I was struggling to get out of bed this morning, I had a long weekend finalizing some business arrangements and was fatigued from lack of sleep.  As I lay there I went through all of the reasons why I should get out of bed and found that one of the biggest reasons to get out of bed and start my day was to write this post.

You see I wanted to share with you a concept, I wanted to tell you that if you are struggling with Motivation it’s because you are not striving to achieve something bigger than you.

I came across this story today, which I thought illustrates the point:

A member of a community service organization, who previously had been attending meeting regularly, stopped going. After a few weeks, the friend decided to visit him.

It was a chilly evening. The friend found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his friend’s visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a big chair near the fireplace and waited.

The friend made himself comfortable but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the play of the flames around the burning logs. After some minutes, the friend took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet fascination. As the one lone ember’s flame diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and “dead as a door nail.”

Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting. Just before the friend was ready to leave, he picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it. As the friend reached the door to leave, his host said, “Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery reminder of the important of being part of something bigger then myself.

In the last post I did on, I talked about how we can learn as much from wealthy people as we can from people who are in poverty.  At the end of the post I asked you to do an activity where you sat down and assessed your position compared to someone who lives below the poverty line.

Over the weekend I was spending some time searching the internet and came across a story which may help you with this activity:

One day . . . a wealthy family man took his son on a trip to the country, so he could have his son see how poor country people live.

They stayed one day and one night in the home of a very humble farmer. At the end of the trip, and when they were back home, the father asked his son, “What did you think of the trip?”

The son replied, “Very nice dad.”

Then the father asked his son, “Did you notice how poor they were?”

The son replied, “Yes.”

The father continued asking, “What did you learn?”

The son responded, “I learned that we have one dog in our house, and they have four. Also, we have a fountain in our garden, but they have a stream that has no end. And we have imported lamps in our garden . . . where they have the stars! And our garden goes to the edge of our property. But they have the entire horizon as their back yard!” At the end of the son’s reply the father was speechless.

His son then said, “Thank you dad for showing me how poor we really are.”

Isn’t it true that all depends on the lens you use to see life?

One can ask himself what would happen if we give thanks for what we have instead of always asking for more.

Learn to appreciate what you have. Wealth is all in one’s point of view.

I hope that helps, until next time – keep smiling !

I am sure that you have heard the saying before:

Your Network = Your Networth

The saying basically suggests that the total of your top 10 friends annual salary when combined and averaged is most likely your income potential.  Many Personal Development experts would suggest that if you want to increase your income potential then you need to change the people that you hang around with.

Now I am not totally convinced by this, as some of the greatest learnings I have received in life have come from people who are broke.  In fact I think that there is a lot that can be learned from people who live on or below the poverty line.

For example 98.5% of loans made by Micro Financing Company KIVA are repaid and not redrawn. KIVA generally makes loans to people who live below the poverty line.

35% of people who repay their loans in developed nations redraw their loans to top up their credit cards and never actually pay their debts.

So with that said, who in this case would appear to be the best person to learn about debt management from?

What I want you to do today is to take some time to think about people who live below the poverty line.

• What Do They Value?

• What Is Important To Them?

• How Do They Survive?

Now I want you to compare the answers to those questions with your own personal answers and ask yourself, what is really important to me?

Finally before I sign off, make sure you buy a coffee at Gloria Jeans this weekend as for each coffee sold the are donating $0.50 to Opportunity International!

The Story of Two Wolves

I want to bring the section on values to a close today with a story that I found, which speaks to many of the reasons as to why we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail in life.

Over the last few days I have asked you to think about your values, and how they have affected you when making decisions in your life.  In doing this I have challenged you to think about what values have attributed to your success and what values have attributed to your failures.

I personally believe that while our values do evolve and change over time, that when under pressure to make decisions sometimes we choose the “evil woof” from this story:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Take the time to go away today and think about which of these “wolves” you are feeding!

Celebrate Your Victories

It has been a couple of days since I have had time to sit down and write a blog post for this Mindset Over Money site, I hope that you have been spending time reviewing and implementing the tasks I have already assigned you.

Today I want to take some time to talk with you about Celebrating your Victories, it’s a little divergence from our recent discussions about values, but is a relevant topic.  You see last Friday was my 25th birthday and I got to thinking about how exciting birthday’s were as a kid.  I used to bubble with anticipation in the lead up to my birthday, in fact in my family everyone would ensure that you were super excited in the lead up to your birthday.

It seems though that over time this excitement and anticipation slowly decreases and as each birthday passes we take less and less time to really celebrate it.  Now I know your probably sitting there and saying but I am getting older, and the older I get the less I want to celebrate a birthday.  But this is just an excuse isn’t, it’s not that we don’t want to celebrate it’s that we feel too old to celebrate.

Well today I want you to discard that thought, today I want you to take the time to celebrate a victory in your life.  Today I want you to take the time to find something positive in your life to celebrate and enjoy!

Over the last few days you have been assessing your values and how the affect your decision making, your successes and also your failures.  As part of this you have probably realized that values don’t function or operate independently.  Values function as a team, and are called a “value system”.

There are a few different types of values systems in play when making a decision and they are:

• Personal Value System – this is a value system help by and applied to one individual
• Communal or Cultural Value System – this is a value system held by and applied to a community/group/society.

Sometimes you will find that your personal value system is in play when making a decision and sometimes you will find your communal or cultural value system.  It’s important to distinguish in your personal decisions which system is affecting you at that specific point.

So today’s activity is devised to get you to recognize how these two value systems differ for you.  You have already taken the time to document your personal value system, so today take just 10 minutes to work out values make up your communal or cultural value system.

A personal development blog that uses the word failure, that is almost a cardinal sin.  In fact I am sure I will get emails from people telling me that by talking and thinking about failure I am attracting failure.  My answer to that is “that’s a load of crap”!

Do you think that Anthony Robbins has never had a negative thought or made a negative comment in his life?

Do you really think the path to success is to think only positively?

I personally believe that a blend of positive and negative thinking is inevitable for everyone, all you need to do is ensure that you have more positive thoughts than negative.

So with that said today, we are going to expand on the exercise you did as part of the Values Change Overtime post.  Today I want you to take 10 minutes to sit down and reflect on some of your previous failures.  I want you to visualise that time in your life and reflect on the values you had and how they affected your decision making at that time.

Upon completing this exercise you will have written down a value system that achieves failure and a value system that achieves success for you.  This system will be different for everyone so it’s important that you do this individually.

Over the last few days you should have been walking past your values at least 2 times a day and rating them from one through to ten as to how they are affecting your decisions at that exact moment.  When I have previously done this exercise I have found that while may values remain consistant, the order in which they operate change.  I found this not only to be true for me but for other people who also have done this exercise.

So I have, through my personal experience come to realize:

1. The Operating Order Of Your Values Change Hourly
2. Your Values Change Overtime

There is no doubt that:

• favourite food as a child is now different as an adult.
• favourite movie as a child is now different as an adult
• your house is no longer the exact same value as what you brought it at

With that said, there is also no doubt that your values and the way they operate today is different to how they operated as a child.  The question we have to answer is what is the most successful values system for me?

You see, you will find that during the most successful time of your life your values operated in a specific way.  If we could replicate that value system repeatedly then you could replicate your success repeatedly.

So what I want you to spend time on today is mentally revisiting the most successful times in your life.  When you revisit these times I want you to visualize how your value system was operating then.  How were your different  value affecting the decisions you made and the actions you took?

Spend just 10 minutes doing this and write down the results, don’t worry about comparing the results of today’s task against anything at the moment, just get it down.

Today’s post comes from a very good friend of mine by the name of Dean Letfus from Massive Action

Over many years of observing and working with many people I have noticed that we don’t pick our values, they kind of pick us!
Professional psychological research tells us that our value systems are 100% developed before we are 7 years old. And 80% of this is established before we are 2!!
So changing a value system is a big deal.  If we don’t like what we value we have to undo a lifetime of programmed thinking and behaviour.
In my work with investors I powerful value systems operating and often undermining our efforts. You see one of your stated values might be financial independence for example. However if your parents established core values in your life such as:

“Get a good education and get a good job”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“We can’t afford that in our family”
“Rich people are snobs”
“Making money is related to time and effort”
“Having anything nice is showing off”

Then our stated value of financial independence is likely to remain a dream.  Our behavior will be driven by these underlying core values, which in the case of the statements above is basically that poverty is good and being rich is associated with a string of negatives.

An extreme example would be gangs. I’ve worked and even lived with them and gang members operate on values of honour, “family”, pride and mutual protection.  Most of us would be happy to have those values in our lives.  Yet their interpretation of those values allows them to rape, kill, steal, intimidate and abuse others. They behave how they were programmed as children, in spite of their stated value systems.

So the initial key to understanding, (or changing) your values is to start to observe your behaviour.   You are what you do, not what you think.

This will take some effort, but it’s worth it.

“I notice I am last to arrive at work and last to leave”
“I spend 15 minutes getting ready for lunch and 15 minutes recovering after lunch before I do any work”
“I adore my daughter but I bite her head off every time she walks into the room”
“Why do I always eat the last biscuit/chocolate/whatever and never offer it to my spouse”
“Why am I depressed for 2 days because I lost a stupid game?”

Don’t be too terrified

Today’s mindset over money blog post is going to be a bit different, in fact it’s not even the post that I had planned.  You see as I was writing yesterday’s post about values I had something occur where I needed to assess my own value system.

I don’t know whether I have told you yet but I am married to the most wonderful lady, her name is Stephanie.  In fact she is the major reason that I educate people and share my thoughts like this, that’s a story for another time.  Yesterday Stephanie received a call to tell her that a member of her family was in hospital and not expected to live through the night.  Now this was not unexpected as they had been slowly deteriating, but it was still a shock.

We were at least an 8 hour drive away from being able to visit Steph’s family member and Steph and I looked at each other.  Without a moments hesitation we started packing the car, we dropped all of our plans for the day and just packed up and left.  Now when something like this happens some people will way up the pros and cons, some people will go after just doing the bare minimum needed, but for us we dropped everything instantly and jumped in the car.

So it became amazingly obvious to me yesterday that Steph and I have the same value highest in our value system, family.

This story does not have a happy ending as despite our efforts to drop everything and take action straight away we were 20 minutes too late to be with Steph’s family member.  Today I want you to take 2 things away from this post:

1. Values – When writing down and assessing your values ensure you are being true to yourself.  Only once you are true to yourself and your values will you be able to find your internal motivation.
2. Life – Life is not like a movie, there is not always the fantasy ending, but no matter how something ends there is always good to be seen.  The true challenge of life is to see the good despite being surrounded by the bad.