Get Happy. Get Rich.
Get Healthy. Get Confident.

Did you know that most lottery winners end up in back in the same financial situation within a few years of their win? There are a few reasons for this such as spending money carelessly and not knowing how to deal with such big change, but there’s another reason for this surprising fact that I want to talk about today.

Based on our upbringing, our environment, and the people we spend time with, many of us have an idea of what we can expect to get out of life and the types of achievements we can make. As these things can and do have a huge influence on us, they unconsciously stop us from advancing past this conditioning.

Whenever we come into a large sum of money, there’s a good chance that we’ll spend it on the things we need or want. That’s not inherently a bad thing. However, wants and needs are not the only reasons. There’s a good chance that the conditioning of your past and those around you makes you believe that you aren’t “supposed” to have such wealth, so you spend it on things in order to go back to normal and return to your comfort zone.

It’s not just the area of money where this happens. Think about times where you may have been on the verge of success in sports or academics, only for things to unexpectedly go wrong at the last minute. You may even find that despite your gains in the areas of skill and knowledge, you haven’t moved that far up the career ladder in recent years.

Of course, there are times when life genuinely does get in the way and things are out of your control, but if you’re like a lot of people, you may notice your financial situation has been very similar for a number of years, and that can’t just be down to external factors.

The main reason psychologists believe that most lottery winners fall back into their previous wealth levels is because they have an ingrained belief about the value they’re worth, so they unconsciously fall back into their prior life situation. It’s not instant, but it does happen.

Now that you’re aware that you may have ingrained beliefs about your true worth that are holding you back, you can do something about them. This should help you when you finally do win the lottery and help to ensure that you don’t blow all of your cash, but more realistically it should help you climb the corporate ladder, keep more of the money you do make, and help you find limiting beliefs in other areas of your life that may be holding you back.

Become Aware of Your Success Limits

A good way to move past your current success limits is to identify them. As of this moment, you may not be sure whether you actually have any. After all, if I asked if you wanted me to give you a million dollars, I’m sure you would say yes.

I encourage you to think back to your financial situation over the past few years and see if it has remained at a similar level. Sure, there will be ups and downs along the way, but there’s probably a constant where you end up.

Look at how your parents handled money and see if you can see yourself taking similar actions with yours.

How do your friends deal with money? Their actions have a huge influence on where you expect yourself to be financially. Research has shown time and time again that we’re never far from the wealth levels of our closest friends.

Find Logical Reasons to Eliminate Limiting Beliefs

While awareness is the first and perhaps most important step to getting past your success limits, you also need to look at any limiting beliefs you may have about money or other areas of your life. If I did really give you that million dollars, would you feel like you deserve it. Would you feel worthy of having so much wealth?

Why? Why not?

Realise that you’re not cut from a different cloth to the thousands of people that find themselves as new millionaires each year. Read autobiographies and interviews of successful people to find that many of them didn’t come from the greatest background. You’ll also find most rich people are not obnoxious jerks which is a common view many people have, which is also probably holding you back financially.

Follow stories from people who started out with a poor or typical background and worked their way up to financial success. You’ll see that this has enabled them to become more giving in their day to day lives.

Once you’re aware of your success limits which are probably fueled by limiting beliefs then it’s your job to find logical reasons why they don’t deserve to exist, so you can move past them.

Surround Yourself with Successful People

Although a lot of people are happy with their current social circle, you may have to broaden your horizons if you want to take your life situation to the next level. I know this isn’t a very nice thing to read, and it feels a little uncomfortable typing it out, but it’s very true.

To put truth to this statement, consider whether you’re in the same financial league as the people you spend most time with. There’s a good chance that you’re not far from them. Coincidentally, since I’ve started making a lot more money, I’ve found that the people I associate and spend more time with are also very successful in this area of their lives.

I’m not telling you to ditch your social circle, but definitely look to expand your network. It can be hard to see how much influence the people in your life have until you spend time with those who are doing well financially and see that they just “rub off on you”.

I’ve you’ve made it to the end of the post, then I take back what I said in the title. Just donate some of that million to charities for me.

I think it’s fair to say that Entourage is the best TV show I have seen my whole life.

For those of you who don’t know what Entourage is about, let me give you a brief summary. Entourage is a story about the life of a rising movie star Vincent Chase, his brother Johnny Chase, his best friend and manager of his career Eric Murphy and his good friend and driver Turtle.

These 4 guys grew up together back in Queens, New York and are best friends. Vince went from being a nobody to celebrity movie star by acting as the hero and lead role in the movie Aquaman. E (Eric Murphy) is Vince’s best friend since they were 6 years old and he is also the manager of Vince’s career. In other words, E does all the organising and gets Vince great roles in movies. Of course, Vince also has an agent, Ari Gold, who’s job it is to get Vince good roles in movies. Ari is quite a character and although he can be quite an asshole, he has some very respectable moral strength and good boundaries.

What makes Entourage so appealing is that it follows the life of a movie star in Beverly Hills. You get to see all the mansions, flashy cars, private jets, trips across the world, crazy parties, models, beautiful actresses. There are even many appearances of real-life celebrities like Kanye, TI, Mary J Blige, Matt Damon, David Schwimmer and more. But besides all that, you get to feel like you are living that life. The 4 guys are all so close and good friends that it feels like you are right there as part of their group when you are watching the show.

What I really loved about Entourage is how it shows that even someone like Vincent Chase, who goes from a nobody to instant world-wide celebrity after starring in the movie Aquaman, gets a series of bad luck and setbacks that almost bring him to the edge of breaking-down. That is something that I can really relate to because I have gone through a series of setbacks and bad luck for a good 3 years in a row and I thought it just happened to me. The lesson is that even though things get difficult, just keep your dukes up and stay in the ring. Never give up.

NOTE: If you have not seen entourage yet and you do not want me to ruin the show for you then you should not read the rest of this post because I am about to reveal some of the big plots and events that happen in the show.

After Vince has his initial success with acting in Aquaman and makes a few million dollars, he gets dozens of offers for roles in other movies. These offers were each worth millions of dollars, but because Vince was looking for something special, he turned all these offers down. He was not in a rush and wasn’t in it for the money, he wanted to act in a movie that he was passionate about and that would show the world that he is a real actor. Time went by, the guys enjoyed life, partied it up, more offers were turned down and still nobody was worried in the slightest because they were all confident that Vince would get another fantastic role in a fabulous movie.

Eventually Vince was able to get his hands on a project he had been wanting to do for two years. He had the chance to buy the script of the movie and create the movie himself. Vince and E decided that they both really wanted to do this, so Vince sold his house and used everything he owned to buy the script, and E put the majority of his own money into this project too. They found an investor who put up $30 million and they found a brilliant (but rather eccentric) director willing to do the movie with them.

Vince, E and the rest of the crew spent months filming the movie in Columbia, and after all that hard work and effort were finally rewarded with a film they thought was absolutely brilliant and would win Oscars. Their movie would first be unveiled to the public at the Cannes film festival. Due to all the hype and excitement around the movie Vince and the crew got an offer of $75 million dollars before the buyer had even seen the movie. It seemed like life could not get any better.

Then…life took a turn down a bad road. Their film was a total disaster at Cannes. People hated it. The buyer who had offered $75 million for the film before withdrew his offer and said that he hadn’t signed anything so they could sue him if they wanted. Good luck…his company was based in Dubai.

The failure of Vince’s own movie had drastic influence on his public image, and all of a sudden there were no more offers for millions of dollars. Vince was very low on cash (close to broke) since he had put all his own money into this movie. However, he was still not worried and convinced things would work out as they always do.

More time passed, more fun was had, more parties were thrown and still no job offers…

Vince finally got a break when E found some writers with a great script. E managed to get the script to Edward Norton who wanted to make the movie, and with some changes in management of a movie studio, Vince was able to get a role in this movie. Everything looked great again until…

Vince was on set, the scenes were being shot, it all looked perfect. But the lead actor kept stealing Vince’s lines…and the director was okay with it. In fact, Vince discovered that the director hated him and didn’t want him on the movie at all. Shortly thereafter, Vince gets fired off the movie and the movie gets shut down due to it being over-budget. Vince and the guys’ world comes crashing down. At this point Vince has really lost hope and begins to feel like he will never get a good role in a movie again.

E tries his best to get Vince a role and as a last resort uses the footage from Vince’s recent movie that was never made (and that Vince got fired from). E’s efforts don’t seem to make any progress and when Vince hears about it he gets into an argument with E. Vince blames E for all the lack of success in the last months and actually fires him. Vince fires his best friend and manager who he has known since he was 6 years old. This is how far the setbacks have driven Vince into a corner. All the time up to this point, Vince has pretty much shrugged his shoulders and maintained the conviction that everything would work out as it always has. Not anymore…the setbacks have finally gotten to him and as a result he took it out on his best friends.

Fortunately, E’s efforts of sending the footage of the unfinished film resulted in some powerful eyeballs viewing that footage, and got Vince requested for the lead role in a MAJOR movie. This was Vince’s comeback, and when Vince realised that he got the part because of E’s efforts, he immediately flew over to see him, apologized and got him back as his friend and manager.

Parting Words

This was a very brief summary of the entire six seasons of the show ‘Entourage’ and doesn’t come close to conveying its awesomeness. I really, really love that show!

The lessons that stood out from Entourage for me were:

• Even if success and money get handed to you on a silver platter, don’t take it for granted.




• Just because you have success or money or friends right now, does not mean that you will always have it.




• In life there will be days, weeks, months or years where you get setbacks or experience failures. You will make wrong decisions. Sometimes these setbacks keep coming, and they keep coming for periods of time that are longer than you expect them to last. Sometimes these setbacks will drive you to the point where you get really desperate, fearful or where you completely lose faith. The only thing you can do is trust and believe in yourself and keep trying the best you can, things will get better.

Where To Watch Entourage

If you haven’t watched Entourage yet and you’d like to start (which I absolutely recommend) then you have two options.

http://www.tvshow7.com/watch-entourage-online

This is often not because you have amnesia or Alzheimer’s, but because you do not have anything to show for all the hours of the day that you were awake. In this article I’m going to give you some time-management tips that will help you to be a whole lot more productive if that is what you want to achieve.

With more and more marketers and businesses competing for your attention every single day, there are plenty of distractions to keep you from being productive. Television, Facebook, Twitter, cell-phones, magazines and food to name a few.

I’m not able to prove it, but I have spent countless hours sitting on Facebook and other social networking sites. If there was some sort of database that kept track of the time I’ve wasted I think I’d get pretty sick to the stomach. I have gained nothing from all that wasted time, and I can’t even say that it was really fun to do.

Why do we all spend hours, days and weeks of our precious lives (time that will never come back) on things that have absolutely minimal if not zero benefit?

After realizing this fact and making some changes in my life, I have discovered a simple secret to sky-rocket my productivity. Even now that I am more productive, I still have time that I spend on things that are relatively unimportant. (I’ll explain later on).

An Analytical Look At Our Day

• Fact: We all have 24 hours in our day.




• We all need to sleep (some more than others) but I think it’s safe to say that 8 hours is a good amount of time to rest our bodies and minds. This leaves us with 16 hours to get things done.




• Of those 16 hours we need to eat, drink, shower etc. which (if totally necessary) could be reduced to 30 minutes but most people will take 2 hours or more per day for these activities. This leaves us with 14 productive hours every single day.




• Our society has trained us that the norm is a 9-5 shift at work (8 hours). Add traveling to and from work (2 hours) and it leaves you with a measly 4 hours to do something for yourself or to have fun. That is not much is it?

Did you ever think about how productive most people are during that 8 hour work shift?

Many times people will be able to do the work they do in an 8 hour shift in just one or two hours if they really focused and worked.

One of the reasons for the lack of productivity is the fact that working for a boss requires you to remain present for the entire 8 hour shift. This results in employees spreading their work out accordingly, even when it could be done in a much shorter period of time.

When you work for yourself however, wasting your own time is like shooting yourself in the foot. I think it’s better to make the most of your time and get as much done as quickly as possible so that you can enjoy the rest of your day for either more work or pleasure.

Sky-Rocket Your Productivity

The easiest way to have a lot of time to be productive is by not wasting it on things that are unproductive.

I know it sounds logical but to apply this principle is not as easy as it sounds. Distractions apply to any kind of work in any environment, so if you can’t relate to my examples I am sure you can think of situations in your own circumstance. I like to give examples of being distracted in the virtual world (online) because I work on the internet from home. This means Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Email, Skype, MSN and random websites are all trying to suck me in to their little world to keep me from doing what I want to achieve.

Minutes turn into hours and before you know it, you are spending more time on these distractions than you are on your actual work. I realised this a few weeks ago and decided to implement some changes. Here is what I did:

• I deleted all social profiles (Except Facebook which I keep mainly for people who add me from my blog).




• I deleted all the people I’m following on twitter and only follow around 60 people who I have a genuine connection with. (As a result I may not be following some people I am friends with but this is not on purpose) I used to follow around 20 000 people but of course I didn’t know or care about the vast majority.




• I stopped logging into Msn messenger.




• I stopped constantly checking email and do it only once a day.




• I deleted all irrelevant Skype contacts. For example, I would chat to girls on the other side of the world on a regular basis who I might only see once every few years. I realized there is little point in it and I could put that time to better use.




• I write all my ideas and tasks down and plan my day.

The Result:

I have so much more time to be productive that I don’t know what to do with it.

Since I have made these changes, I have been writing a 1200 word article every day of the week. I have been working on my affiliate sites again and writing articles to promote them. I have time to read books and do research on subjects that are necessary for my blogging and internet marketing.

All in all, I think I’m doing double the amount of work I was before the time and I still have time to spare.

Get More Out Of Your Day

Whatever environment you work in, it is possible to be more productive by cutting out all time spent on unproductive things. I can’t tell you what those things are, but you can certainly identify them.

Why not do a little experiment to cut out those time-wasting activities and use that time and energy to focus on achieving something that you want to get done? Try it for a month since it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. If you don’t notice a change after one month then you can revert back to your old ways.

I am pretty certain that if you cut out time-wasting activities in the same way that I did that you will notice a considerable difference in your productivity.

There is another reason why this secret of cutting out time-wasting activities contributes so massively to your productivity.

When I had all the distractions I mentioned, they would be on my mind even if I wasn’t actively doing them. I would always be wondering if someone had tried to get in touch with me, made a comment on my profile or sent me an email. By removing the distractions, I also removed the potential wondering if someone had gotten in touch with me. This gave me a lot of thoughts to use on my work and my projects instead of being pre-occupied by unimportant things.

It’s scary to think that nothing you do today will matter at some point in the future because our world as you know it today will not exist anymore.

The degree you studied 12 years to get… the millions of dollars that took you decades to put together… the dream house you spent 5 years planning and building.

There are all sorts of possible scenarios that could turn years of hard work into nothing. The population of the world is growing like crazy and things like war, civil unrest, a collapse of the financial system and imposing of martial law by governments, natural disasters (like the oil spill that could have an enormous impact on food production) or disease could reduce our numbers enormously. Of course it is possible that none of these things will affect you in your lifetime. It could happen next year and it could happen next century.

However, from what I know after studying history, almost everything that gets plotted on a graph that goes up in a parabolic curve, usually comes crashing down to it’s previous break-out point before the parabolic explosion. It’s just a matter of time.

What goes up…must come down.

I took the liberty to grab various graphs to explain what I mean.

Crude Oil

As you may remember, the price of oil shot up to just over $140 per barrel back in 2007/2008. Gas prices shot up and as a result of the record high oil prices,many other sectors also shot up (commodities,metals, stocks etc.). When oil was at those record high levels, analysts on TV were talking about $200 per barrel oil and even higher. In fact…there were analysts from huge companies saying that oil would never come below $100 per barrel again, and they listed ‘peak oil’ as one of the reasons for this.

Well…after that peak, oil pretty much tanked and hit a low of $30 per barrel again. This $30 per barrel was around the break-out point on the chart before oil went parabolic and exploded up to those $145 per barrel prices.

Uranium

The same thing happened with uranium.

Wheat

The same thing happened with wheat.

Nasdaq Composite Index

I was still in primary school when it happened so I don’t remember much of the tech bubble in the Nasdaq Composite Index (which is an index of many technology stocks) in the late 1990′s.

Unfortunately this chart is a logarithmic chart (meaning that the distance from 100-200 is the same distance as 200-400 etc. on the chart) and it does not visually show the decline after the peak as a ‘normal’ chart (where the distance from 100-200 is the same as 200-300).

However, the point is that from the all-time high peak of the Nasdaq in the early 2000′s of 5048, the index crashed to a low of 1139 which is a whopping 77.4% decline!

Tulip Mania

The Tulip Mania happened way back in the 1600′s in the Netherlands, so if you haven’t heard of it I would not be surprised. I added this example to show that bubbles are not a recent phenomenon, they have probably been around as long as man-kind.

If you want to read more about it you can do so on Wikipedia here.

World Population

The reason why I presented all these charts is to indicate how after a parabolic explosion (read as massive change in equilibrium), the balance has to be restored and this is often done by a huge decline in order to try to restore equilibrium.

Now take a look at the human population growth plotted against time on a chart:










Source




Does that not look like a giant, huge, scary parabolic chart?

Deducing from all previous parabolic charts in history, it is logical to expect an enormous decline in the human population in order to restore balance and equilibrium.

What Is The Point of This Post?

The point I want to make is that we as a human race have created (and still are creating) a massive imbalance in the world. Not only have we multiplied our species to billions of people, we are destroying almost everything that our beautiful planet has to offer.

We are destroying vegetation, forests, habitats, ecosystems, food-chains. We are polluting the oceans with toxic waste (and enormous oil-spills). We are polluting our atmosphere and drinking-water.

If we do not collectively (as a human race) do something to stop and reverse this imbalance that we have created and still are creating, then it is going to be restored for us and hundreds of millions of people will be wiped off the face of the earth.

How will our population decrease by a few billion people?

I don’t know. It could be through war, disease, natural disasters, lack of food, pollution or many other factors I can’t think of right now. I also cannot say when this correction of the imbalance will take place, it could be in the next decade and it could be in the next century. Who knows.

All I know is that we are destroying the planet we live on.

You can help to make positive change by wasting as little energy as possible and by polluting as little as possible and of course by spreading the word to as many people as you know. If everyone makes an effort, we can make a big, big change for the better in our world.

When it comes to work I think there is nothing better than being your own boss and working for yourself. I have been working for myself since I was 17 years old and can’t say anything but the fact that I love it and wouldn’t want to change it at all.

That being said, working for yourself is not always as glamorous as it sounds and today I want to reveal the benefits and drawbacks of being your own boss.

Overall, I feel that being your own boss is the best thing in the world. Even with all the responsibility of having the success of the business entirely in your own hands and with the discipline needed to focus on your goals and not be distracted by all the fun things, I would not trade it for working for a boss.

Not everyone would enjoy being their own boss and working for themselves. The discipline required and responsibility is too much for some people.

Some ideas of ways to make money while working for yourself are:

• Forex Trading
• Be a Blogger
• Be anInternet Marketer
• Write a Book
• Make Music
• Make a movie
• Start a brick-and-mortar business
• Walk Dogs

I know that many bloggers (myself included) talk about quitting your job and working for yourself. The truth is that you should think very carefully about the decision of quitting your job and working for yourself.

Do you think you can handle that kind of responsibility to make decisions and make your business successful?

Do you have the discipline to push yourself to work hard when there is nobody to tell you to be at work at 8am?

I mentioned it earlier but I will do so again: when you quit your job, fire your boss and begin to work for yourself, make sure that you have at least 6 months but preferably 12 months or more worth of living expenses saved up. The last thing you want when working for yourself is the added pressure of thinking about how you are going to pay rent or buy food at the end of the month. That way you give yourself 12 or 24 months of complete breathing freedom where you can totally focus on your business and make it profitable and successful. If you fail and exhaust those savings after a year or two you can always decide to get another job and find a new boss.

I wish you the best of luck on your journey of working for yourself!

You want to achieve the results and get the benefits from doing the work and you know the consequences of what will happen if you do not do the work. But you still cannot be assed to get started.

How To Find Motivation

I think we have all been in the situation where we really want to get something done but every neuron in our bodies is resisting even the slightest effort to get started and take action.

Personally I have that feeling on a regular basis. There are blog posts to write, affiliate sites to be worked on and links to be built for getting better rankings. I want the results for the work, but I just can’t be bothered to start.

Have you experienced this?

Do you find yourself doing all sorts of random activities just to pass time so that you do not have to start working on your idea?

You do things like trying out yoga for the first time or trying to levitate objects with the power of your mind to avoid getting started. You become overly eager to run annoying little errands for whoever is around at the time so that you just don’t have to get started on your own project.

Here are some great motivation techniques! Print them out and hang them on your mirror or on the inside of your front door so that you will see them every day.

Just Do It

The 3 simple words in Nike’s slogan that made the brand so famous and well-known. Just Do It!

When there is something that you know you want to do but you can’t seem to get started, Nike’s slogan is all you need.

Your idea is not going to materialize by itself, you are not going to build muscle without exercising and you are not going to be successful without doing any work.

But What If You Could Find A Magic Genie?

Unfortunately there is not easy way to do something.

There are no magic fairies and the chances of finding a magic genie by rubbing old oil lamps are pretty slim.









Just Do It!

Get started. The sooner you start, the sooner you finish.

If you have to, grab your Ipod and put your favorite song on repeat, but just dive head first into your work or project and do it. That is the best motivation there is to get started on something you know you want to do but can’t bring up the energy to get started with.

Still Not Motivated?

Are you still not motivated to get started?

Well, you’re still reading this article so I presume you need a few more words of wisdom. I was prepared for that, and as you know, a picture can say more than 1000 words.

Serious Cat is the answer. Print him out and stick him on your mirror. Whenever you procrastinate, Serious Cat will get your lazy butt to work.

All Jokes Aside…

I hope that you enjoyed this slightly humorous post.

All jokes aside, the best way to get motivated to do something you don’t really want to do is to just do it. There is no better or other way to explain it.

Don’t think about how much work it is going to be or how long it is going to take you, just get started.