Happiness in LIfe: You Deserve It

Happiness in Life: You Deserve it!

Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 2, 2010

Achieving your own happiness is the best measure of how well you are living your life and enjoying your relationships. You can learn how to be happier and more fulfilled in everything you do.

Everyone is Different

Happiness in life is like a smorgasbord. If 100 people went to a smorgasbord and each put food on their plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife would go up to the smorgasbord and come back with plates that looked completely different. Happiness is the same way. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about him or herself.

Listen to Your Heart

And your mix is changing continually. If you went to the same smorgasbord every day for a year, you probably would come back with a different plateful of food each time. Each day-sometimes each hour-only you can tell what it takes to make you happy. Therefore, the only way to judge whether a job, a relationship, an investment, or any decision, is right for you is to get in touch with your feelings and listen to your heart.

Be True to Yourself

You’re true to yourself only when you follow your inner guiding light, when you listen to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “still, small voice within.” You’re being the very best person you can be only when you have the courage and the fortitude to allow your definition of happiness, whatever it may be, to be the guiding light of every part of your life.

There Are No Limits

A very important point on the subject of happiness is whether or not you feel that you “deserve” to be happy.

Accept the notion that you deserve all the happiness in life you can honestly attain through the application of your talents and abilities. The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you will feel of the good things in life. And the more deserving you feel, the more likely you will attain and hold on to the happiness you are working toward.

Make Happiness Your Key Measure

You should make finding happiness in life the organizing principle of your life. Compare every possible action and decision you make against your standard of happiness to see whether that action would make you happier or unhappier. Soon, you will discover that almost all of the problems in your life come from choices that you have made – or are currently making – that do not contribute to your happiness.

Pay the Price

Of course, there are countless times when you will have to do little things that don’t make you happy along the way toward those larger things that make you very happy indeed. We call this paying the price of success in advance. You must pay your dues. Sometimes these interim steps don’t make you happy directly, but the happiness you achieve from attaining your goal will be so great that it totally overwhelms the temporary inconveniences and dissatisfactions you have to endure in order to get there.

Action Exercises

Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, accept that you deserve all the joy and happiness you can possibly achieve through your own efforts.

Second, make your own happiness the chief organizing principle of your life and judge everything against that standard. Follow your inner guiding light.

Third, be willing to work hard and pay the price for the satisfaction and rewards you desire. Always go the extra mile and your success will be assured.

The Best Way to Act is NOW!

Become a Money Saving Expert - Pay Yourself First

Become a Money Saving Expert – Pay Yourself First

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 8, 2011

A part of all you earn is yours to keep, and if you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you.

- W. Clement Stone

Resolve today that you are going to save and invest at least 10 percent of your income throughout your working life. Take 10 percent of your income off the top of each paycheck each time you receive one and put it into a special account for financial accumulation. The fact is that if you save just $100 per month throughout your working lifetime and you invest that money in an average mutual fund that grows at 10 percent per annum, you will be worth more than one million dollars by the time you retire. This means that anyone, even a person earning minimum wage, if he or she starts early enough and saves long enough, can become a millionaire over the course of his or her working lifetime.

Developing the lifelong habit of saving and investing your money is not easy. It requires tremendous determination and willpower. You have to set it as a goal, write it down, make a savings plan, and work on it all the time, But once this practice locks in and becomes automatic, your financial success is virtually assured.

Practice frugality, frugality, frugality in all things. Be very careful with every penny. Question every expenditure. Delay or defer every important buying decision for at least a week, if not a month. The longer you put off making a buying decision, the better your decision will be and the better price you will get at that time.

A major reason that people retire poor is because of impulse buying. They see something they like and they buy it with very little thought. They become victims of what is called “Parkinson’s Law,” which says that “expenses rise to meet income.” This means that no matter how much you earn, you tend to spend that much and a little bit more besides. You never get ahead and you never get out of debt.
But you don’t have to be a victim of Parkinson’s Law. If you cannot save 10 percent of your income, start today by saving 1 percent of your income in a special savings or investment account. Put it away at the beginning of each month, even before you begin paying down your debts. Live on the other 99 percent of your income. As you become comfortable living on 99 percent, raise your savings level to 2 percent of your income, then 3 percent and 4 percent, and so on. Create a savings plan that you are comfortable with and then commit to it.

Within one year, you will be saving 10 percent and maybe even 15 percent or 20 percent of your income and living comfortably on the balance. At the same time, your savings and investment account will start to grow. You will become more careful about your expenditures, and your debts will begin to be paid off. You will become a money saving expert. Within a year or two, your entire financial life will be under your control and you will be on your way to becoming a self-made millionaire. This process has worked for everyone who has ever tried this savings plan. Try it and see for yourself.

Action Exercise

Open a special account for financial accumulation today. Make a deposit in this account, no matter how small. Then, look for every opportunity to add to this account. Begin to study money so that you understand how to make it grow. Read books and magazines by experts on the subject. Become a money saving expert. Never stop saving, learning, and growing until you become financially independent.

Do you have any money tips or saving techniques that have worked for you? If so, please leave a comment below with strategies that you have successfully used to save and invest money.

Light is Born

"Light is Born” is a creative telling of the Angel’s proclamation of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds to help make it real for our age. The Christmas season is the perfect time to be reminded of the day light was born.

Merry Christmas to all!

Raymond Pasimio Red

Building the Courage to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone

Posted by Brian Tracy on Nov 16, 2011

There are several forms of courage that you can develop with practice. These forms of courage will help you to achieve the great success that is possible for you. They are all learnable with practice.
Dream Big Dreams
The first form of courage is the courage to dream big dreams and to set big goals. This is where most people are stopped. The very idea of setting big, challenging, exciting, worthwhile goals is so overwhelming that they quit before they even begin. But this is not for you. Sit down, write out your goals as if anything were possible for you, and never be afraid to dream big dreams.
Make a Commitment
The second type of courage is the courage to make a total commitment, throwing yourself wholeheartedly into whatever it is you decide to do. Al successful people of my experience are people who are living fully engaged. They are fully involved in their lives and in their goals. They don’t do things by half measures. They may have no guarantees, but they are not afraid to put their whole hearts into their activities. If they pail, they fail by trying greatly, not by playing it safe, wishing and hoping that everything will work out all right.
Move out of Your Comfort Zone
The third type of courage you need is the courage to move out of your comfort zone. It is the courage to move into your zone of discomfort, where you feel awkward, clumsy, and alone. The comfort zone is one of the greatest enemies of human potential. When people get into a comfort zone, they strive to stay in that comfort zone. Often their whole lives pass them by while they are furnishing and reinforcing their little rut of medium performance.
You need the courage to continually move yourself in the direction of your biggest goals and ambitions. You need to be willing to face discomfort in order for you to grow.
Step Out in Faith
You need the courage to launch in faith with no guarantees of success. Someone once wrote, “If every obstacle must first be overcome, nothing will ever get done.”
Courageous people are those who have a dream and set a goal, make a plan and take the first step, with no assurances and no guarantees that their efforts will result in success. However, if you look upon every step forward as a learning experience and every setback as a valuable lesson that has been sent to you to make you stronger and better, you will not be afraid to launch in faith into the unknown.
Risk Failure
You need the courage to risk failure. You need the courage to endure constant setbacks, disappointments, and temporary defeats. You need to learn to deal with failure by realizing that it is an indispensible prerequisite for success. You need the courage to treat failure as an opportunity to more intelligently begin again. You need to overcome the fear of failure by doing the things you fear over and over again, and then by resolving to bounce rather than break when things don’t work out for you.
Face Your Fears
You need the courage to turn toward danger continuously. Identify all the fear situations in your life that cause you stress or anxiety today. Decide what the worst possible outcome of each of these situations might be. Resolve to accept the worst, should it occur. And then take action to resolve each of those situations. Refuse to allow a fear situation to remain in your life, dominating your thinking and emotions and holding you back.
Be Willing To Make Mistakes
You need the courage to be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. All peak performers continually make decisions, make mistakes, learn from them, self-correct, and carry on.
Successful people are not those who necessarily make the right decisions all the time, but they make their decisions right. If they make a mistake, they accept it, learn as much as possible from it, failing and making mistakes. The more you fail and the more mistakes you make, the smarter you become and the more likely it is that you will eventually achieve your goals.
Accept Complete Responsibility
You need the courage to accept complete responsibility for your life, which means to take ownership for results. You need the courage to refuse to make excuses or to defend yourself. You need the courage to say, over and over again, “I am responsible!”
When something goes wrong, you focus on the solution rather than the problem. You ask, “What do we do from here? What’s the next step? What is the solution?”
You then pick yourself up and carry on, extracting the wheat from the situation and throwing away the chaff.
Persist Longer
The final courage you need is the courage to persist longer than anyone else. Persistence is the quality that will ultimately guarantee your success. Your willingness to persist in the face of every adversity can be your greatest asset. It can be the one factor that guarantees your success.
If you refuse to quit, you must ultimately succeed. Just as in baseball, you won’t ultimately hit a home run unless you keep on swinging. In 30 years of studying successful people, I have discovered one fact over and over. No one was ever defeated until they accepted defeat as a reality. No one can ever defeat you but yourself.