Make America and You Greater

I think most of us are getting pretty feed up and bored with politics lately.  I mean every time you turn around you see or hear more news about the race for the White House and, of course, the face you see most often is that of Donald Trump.  I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of that big bully, loud-mouthed Trump to last a life-time.  This know-it-all thinks he’s the smartest man in the world but his campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again”. Every time I see that baseball cap with those words on it, I think, “Wow … when did America stop being great?”

I’ve traveled the world, visiting 84 different countries as well as living two years in the middle east and two years in England and I can say, without hesitation, that we have a great country and it’s constantly getting greater. I fear that might not hold true if Trump became president, however.

Ours truly is a land of great freedom and opportunity where you can start off being dirt poor and still become a millionaire. It happened in the 1930’s and in the 1970’s and it’s still happening today. So how does a person take advantage of our freedom’s and opportunities?

Continuing on last week’s post about the power of the brain and how we can program and teach our brain with enough repetition to act automatically without conscious thought, here’s the beginning key to achieving financial greatness in our great country. Step one is to start training your brain to calculate out at least 10% of every single dollar you earn and then you set it aside and never spend it and I mean NEVER. This is investment money, not spending money. So just keep doing that over and over again until it is such an automatic habit that you don’t even have to consciously think about it.

If you have followed me very long you know what comes next.  You take those savings after months or years and wisely invest them.  And that, my friends, is the beginning of a sure fire way to become wealthy in one of the greatest countries in the world, if not the greatest.

Next week I’ll lay out the best investments to make in today’s economy and the way to make those investments. You get started on the savings part and I’ll get you prepared for investing in the great USA.

 

The Brain and Robot Tennis

 

Sometime ago I read a book about The Secret Lives of the Brain which was actually the subtitle of the great book entitled Incognito by David Eagleman. The part of the book that really grabbed my attention was what he said about the part of the brain that you can teach exactly how to hit a tennis ball almost perfectly every time without even thinking about it.

Being an avid tennis fan and sometimes tournament player myself, and with my own experience pretty much backing up and proving what he was saying, he had my undivided attention. Many times while playing, I’ve surprised myself when I am running full speed to get to a tennis ball coming at me at 65 or 75 miles an hour, then to arrive at the exact right spot and hit the ball back to the place I was aiming. Wow, I’m thinking … how did I ever do that?

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, makes the case that tennis shots are made almost entirely without using the conscious mind. Of course, to get to the point of great non-thinking tennis shots, anyone who wants to be that good needs to use the other part of the brain–the conscious part that is the part that thinks through what goals a person wants to achieve. So with the conscious brain a tennis champion wannabe sets the goals to fulfill their dream tennis performance.

The author of this book is not just talking about these two parts of the brain being used to be a great tennis player either. You can use both parts of the brain to become very good in many areas of our lives, whether it’s to become a great public speaker, great writer of books, making a fortune, or creating super health for yourself and others. It will work for whatever you really want to do and be.

But that’s just the first part, because after you use the conscious part of your mind to set your goals, you then need to practice and drill over and over again. If you do that for many, many hours over a good length of time you will begin to program your unconscious mind so eventually it will perform for you without your thinking about it. It will be automatic. It might take thousands of hours but studies have shown that anyone that spends 10,000 hours doing one thing they most likely will become one of the best in the world at that one thing.

Under the chapter subheading “The Robot that Won Wimbledon”, David Eagleman concludes that, “The competitors at Wimbledon are rapid, efficient machines that play tennis shockingly well. They can track a ball traveling ninety miles per hour, move toward it rapidly, and orient a small surface to intersect its trajectory. And these professional tennis players do almost none of this consciously. In exactly the same way that you read letters on a page or change lanes, they rely entirely on their unconscious machinery. They are, for all practical purposes, robots. Indeed, when Ilie Nastase lost the Wimbledon final in 1976, he sullenly said of his winning opponent, Bjorn Borg, ‘He’s a robot from outer space.’”

Today I would say the same thing about Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. But remember folks these two parts of our brain can be used for many more things than tennis! Let’s all work on that.

Recognizing Reality

Did you get to read the post from last week when we started talking about common sense? Well while that was about using common sense when getting help and advice from the professionals that support your business, this week, let’s talk about common sense when deciding what financial deals to get in on. Here is just a little more from my old publication, The Financial Freedom Report.

One definition of common sense is “what is sound and prudent but often unsophisticated”. I’ve seen many very sophisticated business decisions that have lost millions of dollars. To avoid financial traps, you need a huge dose of common sense, especially when those all around you are playing sophisticated and getting wrapped up with what is hot or in vogue. Common sense will keep you from being trapped or pushed or bullied or shocked into doing a deal that you don’t want to do.

There are many high powered, complex formulas for success and financial independence, most of which are so mind boggling it would take a PhD to understand them. Many of these formulas were written by people who never actually made big money themselves but sat back and watched others do it. From a spectator’s position they think they know the answers and then they make things so complex and involved that the average person cannot understand them. Take it from me, making a lot of money in a short period of time can be done with a simple game plan. I said simple not easy, since it takes tons of work. You are probably already working very hard but maybe not with the right game plan.

When I studied the lives and fortunes of two dozen millionaires and multi-millionaires, I was looking for a common denominator, something they all did that accounted for their success. I finally noticed factors that were present in almost every fortune. I slowly eliminated those factors that didn’t show up in every case. What I ended up with was basic and somewhat obvious, although it escapes 96 percent of those who look for it.

There are four essential ingredients, and I put them into a formula I call “PSIC”, which simply translates into P=Plan, S=Save, I=Invest, C=Compound. And I will add now in order to compound at high rates you need to use leverage.  

An insistent, fast-talking, and even somewhat logical person many times can persuade somebody to do something he doesn’t really want to do. If somebody asked you if you would like to get in on this super-hot deal that will pay you a 250 percent return without any risk and without a lot of your effort, what does your common sense tell you? Common sense should tell you that if a deal were really that good, the guy trying to sell you the deal and or the promoters behind him would probably not have trouble getting the needed money as a loan from a bank.

The simple fact is, those kinds of returns don’t exist. Yes, it is possible for you to get 100 and 200 and even higher percent returns, but not without a lot of work on your part and certainly not without any risk.  Deals like that don’t come all packaged neat and simple, especially without risk and without great effort on your part. Believe me it won’t happen! If I had a deal with a return like that (and I have had those kind of deals) you’d better believe that I would be able to borrow a whole lot of money, which I have done many times, even if I had to pay 2 or 3 times the going rate of interest. Common sense is recognizing reality and then acting accordingly.

Supporting Roles in Your Success

Last week, I shared with you some great advice from an old publication of mine, The Financial Freedom Report. I quoted from an article published in the Summer of 1995 entitled “Ask Your Barber How to Cut Hair, Not How to Make Money” which was simply saying that people who aren’t a super success as making money are not the people you want to talk to. However, there are some people you will need on the sidelines, but like knowing who to go to for advice on money, know who to go for advice on the other things you’ll need along the way, and when to bring them in.

Generally speaking, I find from experience, attorneys are deal breakers, not deal makers. Knowing that, I usually structure the whole deal before I have an attorney get involved at all. Yes, I want him or her involved. When? Just before I sign the papers. I want the attorney to read the contract to a make sure that everything is legal.

Problems can arise when the attorney steps into a management role. When going to an attorney for legal advice, you should always be sure that you ask very precise questions and not let the attorney overstep his bounds. He will if you let him. He has to play the devil’s advocate, and that is good. The same applies to your CPA, your business managers, and your bankers.

A man by the name of Owen Feltham said, “The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two words “common sense.”

So what is the bottom line from these words written so long ago? Use common sense when choosing who to go to for advice as well as what advice you take from people, even if they are “professionals” because if the advice doesn’t have anything to do with their profession, your common sense meter should be telling you to set that advice aside and have a word or two with someone that really knows what they are talking about in those matters.

Next week, just a bit more from my old publication but this time we’ll talk about common sense deals and how to avoid getting taken by fast talkers and their so-called ‘advice’.

Surround Yourself with Makers

I happen to pick up an old copy of a publication that I produced for many years called The Financial Freedom Report. It was dated the Summer of 1995 and the article that caught my eye was “Ask Your Barber How to Cut Hair, Not How to Make Money”. I quickly reread what had written all those years ago about that statement and it’s something that needs to be repeated and practiced today. Here’s what I said.

It is amazing how many people seek or listen to financial advice from neighbors who are in approximately the same financial position as themselves. Others run to their bankers to ask if a particular deal is any good or not. What do bankers know about deals? Zip! Sure, a banker knows about loans and checking accounts, and they know a lot about accounting and borrowing and lending money because that is their business. Deals are not. Since people know that there is money in banks, they tend to think that the bankers know how to earn it. Remember they are just custodians; they are just janitors of money. It’s not their own money. It’s yours.

Barbers work on heads, but that doesn’t make them psychologists, because they only work on the outside of the head, so their psychological advice or advice on how to make money is not very credible. Avoid the trap of looking to the wrong outside sources by doing some of your own thinking.

The best way to learn how to make money is with somebody who has made a lot of it. What better place to go than to an entrepreneur who started from scratch and did it all themselves? I wouldn’t even want to go to David Rockefeller. Sure, he has several hundred million dollars and he is the chairman of the board of one of the largest banks in the world, but his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller was the one who made the big bucks.

Everybody needs advisers, but the advisers you need to surround yourself with should be deal makers, not breakers. Sure, you and only you should be the one making the final decisions, but I find that all of us can be influenced and helped by smart people whose opinions we hold in high regard.

Next week, I’ll reveal a bit more about the subject with more from this very same article. Although it was written over 2 decades ago, the ideas in it are still true today. The best ideas do stand up over time!

For many years, science has proven that there is a definite mind/body connection. That is, our thoughts and self-talk can stimulate changes in our bodies. We’ve all experienced changes in our bodies when, for example a sudden fearful thought pops into our mind. Our bodies can quickly begin to perspire, produce adrenaline, or make our faces flush.

Likewise, a very pleasant thought or positive self-talk can relax our muscles, slow our heart rate and even lower our blood pressure. If we use that mind/body connection in the right way, we can make big and positive changes in our lives. I have certainly experienced that on the tennis court by doing a lot of specific positive self-talk before I play a match. I repeat over and over again statements like, “I have great stamina and energy,” I have a very powerful serve,” or “I stay positive and upbeat.” On the negative side, I learned a long time ago not to say, at critical times in a match, things like, “Oh, I just can’t double fault now!” as apparently the brain locks onto the “double fault” words and misses the word “can’t”. And yep, that’s when a double fault happens.

But now comes some new discoveries about this connection. It’s kind of the reverse—it’s a body/mind connection. Several recent studies have shown that certain things we do with our bodies send a message to our brain. Those messages can be very helpful or very hurtful.

This body to mind connection was introduced to me just last month when I heard Amy Cuddy, an American social psychologist, talk about it. I was so surprised and impressed that I bought her book, Presence, the first day it was released. What a great return I am getting as I see and understand more about how the body can change your brain.

Last week I quoted Amy on the subject of better ways to set new years’ resolutions by using baby steps and nudging yourself. I thought her advice on goals setting was good but Chapter 8 entitled “The Body Shapes the Mind” uncovers, what I think, are brilliant ideas. Amy Cuddy, along with some very bright collaborators, began experimenting to see if the human body holds certain poses for about two minutes would that affect or change the human mind. They chose 5 positive poses and 5 weak poses. Probably the most powerful pose was standing up very straight, shoulders back with hands on your hips–what she called the superman pose. Not only did that pose make the person feel much more powerful, happy and confident it also improved their body chemistry. By using blood samples and saliva samples they found that the men and women who participated in the study showed a 19 percent increase in testosterone and a 25 percent decrease in cortisol–which is a stress hormone.

On the other those people that held a 2 minutes low-power pose like slumped down in a chair, head down and tucked in arms, had a 10 percent decrease in testosterone and a 17 increase in cortisol. Amy goes on to say “the way you carry yourself is a source of person power–the kind of power that is the key to presence. It’s the key that allows you to unlock yourself, your abilities, your creativity, your courage and even your generosity. Taking control of your body language is not just about posing in a powerful way. It’s also about the fact that we pose in powerless way much more often than we think and we need to change that.”

So when you want to feel better about yourself and feel more powerful in your life, remember that how you hold your body can change things in your brain. I’m going to start power posing before my tennis games like Amy does just before she gives a speech. In the quiet of her hotel room she stands in the superman power pose for 2 minutes which gives her the right attitude and confidence to go out there and give a terrific speech!

Baby Steps and Gentle Nudges

 

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been very big on setting goals including New Year’s Resolutions which are pretty much at the top of my list. At years’ end, I’ve always been surprised and often disappointed by how many goals I failed to accomplish or fell short of accomplishing during that one year. I’ve always thought that I just needed to set bigger goals and try much, much harder. And yes, I would end up berating and beating myself up for my failures. But now I am learning from Amy Cuddy’s book, Presence, that there is growing evidence and research indicating that most of us having been going at the goal setting and resolutions thing all wrong.

Under the section entitled, “Many Popular Self-Change Approaches Fail–And Even Backfire”, Amy says, “For one thing, New Year’s resolutions are too ambitious. Setting big goals such as getting straight A’s in school or working out three times a week is a positive step in theory, but these goals are not designed in a way that actually allows us to build toward them.  They’re reliant on the success of hundreds of smaller changes and they don’t come with step-by-step instructions showing us how to get there”.

I will say, as I do in my preaching on goal setting and what I almost always do myself, we all need to break down our goals into small steps. But Amy goes further saying we need to break our goals down into ‘baby steps’ and gently ‘nudge ourselves’ along.

Additionally, Amy says, “One of the biggest culprits, as least in the United States, is the repeatedly dispiriting New Year’s resolution, which is riddled with psychological traps, that work against us.”  The problem with big goals, with a time frame that is way in the future, is that we really can’t easily visualize the end results and so it’s easy to get down on ourselves and give up along the way.  Quoting Amy again, she adds “focusing on process encourages us to keep working, to keep going, and to see challenges as opportunities for growth, not as threats of failure.”

In other words, take lots of baby steps.  Amy mentions her ambition to be a runner which at one time in my life I thought I wanted to do also. The problem is, when we set big goals, like maybe running a marathon in 6 months or doing a 3 or 4 mile run our first or second time out, we usually get totally exhausted very early on and we give up or become very discouraged.  I’ve talked to many runners who have had a similar experience. However, if I start with very small goals—baby steps—such as saying to myself, “I’ll just run for 10 or 12 minutes,” or “I’ll just go down to that mailbox or tree,” then when I’ve reached that very small objective I can say, “Hey, I want to see if I can just run another 5 minutes or just to that house down there.”  That approach is such a hugely different experience and it sure seems to fit what Amy Cuddy is discovering in her study of goal setting and resolutions.

So I would challenge all my readers to give more thought to your goals and objectives as we begin this wonderful new year. Think ‘baby steps’ and ‘gentle, small self-nudges’ and we all might find that we stop beating up on ourselves for thinking we have failed and instead find we have made some very big gains in our physical, family, social and financial life.

Accountable Goals for 2016

As pretty much everyone knows, this time of year is so super busy it can be the most stressful time of the year.  There is an automatic built in deadline for all of us and as you read this we’ve just past that automatic deadline that’s called Christmas. The 25th of December is a goal that the world has set for all of us. That date pushes all of us to get many tasks done and in a way that is a good thing.

So now as we finish this year of 2015, most of us start thinking what the next year will be like and what is it that we want to accomplish.  We start thinking about what goals we want to set for ourselves and, if we are wise, we put deadlines on our goals which pushes us to reach those goals within that self-imposed deadline.  If we tell other people what our goals are and the deadline dates, that is usually very helpful because those friends and relatives can help push us and keep us on track by asking how we are doing and if we are on track for completing our goals on time.

I couldn’t help but think of that late last night at a party, when I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t written this week’s blog and I had told my editor that I would have a draft to her by last night. Ouch.  So first thing this morning I got right on the task of writing this blog that you are now reading. Outside help can really keep us on track.

Additionally, last night someone asked me what my goals were for 2016. They knew I was big on goal setting and they also set goals for themselves and push their kids to do the same. My answer was that my biggest goal for the new year was to push myself for better and better health.  Now that I’m almost 72 years old I see, more and more, how important health is. I’m already in darn good shape and came so very close to a 10 mile a day goal I had set for myself in 2015 that included running, walking and playing tennis. But in 2016 I’m going to raise the bar to an even higher level and add some tough weight lifting goals since I know that extra muscle will increase my metabolism and of course make me look and feel better and stronger.

So my challenge to you is take time to think through what you want to accomplish in this coming year and be sure, as I’ve preached over and over again, to write down what those goals are and then be sure to put a time frame or a deadline on your goals. To help yourself along, tell friends and or relatives what those goals are and ask for their help. That combination is a sure fire way to make your goals a reality.

 

Side Notes on Uncertainty

Years ago I picked up a habit that has served me well for many years and I still do it to this day. It’s simply this: When I’m reading a book–especially a book with good advice, concepts and life lifting ideas—I write notes of those statements that I find profound and powerful,  those things that I don’t want to ever forget.  I write those gems on the blank pages in the front or back of the book with the page number of the quote.  That helps me tremendously weeks, months or years later when I want to quickly review the high points in that particular book, and I can do so in a matter of a few minutes.  Those quick reviews re-motivate me, remind of many things that I’d forgotten, and help me find and follow good pathways.

Let me show you what I mean. Here are my notes from Pema Chodron’s book Living Beautifully with Uncertainly and Change.

Page 3.  “Our attempts to find lasting pleasure, lasting security, are at odds with the fact that we’re part of a dynamic system in which everything and everyone is in process.”

Page 6.  “Change….when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment….”

Page 7.  “What a fundamental ambiguity of being human points to is that as much as we want to, we can never say, ‘This is the only true way. This is how it is. End of discussion.’  In an interview Chris Hedges also talked about the pain that ensures when a group or religion insists that its view is the one true view.”

Page 10. Our habitual response to feeling ensues…when we’re hooked, we turn to anything to relieve the discomfort–food, alcohol, sex, shopping, being critical or unkind.”

Page 12. “…emotions like anger that are an automatic response last just ninety seconds from the moment it’s triggered until it runs its course.”

Page 16.   My thought from reading this page is I try to notice when I am trying to escape from the fundamental uncertainly of life!

Page 26.  “We all have our familiar exits: zoning out in front of the TV, compulsively checking e-mail, coming home at night and having three or four or six drinks, overeating, overworking.”  Note to self: I need to become more aware of these escape methods and not do them myself.

Page 29. “Don’t believe everything you think.”

Page 30.  My thoughts from this page are that I need to think about what I’m thinking but then I shouldn’t try to totally repress thoughts I don’t like but I need to work on refraining from doing it again.

Page 50. “Accept yourself as you are right now.”

Page 53.  “Loving kindness for self means making time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate, self-honesty.”

Since we all have limited time in our lives (even if you live to be 80, that’s still only 960 months and you know how fast a month flies by!), we all need to be as efficient and productive as we possibly can and that’s why I encourage you to use your time wisely. I really think my habit of capturing the best items of the best books as you read is a great habit to develop for life enhancement and productivity.

I hope you glean as much wisdom as I did from these high points of Pema’s great book. I will post the rest of the notes that I made in the front of her book next week. Right now I need to go to my club and play some more tennis. Yep … we all need to balance our lives to get the most out of the limited time we have here on the planet earth.

Money Can’t Buy Happiness—or Can it?

We’ve all heard the old saying “money can’t buy happiness”, but like many enduring myths, this one is proving not to be true.  Harvard business professor Michael Norton says that money can and does, in fact, buy happiness in many cases.  And quite frankly my personal experience has proved his point over and over again. But really, it’s what you spend the money on that determines if that money actually brings you happiness.

As we’ve just finished the giving of ‘thanks’ on Thanksgiving Day and as we approach Christmas time and the possible gifts we can pass on to others, it’s a good idea to really think through what possible gifts would bring the most lasting happiness and satisfaction. I don’t think giving just ‘stuff’ is the answer as I think professor Norton proves.

Many years ago, I figured this ‘money myth’ really was just that—a myth. I learned it during those years when my family traveled the world. We went everywhere in Europe and had some very interesting and thrilling drives in the family station wagon through the middle eastern countries of Turkey, Syria, Jordon, Lebanon and Egypt. Later in life I even did a ’round the world’ trip. I have often found myself thinking over the grand memories of these wonderful excursions and when I compared the money spent on travel with money spent on a big screen TV or a new fancy car, the experience of the travel won every time.

Discovering that money really can buy happiness was a huge wake up call for me and motivated me in my younger years to figure out the secrets of making millions so I could really lift my happiness level and keep it up there at a high level most of the time.

When it comes to bringing lasting happiness, Professor Norton’s studies show that experience trumps the acquisition of ‘stuff’ almost all the time. That includes all kinds travel and vacations as well as a trip to the beach, mountains or an amusement park with a ride on the roller coaster.

Think about your own life and experiences.  If you are like me, you get tons of pleasure for several days even before you go on your exotic trip simply by thinking about the great things you may encounter and experience. Then you get more happiness and fulfillment during the trip or vacation.  As an extra bonus after you return home, you often live and relive that trip over and over again, sometimes for many, many years after. Compare that with how you think about the ‘stuff’ you have.  The newness of things quickly wears out and doesn’t thrill you much after a short while.

So again, think about the gifts that you may give this Christmas and maybe throw in a plane ticket or two for you kids or grandkids to some place they’ve never been. And yes, keep on earning and investing wisely to build your estate, without guilt, and give others experience rather than just stuff.

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