Make A Habit Of Controlling Your Life

Do finances really take care of themselves? You've probably heard for years, you've got to manage your money. You've got to manage your money. Money doesn't manage itself. You'll simply lose all your money. And if you don't watch every single penny, you'll end up in the poor house. Your parents may have told you that, other financial experts have told you that. And certainly it is easy to lose money and it is easy to go in debt, especially with credit cards given out like candy these days to almost any citizen with a pulse and an address, it's easy to run up massive amounts of debt. But I did something just earlier today I wanted to share with you. Periodically I completely redo my daily selfie speak program. That's the audio where I tell myself what habits I want to have. And I record it once every few months and then I listen to it every day. So this time I organized my selfie speak program according to the seven spheres of life where you have significant habits. As I organized these, self control agency over yourself. That's the first sort of overriding sphere of life that involves your habits. The second one is health. The third, love, friendship, relationships with people. The fourth, lifelong learning. These are all major spheres of life where you have to have daily habits to support them, to make them all work. The fifth one, creation, creating, demonstrating your purpose in life to others. That is what I think is the fifth great sphere of life where you need habits. The sixth one, leisure. What you do for fun, what you do to relax. That's the sixth one. The seventh habit, wealth, finances. And I put it there as the seventh one, not because I think it's unimportant. If I didn't have any money, the other six categories would all be in worse shape. Without money, I wouldn't be able to eat healthy food. Without money, I wouldn't be able to create things like all online courses, because I wouldn't be able to afford this studio and camera. So money is critically important. It fuels all the others. But when I found out I put these things in hierarchy, it just naturally came in seventh place. The first place was self control. If you can't control yourself, your own schedule, your own agenda, your own ability to control your body, nothing else really matters. So that one was obvious. First place. The second one, health. To me, it's obvious because you ask people about habits, the first thing they think of typically is do you exercise, do you eat right, those habits, because if you're feeling pain, it's hard to do anything else. Well, in Life. If your health is so bad you die, well, then everything else is obviously completely irrelevant. So I outline this for those of you who were able to tune into last Thursday's show in some detail. We'll be reposting that segment very soon if you really want to get a sense of my overall philosophy of the seven habit spheres of life. But here's what I found out this morning. I went through my list of every single habit I do on a daily basis and I have about a hundred of them. These are a checklist I keep right here on my cell phone. And what I did is I cut and pasted my. I just somehow hit the Siri button on my iPad. Excuse me for that. So what I did was I looked at every single daily habit I have. And so I wrote down things like for number one in my self control agency, I wrote specific things down like listen to my selfie speak audio every day. That's one of those things written down. Empty my email box every day by the end of the day. Specific actions, daily habits. So that's what I have. For example, for sphere two, the health. I have things like get eight hours of sleep, drink a large glass of water every day when I wake up, have no more than one cup of coffee. I do 20 jumping jacks every morning. Now I'm saying these not because I'm telling you these are the perfect things to do and you need to do them. I'm just giving you examples of specific habits I have in my and who knows, if there's enough interest, I may share with you this whole list. These are the hundred habits I do every single day. My category for love, friendships and relationships. I have things like have dinner with my entire family every night. It's just a daily habit. Lifelong learning. I read a book a day. I listen to an audiobook a day. I read abridged ebooks every single day. So those are things and then the creating. I have very specific creation habits on a daily basis. I write 500 words a day about habits. Some of those I use for segments here, some for books, some for online courses. I write a question a day. I write a poem a day, an aphorism a day, a habit tip a day. I have very specific goals. Leisure goals. Leisure, pleasure and relaxation. I meditate for just 10 minutes a day. I try to read one joke a day. It only takes about five seconds, but I have a whole bunch of little tips there. So what I found is by the time I got to number seven, wealth habits. Look what was on the page Absolutely nothing other than the category. Now, what I conclude from that is not that you can't have certain good financial habits. Of course there are good financial habits like pay cash, don't go into debt for anything other than perhaps a small mortgage or education. And even education is dubious these days. Don't spend more than you have. Live within your means. Upgrade. There's a lot of different, in general, habits you could have over the course of a month or for a year. But when I came down to daily habits to really help my wealth and my finances, what I found is the other habits. If I just stuck with the other habits, it solved my problem for finances and wealth. Because if I'm creating on a daily basis, then I'm making more money for my online courses. If I'm doing things like reading books and going to bed at a reasonable hour, I'm not out spending a fortune out on the town. If I'm constantly trying to build my mind, then I'm not spending a fortune on the casino down the road. There is a casino several exits away from me in Long Island. I've never been to it. I'm not opposed to casinos. I'm not trying to shut them down. They just don't appeal to me. Have I ever put $5? Sure. But I don't think I have in the last 15 years. Because I'm focused on what I want, because I'm focused on learning, creating money comes out. If you're spending your time learning new stuff every day, as I try to do, through reading, through communicating with you, trying new things, experimenting. I mean, what Marceau and I have learned in the last six weeks, just on the technical aspects of trying to do a livestream show on 20 different platforms. That alone is a master's degree in electronics and information technology. If you're focusing your energies on learning new things, hard things, and creating things of value. In my experience, it's virtually impossible not to see your finances grow for several reasons. You become more valuable in the marketplace. More people seek you out, more people want to purchase your services or hire you or buy your courses or books or whatever it is you sell. We all are selling something that's a part of it. Part of it is it squeezes out your time to waste money. If I'm spending my time learning and creating, I simply just don't have the time to go to New York City and do a lot of shopping, to buy a whole bunch of new suits or whatever. It just doesn't interest me. I don't have time. So that's what I want you to think of if you are trying to improve your own financial position. Sure, wasting $5 on Starbucks is better than wasting $5 a day at Starbucks. Sure, having a 24 hour cooling off period before making a major purchase on Amazon or anyplace else is good. Then I would ask you get the other spheres of your life in shape first. Focus on that. Get your health in shape. You know, there's, there's a lot of information out there about how poor people are more obese because they don't have access to good food. And certainly there are situations in some neighborhoods where the stores just have packaged processed food, sugary food, and McDonald's is a lot cheaper than nice restaurants with great salads. But in general, I find it's actually less expensive to eat healthy for a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world than it is to eat garbage. For one thing, it's very easy to go out to a restaurant and have an entree, an appetizer, a dessert, three or four drinks. Spend $100 in the US at a not a fancy restaurant, but just go to a chili's and spend 100 bucks. If you're not eating the appetizer or the dessert and you're drinking water instead of five sodas or five beers, it's going to cost you a lot less money and you'll be healthier. When you are healthier and you're getting proper sleep, you can think better. You'll probably be more productive at your job. You're more likely to get a promotion or to at least not get fired. When your health is out of whack, you're not going to be as worthwhile to any employer or anyone who's hiring you. So it's all connected. Make sure your health is in great shape. You'll be more valuable in the marketplace if you're learning more. You'll be more valuable in the marketplace if you are actively creating new ideas, new projects, new books, new courses, new blog posts, new anything to help other people, there's a million ways of monetizing it. Now, this wasn't true when I was a kid or even a young man growing up. But in today's modern economy, if you are creating ideas that are useful to other people, whether it is a blog post, whether it is podcast with advertisers, Whether it is YouTube with advertisers, whether it's an online course, whether it's an ebook, you can make money from your ideas. So if you simply focus on creating more that helps your seventh sphere of finances. So that's what I want you to think about. If your finances are not where you want to be, if you don't have the money you need and want to live the lifestyle you want, maybe it's not just about getting that magic stock tip. Maybe it's not about your friend cutting you into some Bitcoin deal. Maybe it's about you focusing on these other six spheres of life. Make sure you're really healthy. Make sure you can control your own schedule and your own agenda and your own daily habits. Make sure you're healthy. Make sure you are learning new skills every day. I have friends who bemoan the fact that they're not as rich as some of their relatives and other friends. And yet the only thing they spend time learning are the new sports scores from a football or basketball or hockey game last night. Why would anyone pay them more money for their profession or whatever they do when they're just learning trivial information? And if you like sports, that's fine, but that can't be the only thing you put as new information in your brain. Be a lifelong learner, but don't stop there. Don't just learn. Don't just be the eternal student. Take that learning and make something useful to other people. If you do that, your finances will in fact magically solve themselves. That is topic C. So if you want to care to dissent. I don't mean to make it sound like it's easy, and believe me, I'm not selling. You know, for $19, I guarantee you this program is going to make you fabulously. Well, no, it's not that simple. It's about daily habits over a period, weeks, months, years, decades. And it involves things like when you meditate and think about your own life and your own values, you're much less likely to want to make purchases just to be like everyone else. The other day we had some friends over and they have a fabulous brand new Tesla and the wings go up and down and they make all kinds of music and it was a beautiful car. And in fact, I had other friends at a party and they had a Tesla and I thought, wow, if I were like a lot of people, I would say to myself, I gotta have a Tesla. And they do look like nice cars. But here's the thing. I'm not a car person. I don't really care about Teslas or any other car. Therefore, I don't have to buy that car. I just saved myself 40 or $100,000. You've got to live your life for you. Now, you may want a Tesla, go out and make the money to buy it. That's perfectly fine. I'm not preaching anti capitalism or anti materialism. Where people get themselves into trouble is not having a clear identity of here's who I am as an expert, here's who I am as a creator. Instead, it's I'm just sort of an average person going with the flow. So I have to distinguish myself by buying fancy things to impress others. That's what gets people into financial trouble.