Attitude #4 The Wealthy Think BIG not small

Warren Buffett is quoted as saying: “I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”

Here’s the next attitude of the wealthy: Think BIG, not small

The following has been misattributed to Nelson Mandela as being in his inaugural speech of May 10, 1994, but this is not the case. Rather, it’s from author Marianne Williamson.

“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

You are here to live out your mission in life. You need to live your life and be true to your purpose and contribute your value to the rest of the world. And the more people you serve, the more money you will earn. For too many of us it’s “all about me.” When you add value to the lives of other people the money will follow. The “all about me” road leads to a sad and miserable life. Providing value and service to others brings wealth, meaning and fulfillment.

There are people in my circle of family and friends that have hundreds to thousands of rental units. I only have 35 units. And at this time I don’t plan to have any more. It’s my comfort level.

It’s easy for me to manage with one part time assistant and about 2 hours per week of my time. I have all the knowledge and experience to grow to hundreds of units, and I choose not to.

I constantly have to fight the battle of thinking small versus thinking big. I am a very private person and like to hide out. If you see me in a social situation, you’d think I have no tongue.

On the flip side, when I speak to a room with a handful of people I do well. When I speak to a room with hundreds of people I do great. There is an energy and excitement that comes from sharing my knowledge with a large group. This is the area where I don’t have to hide out.

Find the area where you can step out and be big. Isn’t it time?

For a free copy of my best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”

Attitude #3 - Prosperity versus Poverty Thinking

I hope you enjoy this quote from Warren Buffett:

“Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”

This leads to the next attitude in our little blog series:

The wealthy have prosperity thinking, not poverty thinking

Many of us think about how nice it would be to be rich; to travel to exotic locations, live in a luxurious home, drive fancy cars and wear expensive jewelry. And many of us have conflicting thoughts about what it would be like to be rich. Maybe you were given messages from your parents when you were young that to be rich you to have to lie and cheat. Rich people take advantage of poor people. These types of messages as a child shape you as an adult unless you examine them for yourself.

In my workshops I have people perform a word association exercise regarding money. From that we create an actual score to see if their attitude leans more toward prosperity or poverty thinking. Imagine this; you have a beautiful yacht with the strongest, lightest weight material ever created for the hull. But your ship has holes in the hull below the water line. This represents the struggle between prosperity thinking (the yacht) and the holes in the hull (poverty thinking). You might say you want wealth or to become rich, but your old messages will fight you.

Here’s an example of poverty thinking: “I’ve heard that to have a big financial ship you have to enter deep water. With my experience, skills and attitude I’d probably have to launch my ship in a bathtub.”

Or, here’s the one I had while married to my first wife: “It doesn’t matter how much money I earn, I still won’t have anything left over to invest.” And this became a self fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s a quote from a very wealthy man to counter any negative messages you may have received from parents: Andrew Carnegie said, “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.”

At Mr. Carnegie’s death he donated all of this wealth, setting up and libraries, a university, and more. Do you want your wealth to be self-serving or to benefit others? Having no wealth does not help anyone.

For a free copy of my best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”

Attitude #2 The Wealthy Plan to Succeed

In this blog post we will continue to deal with the distinctions of wealth, broke and poor as in the post of a few days ago. Both wealth and poverty are a state of mind and broke is only a lack of money.

The wealthy plan to succeed

There is a difference between creating an intention or goal with the attitude that you will succeed versus trying to minimize your losses. The wealthy have intention. Many of the rest of us have goals, and some folks don’t even have goals.

A poor person is more concerned about not losing what they have, not in how to bring more into their life. They are looking for security and operating at survival. The wealthy attitude is about abundance and creating more. If your goal is to have enough money to pay your bills, that’s about all you will generate. I was there in my first marriage, and that’s no fun.

A goal is often an extension of the past. Someone might say, “Last year I earned $200,000. This year my goal is $250,000. That would involve working a little smarter, faster, making more calls, or looking for bigger contracts. Again, that’s looking to the past, not the future of what’s possible. Maybe what’s possible is $1,000,000 of income. If that’s the intention, do you think the actions will be different than those for a goal of $250,000?

Although I speak about achieving goals in the Wealth On Any Income book, you will see it’s designed to create actions from the future, not the past or the present. While I didn’t use the word intentions in the book, it is based on creating a future from what’s possible.

When you either write or state your intention out loud, or a goal from the future not the past, you do NOT need to know how to achieve it in order to speak or declare it. The “how to” can only show up after you declare your intention, and it does show up each and every time.

An intention comes from what’s possible. John F. Kennedy spoke about putting a man on the moon. That was an intention. We didn’t have any equipment or technology to do it at the time. But because he had intention, we created the reality. Try it for yourself.

For a free copy of my best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”

Earn 8-12% with as little at $2500

In this blog post I’m going to interrupt the flow on the topic of how the wealthy think and provide some information about how to earn 8-12% on small amounts of money, as mentioned in my email when I offered a free copy of my revised book, Wealth On Any Income.

Here are some investment resources that should be helpful:

1. Peer-to-Peer lending: You can deposit as little as $2500 and make loans of $25 to people who are looking to pay off credit cards, consolidate loans, or make home improvements. Read all the details and disclaimers at http://www.LendingClub.com

2. There are several mutual funds with long stable track records. Here are two examples of investment companies that have mutual funds that have earned 9-12%, not interest, over many, many years:

http://www.americanfunds.com  charges a load

https://investor.vanguard.com  does not charge a load

3. You can also purchase individual stocks of blue chip companies through

https://us.etrade.com

And https://www.tdameritrade.com

I recommend the concepts in either the new (2008) book by Bill Staton if you want to buy individual stocks:

Double Your Money in America's Finest Companies: The Unbeatable Power of Rising Dividends

or his first book: The America's Finest Companies Investment Plan 1997

For a free copy of my best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”

Attitudes of the wealthy #1

This is the first of a few blog posts where I will provide tips, techniques and motivation to support my readers on the road to financial freedom. After four years of just collecting rent checks on not doing much to contribute back to the community, other than a few UCLA classes, I decided it was time to get back into action in supporting others to create financial freedom. This is where work becomes a choice instead of a requirement.

I’ve said that regardless of how much money someone earns, they cannot become wealthy unless they think and act as the wealthy do. There are many ways to measure the wealth of a person besides money, but that’s not the conversation for this blog post. Here I am talking about financial wealth.

How do wealthy people think, and what do they do? Over the next few posts, about one per week, we will cover several areas where the wealthy think differently than the poor. First we need to cover a few definitions.

We need to define wealthy, poor and broke. A wealthy person has enough money to feel comfortable in their lifestyle. They are not worried that they will lose their home or they won’t have enough money to feed their family. They don’t care how much they’ll get from Social Security.

A poor person does not have any of those attitudes. They don’t have enough, they know they don’t have enough, and they know they will never have enough. If the government doesn’t help them, they may not survive, and they believe the government owes them what they feel entitled to.

Broke is a condition where there is a lack of money.

I’ve been broke twice before, and once I was poor. When I was younger I only made enough money to keep my head above water. Based on the relationship with wife at the time my attitude was, “It doesn’t matter how much money I earn, I’ll never having any savings.” It was not a good marriage because I could not support my wife in the manner to which she wanted to be accustomed.

After my second divorce I was broke. I had the attitude that I could rebuild my wealth. I knew that I was in control of my life and I had the knowledge to make it happen.

“The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything to which he is justly entitled.” – Andrew Carnegie

Let’s look at the first attitude of a wealthy person:

Wealthy people control their circumstances.

 I recall a program from about 40 years ago where the presenter said the wind blows in the same direction for every sailboat. But how the skipper sets the sails determines his direction. What I hear in this is that the economy can be weak, there can be bad news, and civil unrest in the world, but a wealthy person will choose how to respond to the circumstances. The circumstances will not dictate the outcome. The mindset, attitudes and actions of the wealthy will determine the outcome.

The poor are controlled by their circumstances.

People who are poor have a victim attitude. They believe the world conspires against them. They do not feel they have any control over what happens in their life. They complain about their job, their mate, their children, their health or their neighbors to the point they have nothing good in their life.

Regardless of your income level, as an exercise, practice catching yourself and see if there is something you want to complain about. For seven days, find something instead that is worthwhile in anything you would have complained about in the past. This will start an amazing shift in your outlook.

In the next blog post I will give you some ideas on where you can put money to work and earn 8-12% with little risk and as little as $2500.

For a free copy of the best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”