The Importance Of Retirement Planning

I have been retired for seven years now and I enjoy every minute of it. I retired when I was 53 years old but could have (and should have) retired at the age of 50. There has been a lot to learn in my retirement. I can describe my retirement in one word, options. There are unlimited options for me now that I didn’t have when I worked for the government. I can be or do anything I want now. Today I want to discuss the importance of retirement planning.

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Planning For Retirement

When I was working, I attended a pre-retirement seminar a couple of years before I retired. We were allowed to request attendance five years before our minimum retirement date. At the end of the seminar, I wrote on my evaluation that it was great information. The only problem was we needed the information sooner. It was too late for a lot of people to do what was needed for a comfortable retirement. Here are five things to do for a comfortable retirement.

  1. Begin Planning Early.
  2. Develop Specialized Knowledge and Skills.
  3. Find a Good Financial Planner.
  4. Begin Saving Early.
  5. Pay off Your Mortgage.

Begin Planning For Retirement Early

When I started my career I was 23 years old. Two things that I never thought were going to happen back then were: I would retire; I would get old. When you’re young you never think about getting old but it is inevitable. It happens to all of us. Importance of retirement planning is crucial. Starting your career is when you should start planning for your retirement. Begin thinking about what you want to do and how you want to live when that day finally comes.

Beginning your plan early will allow you to adjust to everything life throws your way. Sometimes life throws you the good things, marriage, children, etc. Other times the bad things death, injury, sickness, etc. Good things and bad will affect your retirement. By planning for the future early in your career you can minimize the impact.

Specialized Skills And Knowledge In Retirement

During my 30 year career, I developed certain skills and knowledge. After I retired I learned that most of my skills and knowledge didn’t transfer to my new life. If you have generalized skills and knowledge, you will learn that everyone is retired with the same skills. There’s a lot of competition. Finding your niche will help you stand out against the competition. I suggest that you research throughout your career skills that are needed in the private sector. Take courses and study those skills to gain the knowledge that you need.

A Financial Planner Is Important

Find a good financial planner. Unless you are an expert on finances you will need a financial planner. They can help you make the right decisions with your money. This will allow you to keep as much money as you can before retirement. It is a big change to go from knowing a check is coming every two weeks to a smaller check once a month. You will need to supplement your retirement with other sources of income if you want to maintain your current lifestyle.

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Save Early And Often

Begin saving as early as you can. The earlier you begin the more money you will have in retirement. I always put money into my Thrift Savings Account, which is the government 401(k). If I had to do it over again I would maximize my contributions. In retirement, you can use your savings to supplement your retirement. I withdraw a certain amount every month. Because the stock market has done so well, my savings have increased.

Saving early is probably the most important thing you can do. I recommend setting a goal for the amount of money you want to save before retirement. For me, the best thing was having it withdrawn from my paycheck and placed into my account. Out of sight, out of mind. Since I never saw the money it was like it never existed. My savings account would grow every two weeks without me doing anything.

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Eliminate That Big Debt

Pay off your mortgage. My mortgage is my biggest expense as it is for most people. Since I transferred a lot during my career I was not able to pay off my last mortgage. I bought houses and sold houses; made and lost money. If I had stayed in one location, in the same house, I wouldn’t have to worry about a mortgage now. I think about what I could do in the places I could go if I didn’t have a mortgage. If at all possible, pay off your mortgage before you retire.

These are just five things I wish I had known before retirement. One can’t overstate the importance of retirement planning. I am not an expert on retirement or financial planning. I hope that you will begin thinking about retirement now that you are young and not wait until it’s too late. Do your research, make a plan, and find a financial planner to help you. Always remember to start saving early.

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2021 A New Beginning

In my first post of this new year, 2021 a new beginning, I want to talk about taking everything we did at the end of December and utilize it in 2021. If you haven’t read my posts from December then I will encourage you to go back and read them. I talked about words you need to replace in your vocabulary, setting goals, and doing a self-analysis.

Techniques To Help You Start The Year Off Right!!!

2021 A New Start

For me, 2020 was a great year despite everything that went on in the world. Today I’m a different person than I was this time last year. I am excited about the new beginning 2021 brings. The possibilities are endless and the choice is yours on what you want to do with the next 365 days. I am set up better for 2021 because of everything I did at the end of 2020.

You can decide today how your life is going to be like a year from now. You just need to make the decision to change. The decision is not enough though. The most important part of making any decision is to make a commitment to that decision. Your commitment will get you through difficult times.

2021 New Year’s Resolutions

Many people make New Year’s resolutions during this time. I have never made New Year’s resolutions. Most New Year’s resolutions made by people only last about two weeks. By January 15th they have already quit on them. The reason is that they never committed to their resolutions.

Let’s take the gym for example. Before COVID, you could find me in the gym almost every morning. Many people make a resolution to lose weight and at the beginning of January and the gym becomes very crowded. Normally, I could go through my workouts without any interference but not at the beginning of January. I don’t like the crowds but I only have to put up with them for the first two weeks. By then, most people have quit because it got too hard and they didn’t commit.

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2021

Begin Today

Now that we’re in 2021 don’t be like most people. Begin today working on a new you. Start carving out the life that you want to live and stop listening to the opinion of others. Read your goals and begin working on your plan. I’m a better person today because of the decision I made last year and the commitment I made to that decision. It wasn’t easy and in fact, it was very hard at times. Stretching my comfort zone was difficult and I wanted to quit several times.

I just kept working on my plan, even on days that I didn’t want to. I kept speaking what I wanted and not what I had. Celebrating the small victories was a big help. I made productive use of each day and always moved forward. Some days I made giant leaps and others, small steps. When I fell I always fell forward. The most important thing I did was persevere by focusing on the WHY.

Let’s Form A Team In 2021

Let’s Go Do It

Let’s go make 2021 your year! You’ve made your decision and committed to that decision. Your goals are set and you have a solid plan. You have a WHY that is big and emotional. Hopefully, it scares you. You know nothing’s going to get in your way and you will overcome all obstacles. Persevere and NEVER QUIT!

2021 a new beginning, it can be for you. If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and follow. Let me know what you want to change in 2021. If you need help with anything, InspireChief is here for you. You can purchase my courses above. Let’s make 2021 a great year together.

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All Aboard!!

“This Train Is Moving on, You Can Get on, You Can Get off, But the Train Keeps Moving on! We Are Going to the Top of the Mountain!”

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Making Good Choices – Ep 13

Welcome to my Podcast, Making Good Choices – Ep 13. Today I want to talk about the choices we make. Before you listen to the Podcast, don’t forget to like, comment, and follow. Subscribe to my team below and click on my links to purchase the products I recommend from Amazon.

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Making Good Choices – Ep 13

We have choices to make every day. Do we get out of bed now or do we roll over and go back to sleep? Do we pick up our phone as soon as we wake up or look at it later? What are we going to wear? What are we going to have for breakfast? We are inundated with choices that we have to make every day. In my blog titled, Anxiety (COVID-19), I wrote about the current situation that we are facing today and how that has created choices. We have a choice between faith and fear. I will always choose faith over fear.

Habits

The first step to making a decision to change is simple, you have to look inside yourself. Write down everything that you do on a normal day. The next day, read what you have written down. These are the habits that have gotten you to where you are now in life. If that’s where you want to be and you are happy, then continue doing these things.

If you are not where you want to be in life and want more out of it, then you have to change these habits. My advice, if you’re looking for a place to start, is to read or listen to books about the habits of people you would consider successful. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a great book to start with. Successful people become successful not out of luck, but through their daily habits. If you want more out of life, ask yourself if you are willing to change. If the answer is yes, then there is no better time to start than now.

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Get On Board!!

This Train Is Moving On. You Can Get On, You Can Get Off, But The Train Keeps Moving On. We are Going To The Top Of The Mountain!

Final Thoughts

Thank you for listening to, Making Good Choices – Ep 13. If you have any comments I would like to hear them. Subscribe to my email list by clicking on the button above and receive my checklist to keep you moving forward in attaining your goals.

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Quotes About Time; 1440 Minutes

I hope you enjoy these quotes about time; 1440 minutes. I pray they inspire you to make a change today.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
~ William Penn

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Quotes About Time; 1440 Minutes

Today I began thinking about time and what time means to us. Throughout my life, I’ve never spent much time thinking about, well…. time. But seeing how I recently turned 60 and a friend of mine described it as entering the fourth quarter of life, time has pushed itself to the front of the line of my thinking process. I am now closer to the end of my life than the beginning.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
~ Leo Tolstoy

The life expectancy in the United States is currently 78.93 years. That would put me at the end of the fourth quarter, but I’m playing for overtime. Taking this number it would give me 18.93 years to accomplish everything I want to accomplish in life. That’s a lot of time and I can accomplish a lot of things. It all depends on how I use my remaining years.

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1440

When we break time into clock minutes, there are 1440 minutes in a day. That gives us 525,600 minutes every year. If we all live for 80 years, that would equal 42,048,000 minutes. That’s how many minutes we would have in a lifetime. An important fact to remember is, everyone has the same amount of minutes, 1440, every day. No one is different. None of us have fewer minutes than somebody else. We are all allotted 1440 minutes a day. How are you using your 1440 minutes?

In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.
~ Les Brown

Time is money.
~ Benjamin Franklin

One thing that I have noticed as I’ve gotten older is that time is very fleeting. I’ve heard a lot of people say this and I have also experienced it. Time seems to speed up as we age. I think back on my life and my school years. High school and college each last four years. Eight years passed by in a blink of an eye. My career, marriage, and raising my children all passed by in a blink of an eye.

The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
~ Stephen R. Covey.

Friends

I believe what started me on the topic of time was two recent events that have happened in my life. As I write this, I have a friend who’s in the hospital fighting for his life. He’s only a couple years older than me and lives a very healthy lifestyle. One day he is fine and the next he is in an ambulance headed for the hospital. The other event was that my sister-in-law passed away this summer. She was only 55 years old. Like my friend, she was fine one day, in the hospital the next, and died two days later. We don’t know how much time we have.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
~ Theophrastus.

Death

Death is inevitable, no one can escape it. I have been in dangerous situations and have cheated death on more than one occasion. I have been shot at and one time could even feel the bullet as it passed behind my neck. I’ve been on helicopters that almost crashed on more than one occasion and have beaten cancer. So Death and I have had several conversations and they have all ended with the words of Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, “Not Today.”

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
~ Charles Darwin

Would you do anything different in your life if you knew exactly how much time you had left? I don’t know how much time I have left, but I choose to spend it spreading positivity and inspiration. The news media does a good enough job of spreading negativity, they don’t need any help. It wasn’t always like that. When I grew up news stations just told you what was happening, the good and the bad. Today, unfortunately, negativity sells. So that’s what we get.

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What Choice Will You Make?

Choices

You can choose to use your 1440 minutes any way you want. Why not use them to:

      – Make someone feel better.

      – Improve yourself.

      – Be positive.

      – Change your mindset.

      – Tell yourself how good and deserving you are.

      – Write a plan for yourself.

      – Set some goals.

      – Do better things today than you did yesterday.

      – Have a wonderful conversation with your significant other.

      – Say hello to strangers.

      – Give thanks for everything you have, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Doubt Demons

You know I don’t always wake up with a positive mindset. Sometimes I have to talk my way into being positive. Some days the Doubt Demons win. The next day I have to continue the fight until I win and get back my positive mindset. Every day is different but the one constant is that I am in control of what I think and say. The choice is always mine on how I spend my 1440 minutes.

Time is a created thing. To say, “I don’t have time” is to say, “I don’t want to.”
~ Lao Tzu

It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.
~ Seneca

I don’t know how much time I have left, none of us do. We do know that we are all allotted our 1440 minutes each day to choose how we are going to spend them. So don’t wait until tomorrow to do what you want to do. Get out there today and live the life you want to live. Know what your worth and don’t settle for anything less. Go become that person others want to be.

No one is promised tomorrow.

It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
~ Steve Jobs

Final Thoughts

Thank you for reading, Quotes About Time; 1440 Minutes. If you have any comments I would like to hear them. Subscribe to my email list by clicking on the button above and receive my checklist to keep you moving forward in attaining your goals.

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Get On Board!!

“This Train Is Moving on, You Can Get on, You Can Get off, But the Train Keeps Moving on! We Are Going to the Top of the Mountain!”

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Eliminating Doubt For Personal Development

I’ve talked about this in several previous articles and want to discuss it more thoroughly today. I’m talking about those little creatures that hide deep inside our minds. The ones that pop up at the worst of times. Their only function is to prevent you from living the life you so richly deserve. Yes, I am talking about those dreaded “Doubt Demons!” There they are, waiting for the right time to come out. They are dug in deep and camouflaged. It is imperative to stifle these demons. If at all possible, they should be eradicated. Eliminating doubt for personal development must become a priority.

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“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
~ Sylvia Plath

 “When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.”
~ Honore de Balzac

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Eliminating Doubt

In my previous post, “Inspirational Quotes about Your Gifts,” I gave you a definition of success. “Success is the completion and the fulfillment of the original purpose of your existence.” For you to have success, you must know what Doubt Demons are and where they come from. Just like a cancer in the body, Doubt Demons are there to destroy you. Doubt Demons are those little voices and thoughts inside your head. They are constantly telling you that you can’t do it. They will stunt your personal development and must be eliminated.

 “Worry, doubt, fear, and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die.”
~ Anonymous

“If you are going to doubt anything in life, doubt your own limitations.”
~ Dan Brule

Fear creates Doubt Demons just like it creates all demons. They are particularly active right after you make a decision to change yourself for the better. Have you ever tried to lose weight and began to get cravings for unhealthy foods? Doubt Demons. If you’ve ever attempted to get a promotion, you might have started noticing the quality of the other candidates. You begin to compare yourself with them and believe that they are better. Doubt Demons. Did you start a business for financial freedom? Were you engulfed in fear, after you made that decision? Did you ask yourself, “how will I pay the bills?” Doubt Demons.

“Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don’t let these feelings stop them.”
~ T. Harv Eker

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
~ Suzy Kassem

How Do Our Thoughts Form?

Any thought you have that fills you with fear is placed there by the Doubt Demons. Where do they come from? Unfortunately, these Doubt Demons can be given life inadvertently. When we are young and our thoughts are forming, we are very vulnerable. As we go through our personal growth our thoughts are developing. Many times adults place Doubt Demons into our subconscious mind inadvertently. They don’t realize the harm they are doing. Often your parents, teachers, etc. have tried to protect you from disappointment. They say things like, “he’s just shy,” “she’s not a good test taker,” or “it takes money to make money.”

Teacher in front of her students

“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 “Doubt is only removed by action. If you’re not working then that’s where doubt comes in.”
~ Conor McGregor

Any statement such as the ones above give life to these Doubt Demons. Imagine what will happen if you want to ask out the girl of your dreams but you have been told that you are shy. You want to go to the college of your choice but are “not a good test taker.” Doubt Demons are not exclusively given life just when we’re young. They can also be placed in us as adults by our coworkers and friends. Have you ever told a friend about a big dream? If their response was less than enthusiastic, it gave life to your Doubt Demons.

 “Don’t let them make you doubt yourself. All the greatest visionaries in history have been told they were insane at some point.”
~ Michele Jaffe

“We all have genius within us, never doubt that fact.”
~ Catherine Pulsifer

Look For These Symptoms

What are some of the symptoms of Doubt Demons? Fear creates Doubt Demons. They feed off our internal fears, especially the six basic fears. There are six basic fears that we suffer from at different times. The fear of poverty, of criticism, of sickness, of loss, of old age, and of death. Once we decide to make a positive change in our lives, we begin to experience some of these fears. At times, it is a combination of these fears. These fears can lead to symptoms such as indecision, procrastination, gossip, and eventually quitting. Once we quit, we return to our old life which is the goal of the Doubt Demons. We must be eliminating doubt for personal development.

Fear not

Have you made the decision to start your own business? If so, you might have woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. The thoughts of failure and not being able to pay your bills raced through your head. Here come your Doubt Demons invoking the fear of poverty. Do you worry about what your friends or family will say? The Doubt Demons have inserted into you the fear of criticism. This is a very powerful fear and you need to know how to handle it. For some good tips and information, you can check out my post, “A Flying Rat’s Ass.”

“I love it when people doubt me. It makes me work harder to prove them wrong.”
~ Derek Jeter

“I’ve learned that the mastery of self-doubt is the key to success.”
~ Will Smith

What To Do?

What can we do about these Doubt Demons? We know we have them, they are always with us whether we believe it or not. We must find ways to exterminate them if we can. If we can’t, we must live with them and control them. You will never be able to fulfill the intent of your existence if you don’t. Eliminating doubt for personal development is a must. Solutions for controlling/eradicating them are:

1. Identify Them. Understand your Doubt Demons for what they are. These are thoughts that have been placed in your subconscious mind and allowed to grow. That’s all they are and once you identify them, you can develop a plan to fight them.

2. Positive Affirmations. You can replace any and all thoughts placed in your mind by other people. By writing down the Doubt Demons which you have identified, you can now replace all negative thoughts with an opposite positive thought. Write down these positive thoughts and speak them out loud several times a day. Remember that your Doubt Demons have had years to grow in your mind. It won’t happen overnight, but if you develop the habit of speaking your positive affirmations daily, you will change your paradigm.

3. Release Them. Now that you have identified your Doubt Demons, began changing your paradigm through positive affirmations, you can release them. As you release them, you will see yourself changing. You will grow more confident, be more decisive, and know how to handle criticism. You will begin to live a happy life because you know how to control your fears and live by faith. It is a wonderful feeling to know that you are doing your best with the gifts God has placed inside you.

Final Thoughts

Are you eliminating doubt for your personal development? Are you struggling with anything right now? Do Doubt Demons stop you from living the lifestyle you deserve? Do you have any tips to share that would be helpful to someone who is struggling with doubt? I would love to be able to help you out. Leave your comments below. Subscribe to my email list by clicking on the blue button above and receive my checklist to keep you moving forward in attaining your goals.

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“Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them.”
~ Anonymous

 “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

All Aboard!!

“This Train Is Moving on, You Can Get on, You Can Get off, But the Train Keeps Moving on! We Are Going to the Top of the Mountain!”

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Quotes To Help You Make Life Choices

Enjoy these empowering quotes to help you make the life choices we face everyday. I’m going to begin with a situation I found myself in where I had to make a life-threatening decision.

I kneeled behind the largest tree I could find. The timer on my watch was ticking down the seconds as I wiped off the beads of sweat dripping on the watch face. Minutes earlier, we were flying over the jungles of Peru and spotted the large cocaine lab from the air. After finding the lab and placing the explosives, I had cut a length of fuse for a 2 minute 30 second burn, fired off the igniter and started my timer. 10 seconds to go and we should hear the large boom and see an immense fireball. Three… Two… One…, Nothing, just silence. What just happened? Did I miscalculate the length of the fuse? Maybe it was a bad fuse? Did the fuse stop burning or was it still burning at a slower rate? All these thoughts flew through my head.

“You are free to make whatever choice you want, but you are not free from the consequences of the choice.”
~ Ezra Taft Benson

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
~ Nelson Mandela

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“Decisions are the hardest thing to make especially when it is a choice between where you should be and where you want to be.”
~ Anonymous

“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.”
~ John C. Maxwell

Life Decisions

Now I had a choice to make. Leave the unexploded ordnance like it was which could injure someone or risk my life going back to the lab to see what went wrong and fix it. The decision was simple and I slowly made my way through the jungle back to the lab. It seemed like it took forever because with every step I took, I would stop and look for smoke or any telltale sign that the fuse was still burning. With God on my side I made it and found out that the fuse had looped back on itself and burned out. Everything turned out well and another lab was destroyed.

We make choices every day and sometimes several choices a day. Luckily, the choices we make are not always life-threatening, but they can have an enormous impact on our lives. I hope these inspirational quotes on life choices will be of some help to you when making decisions.

Would you chance it?

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
~ Denis Waitley

“Every morning you have two choices: Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase your dreams. The choice is yours.”
~ Anonymous

You Are The Deciding Factor

How your life turns out depends on the choices you make every day. If you make more good choices than bad choices, you will enjoy the benefits of living a good life. We make many decisions every day and most of them will not have a significant impact on our life. They can however have an impact on how your day is going to turn out. If you choose to eat a sketchy gas station burrito for breakfast, you might not have the best day. In this article I don’t want to focus on the minor decisions that we make, but rather the ones that are life-changing. This is a great anonymous quote to help you make life choices; “We make our choices, then our choices make us.”

Life is a game and like all games the choices that you make during the game decides if you win or lose. You are 100 % responsible if you win in life or lose in life based on the choices that you make. Success doesn’t see race, socioeconomic status, or what country you are from. It only matters what you do with your life and the choices that you make. Always remember, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.

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The 3 C’s

“I believe we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.”
~ Sammy Davis Jr.

Changing Destinations

You can change your destination simply by making the right choices. The end always matters more than the beginning.  For example, you might decide that you want to attend Harvard University but do not get accepted. You make a choice to attend a local community college, study hard, make the right choices, and do everything in your power to apply for a transfer to Harvard. Eventually, you are accepted and graduate with honors. It didn’t matter what school you started at; you are a Harvard graduate.

I grew up in a middle-class family. My father was a federal law enforcement officer and even though he didn’t make a lot of money, he provided very well for us, and we never wanted for anything. I remember there were some lean times when we had to switch to powdered milk and other less expensive food items, but there was always food on the table.

“Every test in our life makes us bitter or better, every problem comes to break us or make us. The choice is ours whether we become victim or victor.”
~ Anonymous

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

My Kingdom For A Chainsaw

Dad always wanted to teach us the value of hard work, so he made a choice not to invest in power tools. This meant that if we had a tree fall on our property, my brother and I were given the task of cutting it into firewood. Without a chainsaw, my brother would get on one side of the tree and I would get on the other. We would use a bow saw and saw back-and-forth for hours until we reduced the tree to smaller logs. Once that was accomplished, we would spend hours splitting the logs with an ax. If he had chosen to, he could have purchased a chainsaw which would have been smarter and faster. Using a chainsaw though wouldn’t have developed the necessary attributes such as teamwork, planning, and perseverance that helped us later in life. Today, I’m thankful for his choices.

So much easier.

“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
~ William Jennings Bryan

“Our talents are the gift that God gives to us… What we make of our talents is our gift back to God”
~ Leo Buscaglia

When The Sun Comes Up

I choose at the beginning of every day how my day is going to be, based on my words, my thoughts, and my actions. The first thing I do when I open my eyes in the morning is give thanks for the day I’m going to have an all I’m going to accomplish. I always start my day off with a happy thought. That thought is always the first time I ever saw my wife.

I make the choice what I’m going to do that day. I choose to work because I enjoy what I do, I like to learn new ways of making money, and I want to continue to have the ability to give. It is my choice to live my life by faith and not pay attention to the fear-based media. I have determined my purpose in choosing to spend my days in activities that will lead me to success.

“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
~ Albert Camus

You can have anything you want in this life if you choose to have it. First, you must make a choice to decide what your life is going to be. Second, you must define your purpose, what it is that you want, and why you want it. Third, you must be willing to do what it takes and sacrifice to make it happen. Fourth, you must make a plan on how you’re going to attain it and write it down. Lastly, you must read your purpose, your sacrifice, and your plan every day. Think about these motivational quotes when faced with life choices

“Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible.”
~ Cherie-Carter Scotts

“You can let things define you, destroy you, or strengthen you. It’s your choice.”
~ Anonymous

Final Thoughts

You can choose to be happy or angry. The life that you have, either good or bad, is your choice. The amount of money you want to have is all up to you. Make a choice today to live the life you want to live. Make a choice to leave this life with no regrets. If you will make the choice, follow the steps above, persevere through any failures you might have, and never quit, you will live the life of your dreams.

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All Aboard!!

“This Train is moving on! You can get on or you can get off, but the train keeps moving on. We are going to the top of the mountain!”

Choices

We have choices to make every day. Do we get out of bed now or do we roll over and go back to sleep? Do we pick up our phone as soon as we wake up or look at it later? What are we going to wear? What are we going to have for breakfast? We are inundated with choices that we have to make every day. In my blog titled, Anxiety (COVID-19), I wrote about the current situation that we are facing today and how that has created choices. We have a choice between faith and fear. I will always choose faith over fear. I see and hear people every day that have chosen fear. I can understand given the information that we are being fed why they chose fear. A lot of choices that we make in life are based on the information that we have been fed. If you are being told that wealthy people are just lucky and if you are not wealthy, then it is because you are not lucky. You do not believe that you can change because you believe luck is something you either have or do not have.

The truth is that wealth has nothing to do with luck and has everything to do with a willingness to change as well as the choices that you make. The Internet has created incredible opportunities for people to make money. There are people that make a lot of money posting videos of themselves. They made a choice to make a business out of posting videos. They found a niche and they spend hours shooting, editing, and uploading their videos. The vast majority of people have chosen just to watch videos of other people and spend hours doing so. One of the things that I tell people is; that you can make money online or you can watch other people make money online. It’s simply a choice that you make, but it also requires you to change.

The first step to making a decision to change is simple, you have to look inside yourself. Write down everything that you do during a normal day. The next day, read what you have written down. These are the habits that have gotten you to where you are now in life. If that’s where you want to be and you are happy then continue doing these things. If you are not where you want to be in life and want more out of it, then you have to change these habits. My advice, if you’re looking for a place to start, is to read or listen to books about the habits of people you would consider successful. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a great book to start with. Successful people become successful not out of luck, but through their daily habits. If you want more out of life, ask yourself if you are willing to change. If the answer is yes, then there is no better time to start than now.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

  • Albert Einstein

Take your list of daily habits and review it to see which ones are holding you back. Compare them with the habits of your chosen successful people and write down your list of new habits that you are going to start developing today. Remember that it took you years to develop the habits that you have now and will take some time to develop new habits. If you stick to your new habits on a daily basis, before long, they will become your everyday life. Get ready for a new you. You might find that you are dressing better, eating better, sleeping better, and overall accomplishing everything you want to do.

I write about this in almost every one of my blogs and particularly in my last post titled The Power of Words, but for me, it’s so important that it needs to be said again and again. The number one thing I teach people is to always remember WHY you started something. WHY did you start that business, begin that relationship, want to lose weight, etc. Changing old habits is not easy. You might have been doing some of these habits for decades. We as humans tend to do things that are comfortable. Old habits are like a warm blanket, wonderfully comfortable. We are constantly pulled back to that warm blanket. New habits can be uncomfortable to tackle at first. When you feel yourself being pulled back to that warm blanket, you must think of WHY you wanted to make that change. By continually working on your new habits daily, they will then become your new warm blanket.

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The big question that you have to ask yourself is, “Am I willing to change in order to succeed?” Success just like faith and fear is a choice. If you choose to be successful and are willing to change your habits to do what successful people do, then you can live as successful people live. There is an unlimited amount of wealth but only a small percentage of people tap into it. The reason most people are not wealthy is that only a small percentage make the choice. They change their habits and are willing to do everything necessary to become wealthy. The universe will supply abundance for everyone. It’s not for just a select few, it’s for all of us, but you have to be willing to change in order to receive it.

What are your daily habits? Are you willing to change those habits? What is your WHY? Are you willing to take what life throws at you, shrug it off, and keep moving forward? Do you want to make money online or watch other people make money online? Don’t stand on the sidelines, put on the pads, buckle up your chinstrap, and get in the game. You are a winner, now go win.

Do you make good choices? I would love to hear your comments on habits that have made you successful. What are some habits that might be holding you back? If you like this post, click the little star below.

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