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/

Saving vs Investing

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“…(wealthly) people see every dollar as a ‘seed’ that can be planted to earn a hundred more dollars … then replanted to earn a thousand more dollars.”

T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Only about 55 percent of Americans invest in the stock market, according to a 2015 Gallup poll. For Americans to create and grow wealth, they must save and take steps to learn about and start investing.

Saving and investing often are used interchangeably, but there is a significant difference.

  • Saving is setting aside money you don’t spend now for emergencies or for a future purchase. It’s money you want to be able to access quickly, with little or no risk, and with the least amount of taxes.
  • Investing is buying assets such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds or real estate with the expectation that your investment will make money for you. Investments usually are selected to achieve long-term goals with increased risk and volatility. Generally speaking, investments can be categorized as income investments or growth investments through capital appreciation. 

Start Investing Early

One of the best ways to build wealth is by saving and investing over a long period of time. The earlier you start, the easier it is for your money to grow. If you have a workplace retirement plan, consider enrolling and maximizing your contribution—there are tax advantages and you may even be eligible for a match from your employer. Set up regular, automatic contributions. Investing early is especially important for retirement.

Make savings a priority

Keep your focus on your dreams and goals. Do the best you can to save and invest at least 15%-20%. It may not be always possible to hit that target every year due more pressing financial demands, but try. Your future depends on your efforts—make your retirement a priority.

Consider this …

If you deposited $2,000 in a savings account at 3 percent annual interest, it would grow to $3,612 in 20 years (before taxes). The same $2,000 invested in a stock mutual fund earning an average 10 percent a year would grow to $13,455 in 20 years (before taxes).

Reference:

  1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/182816/little-change-percentage-americans-invested-market.aspx

9 Nuggets Of Rock-Solid Advice For Retirement-Age Clients | Seeking Alpha

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Summary

Investing in retirement is not a static activity.

It requires keeping up with and adapting to changes as we help our clients navigate the shifting investing landscape in the years ahead.

There will surely be plenty of surprises. Why not help our clients proactively prepare for them?

“If we collect a rock a year, by the time I’m ready to retire, we’ll have a lot of rocks.” – Michael Maslin, The New Yorker

Collecting rocks is not a great retirement strategy. But planning years ahead of time is. We are fortunate to work with clients who have had the foresight and discipline to save early and accumulate sufficiently large nest eggs for retirement.

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5 Retirement Rules to Live By

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Many people look forward to retirement because it represents freedom. You don’t have to get up and go to work every day or do what a boss tells you.

But just because your time is your own after you leave work doesn’t mean you have no rules to live by in your later years. In fact, it may be even more important to adhere to some guidelines to make sure you don’t run out of money when you’re living on a fixed income as a retiree. 

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Corporations: Value Based and Purpose Driven

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“Doing good is good for business”

According to one corporate Chief Marketing Officer who spoke at CES 2020, sixty-three percent (63%) of global consumers purchase items from companies with purpose. Said another way, a majority of global consumers, either consciously or unconsciously, purchased goods and services from companies whose overriding purpose and values were to make the world better. Purpose must be more altruistic than just increasing shareholders returns through capital gains and growing revenue, cash flow, earnings and dividends.

Salesforce.com

Marc Benioff, founder and Co-CEO of Salesforce.com, strongly advocated that corporations, especially big technology companies, must be a force for good and that brands can play a major role in doing good. He conveyed the message during a C-Suite session this month at CES 2020 that businesses can be mutually financially successful, sustainable and philanthropic business. He stated the point that a business can and should successfully serve the interests of all stakeholders, which includes the planet. In his opinion, every corporate CEO should adopt a public school, public hospital or combat homelessness in the community they operate. In short, all stakeholders have to matter; and, the planet and local community are key stakeholders.

“Don’t read people’s lips; Watch their feet.”

Marc’s company, Salesforce.com, from its beginning is 1999, has made trust its major value and serving all stakeholders’ interests which include giving back to its community a core purpose. Putting action to their words, the company has directed one percent (1%) of corporate resources which is over $300 million (profits, equity, and time) into giving back to the community. He went as far as proposing a corporate tax to battle homelessness. As a result, Salesforce.com has been regularly ranked as one of the best places to work in America and has had a 4,000 percent return on investment (ROI) for their shareholders.

“Businesses are the greatest platform for change.”

In his opinion and how he designed Salesforce.com, businesses are the greatest platform for change and people are basically good; his intent when he left Oracle to start Salesforce.com was to create a company culture based on trust and optimized to enable employees to do good. He felt that “…purpose is defined by the company; it cannot be enforced”.

Stakeholder Capitalism

Stakeholder capitalism, Marc Benioff opined, is a more fair, a more just and a more equitable form of capitalism than its predecessor. It means paying men and women the same. It’s means embracing values of trust, truth and doing the right thing over time. He often asks technology companies’ CEO’s and boards what are their priorities, what are their highest values, and what is truly important to them. Since in his view, making money is easy; doing the right thing takes effort and dedication.

But, leadership is about who you are and what you do. CEO’s of major technology companies must look at their values and purpose. They must assess whether they’re using these influential platforms to make the world better or just to make money. Despite the recent negative news surrounding big technology companies like Facebook on issues of privacy and impacting the U.S. Presidential elections, Marc stated that they can do both…make the world better for all stakeholders and make money for shareholders.

Don’t Just Save…Value Invest

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Make the most of your money and that means investing.

For many Americans, investing can appear to be a frightening gamble. Memories of the 2008 financial crisis devastated investment accounts with paper losses more than ten years ago create the reluctance among many to invest.

However, in order to beat inflation and ensure that your savings will work for you long term, it’s crucial to invest in growth-oriented investments such as the stock market. Whether through an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan, a traditional or Roth IRA, an individual brokerage account or somewhere else, to build wealth and financial security, individuals must invest in the equity stock market. And, it is important to start investing as early as you can to give your money as much time as possible to grow.

Valuation matters, and it matters a lot.

Value investing rarely performs well in the short run. This is especially true during strong bull markets. Popular non-GARP (growth at a reasonable price) stocks are likely to be overvalued whereas unpopular value stocks will be where the best bargains can be found.

Consequently, being a value investor means being a patient investor and implies that an investor have a long-term mindset. Value investing rarely produces short-term results, because value investing usually also implies investing in out of favor stocks. This unpopularity is often why they have become bargains.

Moreover, value stocks are typically inexpensive for good reasons. Therefore, we need to ascertain whether the discounted stock price is justified or perhaps an overreaction by investors. These judgments can help us determine the level of risk we are facing and if we are being adequately compensated for taking it by the low valuations or not.

Additionally, in the long run value stocks often dramatically outperform and very often do so by taking on significantly less risk than other strategies such as momentum, or in many cases even growth. This is attributed to the fact that the risk is being mitigated by low valuation (price) and margin of safety.

As a result, the key benefit of value investing is the valuation risk mitigation element. Research demonstrates that stocks that are properly valued, or undervalued, are more defensive in a volatile or bear market.

Margin of Safety

Margin of safety is the difference between the intrinsic value of a stock against its prevailing market price. Intrinsic value is the actual worth of a company’s asset, or the present value of an asset when adding up the total discounted future income generated:

  • Deep value investing – buying stocks in seriously undervalued businesses. The main goal is to search for significant mismatches between current stock prices and the intrinsic value of these stocks. This kind of investing requires a large amount of margin to invest with and takes lots of guts, as it is risky.
  • Growth at reasonable price investing – choosing companies that have positive growth trading rates which are somehow below the intrinsic value.

Margin of safety serves as a cushion against errors in calculation. Since fair value is difficult to accurately predict, safety margins protect investors from poor decisions and downturns in the market.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/how-much-money-youd-have-if-you-invested-500-dollars-a-month-since-2009.html

Goals are Key

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“When you define your goals, you give your brain something new to look for and focus on. It’s as if you’re giving your mind a new set of eyes from which to see all the people, circumstances, conversations, resources, ideas, and creativity surrounding you.” Darren Hardy, author of Compound Effect

With goals, investors can create a realistic plan for achieving their investing objectives within a certain time frame. Since one of the biggest mistakes investors make is confusing investing with stock picking or trading. Ask many people how their money is invested and they might quickly jump to tell you the latest hot stock they’ve purchased and the investment thesis that explains why they think it’s going to take off.

Without an investment plan, what is the goal? Probably just to make some quick, easy money, which neuroscience has shown makes us feel good. Unfortunately, behavioral economics tells us that acting on such impulses tends not to end well. To be true to the term, investing must start with a specific goal corresponding to a set time horizon. The goal itself could be anything: buying a new car in two years; purchasing your first home in five years; or retiring in 40 years. What’s most important is to have the goal be the focus of your approach.

Once you’ve identified a goal, an investment plan can take shape. How much savings can you devote to it? How much time do you have? How realistic is the goal given the first two questions and the amount of risk you feel comfortable taking? If you choose to work with a Financial Advisor, he or she can help you find answers to these questions, and take you a long way to devising a strategy to help achieve that goal. 

Know your time horizon

How long do you plan to hold a stock and what purpose will it serve in your portfolio? Your trade time frame depends on your trading strategy. Generally speaking, traders fit into one of three categories:

  • Single-session traders are very active and are looking to gain from small price variations over very short periods of time.
  • Swing traders target trades that can be completed in a few days to a few weeks.
  • Position traders seek larger gains and recognize that it often takes longer than a few weeks to achieve them
  • Determine your entry strategy  Look for entry signals—for instance, divergences from trend lines and support levels—to help you place your trades. The signals you employ and the orders you use to make good on them hinge on your trading style and preferences.

Plan your exit

When it comes to an exit strategy, plan for two types of trades: those that go in your favor and those that don’t. You might be tempted to let favorable trades run, but don’t ignore opportunities to take some profits.

For example, when a trade is going your way, you could consider selling part of your position at your initial target price to make gains, while letting a portion run.

To prepare for when a trade moves against you, you can set sell stop orders underneath a stock’s support area, and if it breaks below that range, you can choose to sell.

Determine your position size

Trading is risky. A good trade plan will establish ground rules for how much you are willing to risk on any single trade. Say, for example, you don’t want to risk losing more than 2–3% of your account on a single trade, you could consider exercising portion control, or sizing positions to fit your budget.

Review your trade performance

Are you making or losing money with your trades? And importantly, do you understand why?

First, examine your trading history by calculating your theoretical “trade expectancy”—your average gain (or loss) per trade. To do this, figure out the percentage of your trades that have been profitable vs. unprofitable. This is known as your win/loss ratio. Next, compute your average gain for profitable trades and average loss for unprofitable trades. Then, subtract you average loss from your average gain to get your trade expectancy.

Profitable trades

A positive trade expectancy indicates that, overall, your trading was profitable. If your trade expectancy is negative, it’s probably time to review your exit criteria for trades.

The final step is to look at your individual trades and try to identify trends. Technical traders can review moving averages, for example, and see whether some were more profitable than others when used for setting stop orders (e.g., 20-day vs. 50-day).

Sticking to it

Even with a solid trade plan, emotions can knock you off course. This is particularly true when a trade has gone your way. Being on the winning side of a single trade is easy; it’s cultivating a continuum of winning trades that matters. Creating a trade plan is the first step in helping you think about the next trade.

Source:

  1. Lee Bohl, 5 Steps for a Smart Trade Plan, Fidelity Insights, November 21, 2019
    https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/5-steps-smart-trade-plan?cmp=em-QYD
  2. www.morganstanley.com/articles/having-goal-key-to-investing

Navy named aircraft carrier for Pearl Harbor hero Doris Miller | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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Doris Miller awarded the Navy Cross medal

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Navy announced that its next $12.5 billion Ford class aircraft carrier, CVN-81, will be named after Doris Miller, an enlisted sailor who received the Navy Cross for his valor during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when he manned a machine gun on the USS West Virginia to fire back at attacking Japanese planes.

Despite having no training in operating the big guns, he bravely jumped into action. Miller later recounted: “It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Japanese planes. They were diving pretty close to us.” Later versions of the story had Miller shooting down four Japanese planes, but the truth is he probably didn’t hit any. During the time he was firing the gun only one Japanese plane was shot down.

Miller, a mess attendant in a racially segregated rating aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, will be the first African-American to have a carrier named after him.

— Read on www.staradvertiser.com/2020/01/17/hawaii-news/navy-to-name-aircraft-carrier-for-pearl-harbor-hero-doris-miller/

The No. 1 secret to long-term investment success – MarketWatch

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The key to long-term success is to pick a good strategy and then establish a lifetime commitment to maintain that strategy regardless of what’s going on at the moment.

In the short term and the medium term, the market is unpredictable and seemingly random. But over the long term (I’m talking decades), it’s easier to figure out and predict.

If there’s a “secret” to long-term success, it’s managing your expectations.

— Read on www.marketwatch.com/story/the-no-1-secret-to-long-term-investment-success-2020-01-21