I finally decided watch the movie Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. If you are some of the few who have yet to see that movie – A successful publisher finds his life taking a turn for the surreal after a car accident with a jaded lover. Besides being a great movie, Tom Cruise’s character said, “My father wrote about this in his book. Chapter 1… Page 1… Paragraph 1: What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?… Money” It could not be worded better than that.  Before I get a lot of people telling me that life is not all about money, let me make a few clarifications:

• Contribution is more important than money
• Money does not measure one’s success or buy happiness
• Money make the world go round and round

Money

Almost everyone everywhere at one point or another has money on their mind. Whether or not they have enough, how they can get more, and what they can use it on. People who say that money is not important are just putting up a facade. You cannot tell me that money is not important to you. The clothes on your back, the reason you get up early in the morning to go to work, the mortgage payment, and car payment, all have to deal with you having and making money.

Contribution is More Important Than Money

I agree with this completely so let’s go into further detail. There are two ways you can contribute:

Contribute Your Time

You can contribute your time in several different ways. You can give people advice on how to live a better life based upon your knowledge and your personal life experiences.  Many people who write autobiographies talk about their challenges and how they were able to overcome them. Some of these people share knowledge they have gained from over 30+ years of experience.  Imagine reading 1 book like this every month for 12 months, that equals learning about 360 years of life experiences in just 1 year! Mother Teresa is a great example of a person who dedicated most of her life to helping others.  Her efforts was so highly respected, she impacted the whole world. A smaller scale example would be me, believe it or not, it takes me several hours of my time to write about knowledge and experiences I have gone through in my life. Or how about a vague example of a high school student who spends their time after school helping out at the senior center.

Contribute Your Money

I was having small debate about Donald Trump with a reader of mine on my article about losers. Even though many people portray “The Donald” to be a self-centered egomaniac that is only interested in himself and money, he is  still able to contribute more money to charities than most people do in an entire life time. In his show, The Celebrity Apprentice, they were able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for needy charity’s around the world.  You cannot donate money to charities by being poor. Contributing your time helps, but your able to do so much more with money.  Being wealthy not only allows you to contribute more money to those who need it (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), but being wealthy also means that you are able to provide jobs (employees) and help other people around them (investors) make money.

Money Does Not Measure One’s Success or Buy Happiness

Success and happiness, like beauty is determined by the eye of the beholder. To some success might be having a big house with fancy cars while to others it may be a white picket fence style house with a car the works. Happiness to some might be having $1,000,000 in the bank while to others it might be spending your life with the one you love. Filling your empty with void with materialistic objects will eventually drain out and become empty again. Buying a brand new luxury car will keep you happy for until you get the urge to want something else.

Money Makes the World Go Round

“A man with a briefcase can steal more money than 100 men with handguns.”

- Don Corleone, The Godfather

Like most ideologies, money is a double edged sward capable of doing both good and evil.  Money can help a poor man live an average life. Money can help a sick man become healthy again. Money can help a student with journey of a prestige and impeccable education. Money can take a non-astronaut into space! Whether you like it or not, money has the power to do almost anything.

“Life is miserable, no matter what. It is better to be miserable with money than without it.”

-Siva Baba

You have two choices: You can either work hard make enough money so you can live comfortly, enjoy your family, loved ones, and travel or you can continue to tell yourself that money is not a necessity in your life and live paycheck to paycheck. Money is what will pay for those guitar lessons, to donate to your favorite charity, to feed your children, to shelter you from the rain, and almost everything else you do in life. Money truely is the answer to most of the questions you have in life.

How say you?

I had this conversation with my friend Neil Patel during a lunch a few weeks ago. He worked his butt off for several years before he made it big on the web. Now he teaches people the power of branding and becoming successful. We recently discovered that he came into his version of cruise mode. I told him about the airplane analogy upon which he agreed that he has indeed leveled off. He quickly became compelled and instantly started working on various new projects and multiple ventures involving investing.

I haven’t even taken off yet

Most of you reading this will be at the level of an airplane taking off. Like in most businesses, most of you will quit because you’re scared, you’re lazy, or you just don’t think you have what it takes. Like Jeremy Schoemaker said in his last post Seven Deadly Sins.., all these are just excuses! If you really want it, then go get it! If you are looking to blog your way to success, do it! If you want to start a company but don’t have the funds, then learn the power of persuasive communication and figure out a way to sell yourself.

I’m comfortable

For those who think you’re in smooth sailing mode, think again. The world is fast paced and changing environment. If you’re not growing you are dying, not literally, but mentally and socially. When it comes to a business or a skill set, the only thing you should be comfortable with is being uncomfortable. This is because when you’re uncomfortable you grow. If you decide to relax now, it won’t be long before your competitors catch up. Take advantage of your success and use it as leverage to take yourself to the next level.

If you’re in take off mode…what are you doing to make it work?

If you’re comfortable with where you’re at, what are some ways you can decide on RIGHT NOW to become uncomfortable to help you grow?

So what exactly is mindset?

Mindset is a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations. To simplify, it means you do the things you do based on what goes on in your mind at the current period of time.

Proactive Mindset vs. Reactive Mindset

Reactive people simply react to what’s happening around them and transform themselves into a negative mindset, whilst proactive people choose how they walk, talk, and feel regardless of the conditions around them enabling them to have a positive mindset.

4 ways to have a positive mindset

1. Hang around the right people: I wrote an article just yesterday about this called: Do You Have a Friend Who’s a Looser? Get Rid of Em!
2. Be Grateful: This is easy! We all know about the things that go wrong in our lives because we’re frequently talking about them throughout the day. What about the things that are going right? You should tell people! Don’t just write down 5 things you’re grateful for, tell someone! Leave a comment below so you can have thousands of people everyday know what you’re grateful for.
3. Starting your mornings the right way: Instead of waking up at 10am, wake up at 6am or earlier. The average human being sleeps through 1/3 of their entire life! Sleep when you’re dead! Wake up early and take a morning walk, exercise, or even practice the art of meditation. Mentally prepare yourself for the rest of your day.
4. Affirmations: I personally think affirmations work, but people really don’t like doing them. So as an alternative to saying them out loud. Imagine yourself after you wake up from bed, jumping up and down and screaming your affirmations aloud like a banshee. Again, don’t say them out loud, but physically get your body into it by tightening up, clenching your fist, or raising your hands in victory! If that doesn’t get your adrenaline pumping, maybe you should go run with the bulls.

Keep in mind: There are more millionaires made after a bad economy then in a good economy. So if your goal is to become rich and make lot’s of money, now is your time to shine!
There are several ways to have a positive mindset, what do you do? Also, write down at least 1 thing that you’re grateful for.

You think it’s bad having a few collectors call you during the day, Donald had collectors calling him round the clock (international investors).  Donald came to a point where he needed to make a move so he decided to call an emergency meeting with his investors.  Everyone at the meeting was pissed and looking to get their investment return.  What the Donald did was unheard of and completely unexpected.  He asked his investors, whom he owed billions of dollars to for MORE MONEY! Many investors decided not to but several did.  This was the turning point in Donald’s life because with this new cash power, he was able to make various smart investments which brought him out of the red and into the billions of dollars he’s worth today.

When a person reaches a point of being several thousands of dollars of debt, they change into a negative depressed state of mind.  Imagine what state your mind would be in if you were over a billion dollars in debt!  When life gave The Donald lemons, he made lemonade, then sold the lemonade and made huge amounts of profits.

I’m not telling you its okay to have debt, good debt vs. bad debt, or anything about finance, I’m telling you that there will always be a time where you have a serious down.  You’ll hit rock bottom.  Maybe even more than once.  People work so hard in their endeavors and fail to reach success, yet little do they know, their success was only seconds, days , or months away.  In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells of a story of these people who were digging for gold but decided to give up.  The gold was only 3 feet away.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GET GOING - “When the situation gets critical, those who aren’t weak-willed work harder and never give up.
-Joseph P. Kennedy (1888-1969), the father of (U.S.) President John F. Kennedy

Let’s put our conscious awareness to how our brain responds to our actions.  Keep working harder and smarter to make your dreams a reality.

I for one have several major projects that require me to work extremely hard.  I know that I’m literally within a year’s period of time before I make it big time.

What are you quests, adventures, endeavors that you’re struggling with to take off?

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Has there ever been a time when you decided to write down your goals and then never looked at them again?

Why do you think that is? Beside the fact that only 50% of the world are motivated by goals, most people are simply too lazy, careless, or just forget.
The only way that goals can work are by doing one thing: TELL EVERYONE
Tell everyone you can possibly think of everywhere you go. The more people that know what your looking to accomplish, the more people that will indirectly hold you accountable. The more people that hold you accountable, the less chances you’ll forget about your goals.  Simple and true. You must still do the basics:

• Choose a goal that has true meaning and importance to you

• Write your goals as defined and specific as possible

• Have it in a place you’ll be able to see it every day. Place a reminder in your calendar to change the location every 3-4 weeks because having in the same place after a while will make the visual of your goals obsolete.

• START RIGHT NOW, not on Monday and definitely NOT ON January 1st!!!

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