Start with where you are and what you have!

This above line may sound very familiar. But it is important that you should remember or never forget this line when you get up in the morning. Many times you want to start a new venture or even simply new practice in your day-to-day life. For example many of us want to stay fit. So we want to hit a gym. But most of us will not immediately work-out the plan. They will say themselves that let me start on the first day of next week which will grow to month or even a year. Like this, you may want to meet your parents or want to say sorry to your friend and the list continues. These are little things but they make huge differences in your personality and in your life. Do it today.

Don’t blame the things around you:

As long as you are still alive, you are capable of changing and growing. It is you who is responsible for everything which is happening to you. So don’t blame the things around you for your failure.

Take up the responsibility for your own growth:

Life gives us lots of opportunities. But we are not saying ‘YES’ to that. Many a time you want to take up a challenging assignment. And the next moment you will think about the hard work that needs to be put on that task. And also you doubt your ability. So the result is the hesitation, a thief of success. Take up the new challenges. Be open to the new things. Try your hand in adventures. These things will automatically show the path to the growth and self-satisfaction.

Don’t live in fear:

Do you know more people are more scared than you? So never let the fear factor swallow your success. Don’t compromise often with a phrase “if you were”. Stop praising about the great souls. Be the change you want to be.

Rise before the sun:

Last but not least. Wake up earlier and plan the day and at least move an inch daily.

The first thing that i have done is cut back, and that is the obvious place to start. Last fall and winter, during the economic melt down I was petrified, I had seen my retirement accounts fall by north of forty percent with no end in sight, I didn’t know if my job was safe or anyone’s job for that matter. So I would say from October through January I spent on nothing except my children and even that was kept to a minimal. But around February I realized living scared was no way to live at all, so we began to do things again. My wife and I went out to dinner, even to some of our favorite restaurants, but we scaled back, our dinners were less expensive and less frequent. For spring break we decided to take our kids away, but we went somewhere that was driving distance, and found incredible deals on the internet. This year the lease on my car was up, so I go a less expensive car to save more. My wife’s lease is up this year and we will do the same thing. I am very concsious of saving more money than i have in the past, I think for the first time in my life I was scared into believing that things will not always be good, and while I have always been a saver, I probably was not as careful as I should have been.

One of the big issues we have faced is our home, we our one of the one’s that is “underwater” in our house. The truth is the financing was so cheap and interests were so low we may have like many others bought more home than we could afford. Now, we didn’t do any 100% financing but I did only put down 10% on my home, the truth is we should have bought less and put down more. Also, we bought in 2006 near the top of the real estat market, and we did a seven year interest only loan. The good news is we have four more years of these payments before our loan becomes an adjustable mortgage. it was a big mistake, we should have bought with a 30 year mortgage at a payment we knew we could afford forever, but we fell into the trap of finding our dream home and over extended ourselves. Hopefully home values will go back up, and we our trying to save so that we can put more down if we need too, or that the banks will work with us. I don’t want to lose my home for several reasons. First, I believe most people want to make good on their debt, I gave a commitment to pay for something and if I can I will honor it. Second, although I was stupid in the way I financed the home my intention is to live here until my kids are grown and we retire, so we had a long term plan of twenty years or longer. Third, we love our house, it is our home, and I believe most people feel this way, they did not buy it as an investment first and a home second, quite the contrary, most people did it the other way. This is our home and we intend to keep it.

These are some of the issues that we have faced. Fortunately, although we lost a lot in our retirement plan it has come back quite away. We will be more prudent with it in the future, probably less stocks and more fixed income investments. We like many others hoped maybe our retirement fund would grow and maybe make us rich, we saw great returns for a while. Now, our goal is what it always should have been, to keep it safe and let us retire with it. Again, we our concentrating on saving more money, to get us through those so called “rainy days.” And finally, we are dealing with the issue of our home, that is our main concern but I believe that we can work our way through it. I have learned a lot the last two years, nothing lasts forever, when things are too good to be true they probably our. And most important, live within your means, not what is inflated, not by what you think you will be able to afford, but by what you know you will be able to afford.

And in the end isn’t that what true friendship is really about? It’s about the character and trust that is needed when the pressure is on, maybe when its not so easy to be a friend, maybe when that person has to choose your friendship over something that might be important to them, or maybe something not even that important. So, my question is, how many friends do you have that are really like that? How many people will be there when you need them through thick and thin, and not just when it is convenient for them? How many people do you really trust to do the right thing when it is much easier to do the easy thing. I thought about this question, when I started I thought I had fifteen close friends, and about fifteen other friends. Of course it was being burned by one friend that started the process for me. I discovered I probably have far fewer true friends then I thought. I counted, at the beginning of the process I thought I had fifteen “real friends” by the end I was down to six, I realized I just couldn’t count on the others, if I really needed someone, if I was in trouble, who could I count on to be there for me? The number was six, the others are still my friends, I still enjoy their company, but at the end of the day I need to know who is going to be there for me. It was an interesting process, almost a cleansing, I think everyone should examine their friendships.

Let me give you a few examples, most people think they are a lot smarter than they are, do you know anyone who says” I’m really not that bright, actually I’m kind of stupid.” And this is scientifically proven, when most people are asked to identify their intelligence levels and then given tests after, guess what? they usually score much lower than they estimated. Take the example of my friend above, if you were to ask most people if they are sensitive, what do you think they would say? And again, tests have shown people’s perception of their own sensitivity is far higher then they score on the test. Do you known anyone who says I’m ugly or not attractive?

Psychology today magazine has examined this phenomenon and they have come up with four spots. “Bright spots” which are known by you and others, things such as, you are out going, or a liberal. “Dark Spots” which are things not known by you or others, it may be something like what motivates you to compete, perhaps you are sub consciously trying to prove something to your father, for example. “Personal Spots” things that are known only to you, in my case I may seem fine at a party, but the truth is crowds may make very anxious. And finally “Blind Spots”,these are things known only by others and usually misconceived by ourselves, examples might be hostility, being overly defensive, or as mentioned earlier your intelligence or attractiveness.

The last two, “personal spots” and “bright spots” are the most relevant in how we perceive ourselves and how others view us. When we know something about ourselves that others are not privy to it very often leads to misconception. Shy people are often considered moody or arrogant because they don’t talk. In the absence of something positive most people perceive a negative even though that may not be the case. You may meet a shy person at a party, he just doesn’t say much, he is not rude or aggressive, he is simply quiet. In the absence of friendliness most people feel the person is unfriendly, although there is no such evidence to support that feeling. Meanwhile, the shy person feels he was totally nice, said hello, was polite, just not engaging, and he is surprised that the person he met felt he was arrogant. This is why out going and exuberant people are generally liked even though they may or may not be good people. They fill a void by promoting themselves and their personalities, they usually are likable so people have no room for interpretation, and most people don’t look for the “dark spots.”

So the question is how do you become more self aware? How do you get an accurate perception of yourself and change the misconceptions? The best way is talk to the people who know you best, the ones you trust. Find out what people really think about you and be willing to take some criticism. If it is your “personal spots” that lead to the misconception you can work on those. For instance, if you are shy you can practice looking people in the eye, perhaps try to be more engaging. If it is the “blind spots” that lead to the misconception then there may be a need for a self examination or a reality check. Communication is the key to any relationship, but to do that properly one must have an honest appraisal of his or herself, and then be able to communicate that to the other person in any form of relationship.

And despite that I like eating far more than working out, and it is an effort to get me to leave my couch when a good game is on, I am very healthy. And I just don’t say so, I get all A’s from my Doctor. When I was younger I loved playing sports, but I just can’t do that all the time anymore. As an adult you just can’t find the time or even energy to do what you did when you were younger, but you need to find something you enjoy doing, or at least can tolerate and try to do it for at least an hour five or six times a week. For me, I play basketball in a league once a week, and we practice once a week on weekends, I also have found while I don’t love spinning ( bicycle class indoors) I don’t hate it, so I try to spin three or four times a week at my health club. My wife tries to walk/run on the treadmill at least five times a week for an hour, usually before the kids wake up. I have friends who get up and run a few miles everyday, totally not for me, but they love it. I have other friends who do Yoga or Pilate’s, the simple truth is there is some form of exercise out there that everyone can participate in to maintain good health. Am I in great shape? No! Do I have a six pack of abs? No! But I am healthy and I feel good and I have the energy, and I know that exercising the 5 to 7 hours a week is the main reason.

Eating, ugh, my main weakness. I love to eat, and I love crap. I would rather eat a hamburger, milkshake and fries than do anything else. And I love Pizza and candy, and Italian food, and Coca Cola and the aforementioned Buffalo Wings. And I am never giving any of them up, I’m just not going to eat them that often. Temptation is the root of all evil, so whenever I can I just stay away from the places that serve them. And that’s the best advice I can give, if you love to eat like me, don’t give it up just stay away. Because the truth is for most people diets don’t work, even when they do they eventually end and people go back to the bad eating habits they had before. The simple answer is develop better eating habits, try to eat salads, and chicken, and fish. Drink as much water as possible, try to stay away as much as possible from bread and butter, eat fruit and vegetables. I’m not saying anything that anyone does not know, we don’t need all the magazines and the pictures to show and tell us what to do, most intelligent people already know, its just hard. What I am saying is I am probably going to eat Pizza and wings on Sunday when watching football, but that means the rest of the week I’m being careful. I’m going to have my burger, shake and fries but probably only about once a month. I’m going to come home at night and eat the healthy meals my wife cooks and not complain because I want to stay healthy. If I go to a restaurant I am going to have my roll and butter, but only one not the whole basket, and nine out of ten times I am going to order chicken and fish. This is the life I have carved out for myself, I get to eat the foods I love just not as often as I would like, I don’t diet but they don’t work for me anyhow, they just make me hungrier. I get in my workout five to seven times a week and while I don’t love it I have made it part of my routine. My picture isn’t going in any magazines anytime soon for my body, but I am not overweight and I feel great. And at the end of the day, that’s what it is all about, feeling good and getting a clean bill of health. So workout, go easy on the crappy foods, stay healthy, but do the things you enjoy just in moderation.

In the last ten years Americans, and the world have seen two huge economic bubbles; first, the Nasdaq/tech bubble of the late 90’s and more recently the worldwide housing bubble. The first merely caused a routine recession, the latter almost caused a Depression, unlike one we have seen since the 1930’s, and we are still not totally in the clear yet. But what makes these bubbles different from the one’s of the past is technology and media. The availability of information through televisions, wireless, and the Internet available to everyone has expanded these bubbles to the general population. Plus, the advances in technology has given the ability to almost everyone to participate. The advance of the Internet has given almost every person instant access to day trading further fueling the bubble of the Nasdaq, and the advances in technology allowed most people to participate in the housing bubble, by allowing fast underwriting and appraisals through technology. So our economic bubbles now affect all people not only the professionals and Wall street.

So how do investors and ordinary workers who have pension plans and 401k’s and savings to invest protect themselves, and even more important how do they make money and save for their retirement? The simple truth is the average investor should never have been participating in these bubbles. When investing the plan should always be for the long term, and yes I know it is difficult to avoid investing in things when your friends and neighbors are doubling and tripling their money on a matter of months, sometimes weeks, but you must resist. Perhaps, the two greatest investors of our generation or any generation for that matter are Peter Lynch, who ran Fidelity mutual funds for decades, and the world’s richest man Warren Buffett. Both have very simple and similar theories on investing. For Peter Lynch, it was invest in what you know and what you use, and what you like. If you worked on your house as a hobby and went to Home Depot, that is something you used and liked, if you bought Home Depot stock you understood what you were buying. If you got up in the morning every day and ate Kellogg’s Raisin Bran or went to Starbuck’s everyday it was something that you used and understood. But buying Cisco Systems that powers the Internet through systems the average man doesn’t understand might be a stock an engineer might buy but probably not a Postal Worker. Now, just cause you used these items, that meant it was only a potential investment. People still need to do their homework, check out management, earnings, timing. For many investors mutual funds are a far better way to go, but the same principles apply, invest in areas that you understand.

Mr Buffet’s theory is very similar, invest in businesses and concepts you can understand. his largest holdings are Coca Cola, pretty simple concept, Wells Fargo a bank, American Express, the credit card industry isn’t going away you lend and get paid back interest, Geico the insurance company, again pretty basic. He also owns See’s candy and Dairy Queen. he is the every man of investing, his philosophy is to invest in things that are used everyday and that are easy to understand. And he has stood the test of time. In the late 90’s, Mr. Buffet’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway was under performing the markets for the first time in his career. The critics said he had lost his touch, the 70 something year old had not kept up to speed by not investing in technology. Mr Buffet called it a bubble, that he didn’t understand the companies business models, that in many cases could not understand what they did, his critics said he was thru. The Nasdaq crashed in 2000, Mr. Buffet is the world’s richest man. In 2008, the market crashed, Mr. Buffets net worth dropped by 50%, critics said his buy and hold theory was dead, while the Dow Jones Industrial tanked, Mr. Buffet bough more Wells Fargo, one of his largest holdings at 20 dollars a share, it’s now 31 he bought General Electric at 13 it’s 17. he bought Goldman Sachs at 115 it’s 190 and the list goes on. He buys great companies, he does not worry where the markets go on a day to day basis because he believes if you do your homework and buy great companies over time you make money. But he doesn’t buy all the time, he has one last credo, buy when most are fearful and sell when most are greedy, because markets are imperfect and tend to overreact to human emotion.

When investing stay away from the hottest trends, you are not an expert. Ten years ago most people I knew were buying tech stocks and making a fortune, the problem was they thought they were stock market geniuses. They weren’t they just caught a bubble. And most people who think they are smarter than they are don’t know when to get out and buy more and more and usually with borrowed money. A guaranteed recipe for disaster. And for all those people who thought they were overnight geniuses in the stock market, most lost all their investment in the end. The same thing held true with the housing market. Five years ago most people I knew were buying homes and trying to flip them. or some bought multiple homes with easy credit and borrowed money and thought they would be the next Donald Trump. The people that were the real experts made a fortune and got out, but the average investor, most had too much leverage and too much greed, for them, it ended up a disaster.

None of this means investing is wrong, or trying to flip a home is a mistake. It means don’t ride trends, don’t think you know more than you do, it means do your homework and buy what you know. If you want to try and by homes or apartments for rental income, know the area, don’t use too much leverage and invest for the long term and make sure you can hold through the rocky times because they always come. The same holds true for the stock market. There are no get rich quick schemes that work, all they will do is get you poor quickly. If returns seem to great to be true they probably are. If people tell you it’s different this time, I promise you its not. It is your money and your future be careful with it, be smart, invest carefully and remember successful investing is a marathon not a sprint.

First lets do away with the obvious, “if I just made more money I could save more,” this is completely untrue. “I have done a budget and there is no where else I can cut.” Budgets are an outstanding and needed tool for financial health, but just because you have done a budget doesn’t mean there isn’t room to save more money. As stated earlier, saving money is a discipline and like most disciplines it requires dedication, repetition and certain drills. So, for our purposes I am going to suggest one simple drill to work on and perfect, and it won’t cut into your budget, won’t require you to make more money, and will not require you to give up anything significant in your life.

Let’s start with Day one, month one, you need to do one simple thing. Before you go to bed at night take one dollar from your wallet or purse and put it in a drawer. Everyone has a dollar in their pocket, take your loose change you have lying around if you have to, but find a dollar. Now, repeat this procedure every day for thirty days, one month. This is no problem for 99% of the people who are working, do it every day, remember it’s a discipline. At the end of the month, what do you have? Thirty dollars obviously, I know it doesn’t seem like much but you saved thirty dollars more than you did the previous month.

Next, day one, month two. At the end of the day you need to do one simple thing. Take two dollars from your wallet or purse and stick it in the drawer. If you had a dollar in your pocket last month then you will have two dollars in your pocket, no one even notices two dollars. Repeat this procedure for thirty days, do not deviate, at the end of two months you will have saved ninety dollars, I know, seems like a lot of effort for ninety dollars. But you are working towards a goal, developing a discipline, and saving money.
Next, month three day one, repeat the same procedure only with three dollars, if you did two you can do three. At the end of the month you will have saved one hundred and eighty dollars. Do you see where we are heading?

Now I am not saying this can go on forever, the next month is obviously four dollars. At some point to do this you may have to give up something. For me I gave up starbucks in the morning, I made my coffee at home. For a friend of mine to meet his goal he gave up sodas from the vending machine during his coffee break to make his goal of four dollars a day. But if you save four dollars a day for a year you are saving an additional $1500, and if you could save five dollars a day by just making sure you tuck it away in a drawer every night, you will save close to $2,000 a year. And some of you may be able to save even more than that everyday and that will translates into large savings. Most of us really don’t even think about four, five, six or even more dollars, we spend it without considering it no matter our financial situation. But if you instill this discipline, practice it, take it as far as you can without altering your life, you will find that you have acquired a discipline that can save you thousands of dollars a year. Almost every working person can afford to do this, give it a try and see the results. And remember saving money is a discipline, it takes focus and a goal.

After the funeral I started to wonder how often people really told the people they care about in their life how much they mean to them. I decided to run an experiment in my own life, I was going to show the people that mattered to me the most how much I cared. Now, I wasn’t going to run right home after the funeral and express to everyone my love for them, that is too obvious and too easy. Over the next few months I set a deliberate plan to let the people I care about know at the most inopportune times for me, how much I loved them. My first test was my wife, I had a day where I was particularly overwhelmed at work, made a huge mistake on a project I was working on, and felt that I had let all of my coworkers down. All I wanted to do was go home, have a drink, be left alone and sit and watch TV. Instead, I called my wife told her to get a babysitter, brought her flowers, made reservations at her favorite restaurant, and spent the entire evening letting her know I loved her, I appreciated the amazing job she was doing raising our children, admired the type of friend she was, and let her know just how lucky I felt. The evening was all about her, and for no particular reason.

Each time I felt down, for whatever reason, I repeated the same type of thing, with my children, my parents, my in laws and even coworkers. Whenever I felt overwhelmed or depressed about something I went out of my way to make someone I cared about feel special. The result? You can’t imagine the difference it made in my life. Not only did it take away my immediate unhappiness by giving to someone else, it made me a much happier person on a day to day basis. There is something incredibly freeing about letting the people you care about know it, and letting them know for no particular reason, no wedding, no funeral, no college graduation, just because. I am sure I made all of those people happy on the days I made the effort, I could see it in their eyes, I knew by the way they treated me afterward. But, however I made them feel, I promise I did not make them near as happy as I made myself by expressing my feelings. The old cliche it is better to give than to receive is never more true when expressing your feelings to the people you care about most.Give it a try, give to the people you care about when it seems the most difficult, and watch the difference in your own life.

One day my friend decided he didn’t want to be unhappy anymore. He didn’t just walk out on his business, but he knew he didn’t want to be in that business anymore, the pressure was to great, the stress was no longer worth it, so over the next two years he closed it down in an orderly fashion. He knew he was unhappy in his marriage but he just didn’t walk out. He talked to his wife about what didn’t work for him, she didn’t understand how he no longer liked their life, they tried therapy, and although he probably knew it was over from the beginning, he tried until he couldn’t try anymore.

At age thirty five he had given up life as he knew it, his work, his marriage, and set off on a new path, but this isn’t a fairytale. He was not instantly happy, he had spent thirteen years working and achieving everything he hoped for, achieved it all and was miserable, now he faced the hard part, he had to figure out why? Why he was so unhappy. Why his dream job and fairytale marriage did not make him a happy person. And how to move forward with his life.

It took years, but ten years later, he was remarried, still successful in an entirely new business and happy. It took him years to figure out what went wrong and how to try and put his life on the right path.He learned that his mistakes were the same that most people make, chasing things that don’t matter, going after material objects, being concerned what others think of you. He learned material objects are great, success is wonderful and an admirable goal, the respect and admiration and even envy of your peers is a wonderful thing to have, but if it defines who you are, if it is your life’s sole ambition, then unhappiness is sure to follow. Life is a constant journey of understanding who you are and what you need, and it constantly changes. If you are unhappy in your life or simply content, strive for more. Not all change needs to be radical like my friends, most often it is just simple adjustments in life, focusing on the things that are most important like family health, and knowing you are the best person you can be. Its about trying to live as stress free life as possible, and that the things are most important come from the inside.

People who are successful have this ability even without something being brought to their attention like this. They have their goals and objectives in mind all the time and focus on achieving them. Because of this positive mental attitude, they are ready for all the opportunities as they arise and they are prepared. Unsuccessful people probably would not notice the opportunity because they are not completely in tune with what they want. The opportunities just pass them by because they just do not even notice them.

Maintaining this level of focus all the time is very hard. It can take up a lot of mental energy and leave you feeling tired and exhausted. Some people have this ability naturally. They are more goal-oriented and their brain analyzes everything it comes across to see if it is an opportunity that they could possibly use. They even file away things in their brain and if the chance or need arises, they recall that there was a chance they could take. This is increasingly more difficult in today’s world. There are many things around to diffuse our focus and which clamor for our attention.

Focus is just not popular in popular culture today. We watch the news and instead of just the news, they also show the weather and three other bits of news in tickers across the bottom of the screen. We want to be working and playing and living all at the same time. So those people who can master the technique of staying in focus and having their goals constantly at the front of their minds are going to do the best.

These people who are dedicated and committed to their goals, are those who eat, sleep and think about not much besides. In every conversation they have with people, in every news story they read, they have one objective in mind, whether it is to make more money, or to discover something through research, or their art. And these are exactly the people who seem to be luckier than others because they suddenly find a rich sponsor, or just the right materials they need, or a mote of brilliance.

It is not that they are luckier. They are just more alert to opportunities and know that every new encounter is not a problem but a possible solution to something. Try it in your own life. Imagine that you have a highly important goal in life and look out for chances in your day to day life which could help you to achieve that goal. Explore things with an open mind and you might just get the luck to achieve your goals too.

But what if you yearn to break free? It may be that when you first started your job you had a very different role or different surroundings and now you have become bogged down with administrative tasks and the job is nothing like it was when you started. Or it could be that you have just lost interest in what was once a fascinating subject and now you have extreme problems dragging yourself out of bed in the morning to go and face the awfulness of the day ahead. Or, it could be that you want to break free and work for yourself. Maybe you have had an idea, or your skills have now developed enough and you think you can face it alone. You can no longer get yourself satisfied and don’t need to keep others happy all the time.

Whatever the cause, one very good way to accomplish this – let’s face it – terrifying decision is to cut off your means of retreat. There is a famous historical precedent in that Cortez, the famous conquistador, burned his ships upon landing in Mexico to make sure that his men fought as hard as they could and had no way of returning to Spain until they had either won or died trying. In the same way, once you have made that decision, if there is absolutely no way of going back then you will not have any choice but to keep moving forward.

This, by its very nature, can not be a spur of the moment impulsive decision. It must be done with careful planning and lots of forethought. You must ask yourself some serious questions before burning any ships! If you quit your job today, how will you pay your bills? How will you and your family eat? Will you still be able to have a roof over head? Can you cut back and still live the same life or will you all have to tighten your belts for a while? These are highly individual and personal decisions and only you and your family know the answers here. But, if it all falls into place, then the next step is to brace yourself and just do it!

There are so many ways that this is the best policy. If you have a bad habit for example, having the policy to ‘just do it’ can break you of that habit for good. Just stop! Don’t even think about it any more. Burn those ships! You may find that it is the best thing you ever did!