We become what we think about”

    This fact, “we become what we think about”, is the Secret Power of Mindset. We are currently and will continue to be what we think about. Essentially, he advised that we are in control of our thoughts.

    Additionally, he stated that we are creatures of habit. We tend to follow, either consciously or sub-consciously, the picture or script in our minds created by our past environment, our parents, our communities and the region from which we come. For better or for worst.

    Instead, we must start imagining our lives the way we want it. We must create a picture in our mind and think about that picture of our future self steadfastly all day long. We must believe it.

    Once we do, we will start making different choices in line with our picture…our self-image. We will take small steps in the right direction.

    “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going”

    He advised that goals are the destinations or effects of our thoughts, that is what we have been thinking and always think about is what we become. Here are 6 steps Earl Nightingale recommended that will help us achieve our goals:

    1. Give yourself a definite goal.
    2. Quit running yourself down.
    3. Stop thinking of all the reasons you cannot be successful and instead, think of all the reasons why you can.
    4. Trace your attitudes back through your childhood and try to discover where you first got the idea you couldn’t be successful – if that’s the way you’ve been thinking.
    5. Change the attitude you have of yourself by writing out the description of the person you’d like to be.
    6. Act the part of the successful person you have decided to become.

    “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

    If a man is working toward a pre-determined goal and knows where he’s going, that man is a success. If he’s not doing that, he’s a failure. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

    When you have an attitude of altitude, and when you are grateful for what you have, your chances to have a meaningful and successful life are greater. Start where you are now to develop this mindset. You have the potential to do many things, even those things you may think are impossible. Broaden your vision and keep moving forward–the sky truly is the limit.

    Earl Nightingale was a motivational speaker and writer. He firmly believed the key to success can be found in these six simple words: We become what we think about. And, he encouraged us to:

    “Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.” – Earl Nightingale

    — For Earl Nightingale’s Quotes, read on www.inc.com/peter-economy/37-earl-nightingale-quotes-that-will-empower-you-to-soar-high.html

    References:

    1. http://www.asamanthinketh.net/files/EN_Greatest_Discover_eBook.pdf
    2. http://wordpress.nightingale.com/articles/is-your-personal-corporation-growing/

    “William James said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He also said,”If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. If you wish to be good, you will be good – only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.” ― Earl Nightingale

    Personal Finance: 4 Ways to Save Money and Improve Your Money Management Skills | Brian Tracy

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    “Believe you’re the person you must become…”

    Virtually every single person in America who is financially independent started off with nothing. But they acquired good personal finance habits, learned how to save money, and improve their money management skills, eventually becoming some of the most successful people in their communities. And anything that anyone else has done, you can probably do as well.

    Save Money By Using A Long Time Perspective

    To save money and become financially independent you must begin living on less than you earn even if you are deeply in debt. One of the most important guarantors of your personal finance success is called “Long time perspective.”

    Take the long view.

    Develop a long term attitude toward yourself and your financial future and begin thinking in terms of where you want to be in five and ten years. This long-time perspective will have an inordinate impact on your personal finance habits and money management skills in the present, and will help you save money over the years.

    The starting point of financial independence is described in George Klasson’s book, The Richest Man in Babylon, as “Pay yourself first.” He says that, “A part of all you earn is yours to keep.” If you just save 10% of your gross earnings every single paycheck over the course of your working lifetime, you will become financially independent and gain personal finance success. In fact, if you saved $100 per month from the time you started work at age 20 until the time you retired at age 65, and this $100 per month earned 10% per annum return, compounded, you would be worth more than $1,100,000 when you retired, in addition to social security pensions and everything else. Major take-away from The Richest Man in Babylon are – pay yourself first, live within your means, invest your money wisely, and prepare for the future.

    — Read on www.briantracy.com/blog/financial-success/personal-finance-money-management-tips-save-money/