The saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In the short term, the plans give a pleasant feeling – “everything okay”. Later it may appear that only sweet little keeper who procrastinate conceal. If the list never implemented plans ruin your mood and your confidence.
Who still wants to change his life this year, here are some tips to increase the
The word self-improvement becomes synonymous with success, only if the tips you are really following, fetch you some improvement in your life style. The improvement may be in terms of your financial growth or your health or in your relationships. Read through to unravel the simple methods to improve you to the greater heights.
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.
These are crazy economic times, the Dow Jones went from 14,000 to 6,500 and back to 10,000. If you own a home you have seen the value drop from 20% to 50% depending on what part of the country you live in. This is the first time in modern history that home values have dropped nationally, yes, various pockets of the country’s homes have had down economic times before, but that has been region specific based on unique economic conditions in each area. But this is the first time that American’s have seen a national drop in what has been historically their largest and safest investment.
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.
Saving money is discipline, pure and simple. It is a discipline like exercising on a daily basis is, or like sticking to a diet. There are no huge secrets to the art of saving money, no secrets that we will reveal that you have never heard before, no earth shattering new technique, just simple focus, mental conditioning and effort. I know many of you think that you just can’t save any money on what you are making, that you barely get by as is, and I am sure for many of you that may be true, but it probably isn’t. The good news is I’m not trying to sell anything here so I am not going to tell you everyone can save money. In this economy many people have lost their jobs, their cars and homes, for them their problems are more severe then simple tips on how to save money. But 90% of you still have jobs and have an income and for you there is more than hope to save money, there is a solution.
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.
I learned a valuable lesson from the life of a friend of mine, this story takes place about twelve years ago but I use his life as an example to me every day. At the time, he was in his early thirties, married, and extremely successful, at least by most people’s standards. But he wasn’t just married, he was married to an incredibly beautiful woman, an attorney who was top of her class at one of the country’s most prestigious law schools, she was brilliant. And it wasn’t that he was just successful, he was in a high profile business, dealing with celebrities and captains of industry, the people you read about in People magazine. He bought a big house, two Mercedes, and traveled the world. He was the envy of most everyone he knew, had set out with goals when he left college and for all intensive purposes met every single one of them by the time he was thirty three years old. And despite all he had achieved, he was an extremely unhappy person, the more this couple had the more they wanted, the more he made the more his wife spent to “keep up with the Jones’.” He felt on a daily basis that he was, for lack of a better term, emotionally out of breath, he was constantly chasing and never catching. It would be easy at this point to take you right to a cliffhanger, to say this person couldn’t take it anymore, that there is a tragic end, that he abused alcohol or drugs, that he hit rock bottom and turned his life around. But he was really no different than most people, and most people who are unhappy with their lot in life don’t commit suicide, and they don’t abuse alcohol or drugs, most people just continue on the path they are on, never make changes and remain unhappy.
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.
