You Are The Difference

Only you can change your outlook and your outcome.

This is an important point, so much so that it bears repeating.

Only you can change your outlook and your outcome.

The only outlook that matters is your own. No one is living your life except you, so if you see the postive side of things, your life will be positive. If others see a negative side, their perception needs adjusting, your postive attitude determines your outlook and drives you towards postive outcomes.

You will find as you achieve more, you will want to give more. You will want to share your achievements with others so they too may eliminate their barriers and in turn they can help others. 

You will not only want material things (which is usually the first stage of wanting) as you will quickly see your outlook changing on what is important as you acheive more and more.

It is perfectly fine to use any of the ideas presented here for material gains, but you will find that eventually you will be striving for more ethereal goals. Material things only satisfy our five senses, whereas immaterial things also appeal to our spiritual self which is the actual source of our wanting and is what provides us with feelings of accomplishment. 

So, what do you want from life? Your answer will drive what you need to do to get everything you want.

Good luck in your pursuit of all things!

5 Stages of Eliminating Barriers

As I mentioned in my prior post, to reach our goals we need to Eliminate Barriers to those accomplishments. In this post I will lay out the 5 stages we each need to go through to Eliminate Barriers in our life.

1. Specify - During this stage we need to specify what goal or accomplishment we want so we have a clear plan and measure of success. This will help solidify the value of the goal.Anything we truly value, we will work harder to achieve.
2. Analyze - We need to determine what steps need to be taken to reach our goal. If there are a series of steps, we need to magnify each one and break it down to managable smaller substeps. This will keep us on target and provide proof of forward progress towards our goal as we complete each step we identify. 
3. Act - During this stage we do those tasks we've outlined as necessary to achieve our goals. It should be fairly simple to follow the plan we've created for ourselves and easily complete the actions to get us to our goals.
4. Review - Periodically review your list of goals and measure your progress towards them. As we progress through our plan, we may have to readjust or replan based on the outcome of certain situations, but we should be seeing progress towards our goal during this stage.
5. Triumph - Smile! If you've followed the steps above you can now enjoy the achievement of milestones towards your goal, and be blissful that you are closer to ultimate happiness!

I will focus on each step in following posts.

Good luck on the road to happiness. 

Eliminating Barriers

Life never seems fulfilled.

You wake up to a job you don't like, to make just enough money to pay the bills and you can only reminisce of the good times rather than make good times.
But then there are some anomalies - the people with more money and less happiness, the people of abject poverty who are consistently overjoyed.
What do they have in common with you and how can you use that commonality to your benefit to get that thing that you ultimately strive for - happiness.

I will use this site to discuss this topic and to provide some techniques you can use in your daily life to Eliminate Barriers to your happiness. As the song says, "life is what you make it" and it is up to each of us to do the things we need to do to improve our situation and get the things we want.

Material wealth is short-lived. Yes, we enjoy having huge homes, fast cars, big boats, fancy toys, but the joy we get from immaterial things such as love, great accomplishment, sharing knowledge, helping others - that happiness lasts a lifetime.
The feeling I get when remembering how I felt when a desperate friend needed my help comes faster and stronger, and lasts longer than recalling how I had the most expensive jeans in my class. Not only that, but I'm sure my desperate friend remembers my help, whereas I'm sure no one particularly remembers my jeans.

My next few posts will outline the method I have discovered that will help you Eliminate Barriers to your happiness, both material and immaterial.

Did You Hear What I Said?

This past weekend I was at a cottage in North Bay.
The weather was awesome, the lake was pristine and calm, and the company was amazing.

I'm more of a city slicker, but I do enjoy getting out to the country and spending some time truly away from all the hustle and bustle. I did freak out a little bit as I didn't have WiFi or very good cell reception (no cruizing the internet on my blackberry), but I also had to go to town for a few hours a day for groceries and garbage disposal which provided me with time to get my information superhighway fix.

I did realize how important it is to have people around you who really matter. Who you can have long conversations that can easily flow from the most mundane to the most complex, and everyone involved has something to offer.

In these conversations, listening is probably more important than talking. And not just listening to what words are being spoken, but really understanding the underlying meaning, emotion, or sentiment of what is being said.

In the world of business, things seem to move so fast, you don't get to deal with much more than what is on the surface, especially with the ubiquitous use of e-mail. But there can be a rich and more satisfying conversation and outcome if you pay particular attention to what is happening below the surface. That is where the interesting things happen. That is where you learn. That is where we all need to be more often.

Making Money in the Stock Market

One of the avenues to be travelled on the road to riches is the stock market.

Money can do all kinds of things for you once you have it - it can purchases goods, services, or make you more money.
We all know how to spend money in both smart and not-so-smart ways, but we don't all know how to use money effectively to reproduce itself for our use.
If we use money to purchase things, wouldn't it be great if we could get more of it whenever we wanted?

But alas, money does not grow on trees, so we can't just want more money. We have to work at it.

Notice I said work at it, not for it. There is a big difference. We work for money when we are paid an hourly wage. As I've stated before, this is a limiting activity. There are only 24 hours in a day, so we quickly max out the total amount of money we can make if we rely on an hourly wage.

A way to work with money, is by leveraging it in investments.

One great investment is the stock market. If done wisely, then you can easily make a very high return. You can also quickly lose all the money you invested. The difference is in how you manage your money and how/when/where/what stocks you invest in.

I've read quite a few books on the subject, but the most sound and effective ways is by acting like a shark, stalking your prey, attacking viciously, and leaving before anyone can notice you were there.

RevShark has some great advice on this methodology, and I subscribe to his site and regularly post messages on the board there.

I suggest checking out his site and book and tell him Twogunn sent you. With his help I've taken control of my 401K and made it into a healthy stream of income rather than just a pretty stagnant savings account.

Good investing!

Eco-Friendly and Sexy

In an attempt to be "greener" or more "earth-friendly", I'm constantly looking at new ways to improve our biggest use as an individual of fossil fuels - transportation.

We are a society dependent on gasoline for cars, trucks, trains, planes. These vehicles are on the road daily, and their use becomes more and more ubiquitous.

So how do we help the health of the planet and the air we breathe while still maintaining a high level of transportation? We can look at better fuel mileage and choose vehicles that use less fuel and therefore release less toxins into the air. Many people are choosing to forgo the SUV and downsize to a sedan or compact car. Ford is betting their future profitability on this change in consumer behaviour. The use of smaller, more efficient automobiles not only reduces the emissions into the air, but can help us save some money since the cost of gas is outrageously high these days.

I think that alternative fuel sources are the real answer to this problem. If we are going to increase the number of vehicles in use, then the reduction in pollutants that is gained by a gasoline efficient vehicle will eventually be negligible or completely lost altogether.
The only way to reduce the pollution in the air is to stop producing it.

There are a lot of electric cars being debuted at car shows recently, but the coup de gras of them all is the Tesla Roadster. Man is it one sexy car - regardless of its power source! At $100,000 it isn't a cheap option, but that is the price you pay for any car that can go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds. Just think of all the gas you save compared to other supercars who can compete with that speed.

There are definitely more practically priced and designed cars that are fully electric (theres even a pretty cool car that runs on air!), but if I'm going to save the planet from pollution, I want to at least look good doing it.

Fighting Off a Virus

AAARRGGHHH!!!
One of my computers has the Vundo virus!!!!

It is a major pain in the a$$.
It not only is a mailicious Trojan virus, but even most anti-virus and spyware applications can't remove it.

I make my living on the computer - I can't be without it or risk compromising the security of what I have stored on it. Needless to say when I figured out I had a virus, I was a little concerned.

I do download and often install various applications on my machine, but not usually any that haven't been reviewed by others or are sure to be virus free - still Vundo snuck in somehow.

THANKFULLY, I found VundoFix and my problem was solved, what a great tool. And its free!
It is nice to know that there are more people interested in working on the good they can do for others.

Financial Independence

Everybody wants more money right?

Not just for having money, or for just the material things that money can purchase (but what is wrong with a Porsche 911 in the driveway?), but also for all the good it can do.

I already send some of my paycheck to a local charity Miami Missions, but if I had a lot more money, I could help them and a lot of others too.

I have read quite a few good books on how to get wealthier to help me on this mission, Think and Grow Rich, Retire Young, Retire Rich, just to name a few.

It seems to me the only way to make more money, is to have whatever money you

have work for you. Diversification of efforts can be great to move faster and be more flexible.

If you only rely on a job to be your sole source of disposable income, you are definitely limited by an unmovable factor - time. You cannot work for more than 24 hours a day and that limits how much money you can make.

So I've looked at the following options to increase my ability to obtain more income:

• enter the stock market
• purchase real estate / invest in a rental property
• start a company

These are all very daunting tasks, but trust me they are worth it. The returns can be great - if you are smart about how you do each task. I'll post some information about how I did each of these three in the near future.

I'm still looking for some great ideas to start a company, so if you have any, please let me know, maybe we can collaborate on something that will change the world!