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- Million Dollar Habits (Part II)
Million Dollar Habits (Part II)
Matt Karamazov
August 28, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 29 minutes
“Good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with. Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to form but hard to live with.”
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and it becomes so strong we cannot break it.”
-Horace Mann
“In short, most of the time successful people think about what they want and how to get that.”
“Perhaps the most powerful words in your vocabulary are the ones you say to yourself and believe.”
“Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts…What he at first chooses, at last compels.”
-Orison Swett Marden
“What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him.”
“Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
“If you are not continually learning and upgrading your skills, somewhere, someone else is. And when you meet that person, you will lose.”
“The good news is that an average person who develops the habit of lifelong learning will eventually run circles around a genius who goes home and watches television each night. There is perhaps no habit that will better guarantee your success in life than the habit of continuous personal and professional improvement.”
“Serious money is long-term money.”
“The first million can be extremely difficult to acquire, but the second million is almost inevitable.”
“Spend as much time investigating the investment as you spent earning the money you are thinking of investing. Fast financial decisions are usually poor financial decisions.”
“Investments are like buses; there will always be another one coming along.”
“The greater the influence you have on the cash flow of your enterprise, the more valuable you are to that business.”
“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
“Be clear about the goal, but be flexible about the process of achieving it.”
“Your most powerful tool for success is your ability to think. Nowhere is this ability more important than when you use it to decide what you are going to do and in what order. The accuracy of your choices in deciding how you are going to spend your time largely determines everything that happens to you. And you are always free to choose.”
“Make a habit of going through life expressing unconditional acceptance toward others. This will make you welcome wherever you go.”
“You get more of whatever you praise and approve in others.”
“You can read every book and article, listen to every audio program, and take every course on the subject, but they will all boil down to the four key behaviors of an excellent listener. They are: listen attentively, pause before replying, question for clarification, and feed it back in your own words.”
“Good listeners are welcome wherever they go.”
“Work all the time you work.”
“Virtually all negative emotions – anger, frustration, guilt, resentment, envy, jealousy, and blame – arise from the inability to forgive a person for something that has been done or said in the past.”
“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.”
“Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.”
“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.”
-Aristotle
“If you take a piece of paper and begin to write down the parts of your life for which you should be grateful, you will be amazed at how many items appear on your list.”
“Leap, and the net will appear.”
“Taking responsibility is like putting both hands on the steering wheel of your own life.”
The universe follows a natural order and the law of cause and effect. If you wish to produce certain effects in your life - i.e., earning money - then you must repeat the natural causes. This book will help you identify them and put them to use in getting rich.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“Your most valuable financial asset is your earning ability. What is your earning ability? It’s your ability to get results that people will pay you for, and the most important word for success, in life and in business, is results.”
“If you invest in yourself, you own 100% of the investment forever. You get 100% of the return.”
“You become what you think about most of the time. You also become what you teach most of the time. So if you start to teach these principles to someone else, you start to internalize them at a deeper level.”
Read the Full Breakdown: The Science of Money, by Brian Tracy
In this book, retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer Jocko Willink shows you how to declare martial law on your own mind, and how to bring more of your potential out of yourself than anyone thought you ever had inside - including you.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“Impose what you want on your brain: Discipline. Power. Positivity. Will. And use that Mind Control to move your life where you want it to be: stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven. Don’t let your mind control you. Control your mind. And then you can: SET IT FREE.”
“Yes or no. This is not complicated. And sometimes you have to put yourself into this mode: Binary Decision-Making.
Are you going to be weak or strong? Are you going to be healthy or unhealthy? Are you going to improve your life? Are you going to make it worse? Are you going to sacrifice long-term success for short-term gratification?
You know the right answers. You know the right decision. Don’t overcomplicate. Binary Decision-Making. Make the right decisions.”
“And that is what aggression is to me: The unstoppable fighting spirit. The drive. The burning desire to achieve mission success using every possible tool, asset, and strategy and tactic to bring about victory. IT IS THE WILL. TO. WIN. And if that kind of internal, relentless aggression is your DEFAULT MODE – YOU WILL WIN.”
Read the Full Breakdown: Discipline Equals Freedom, by Jocko Willink
Everything that most people believe about self-discipline is wrong. In this book, through inspiring stories and using fundamental truths and hard-won insights, Ryan Holiday illustrates the true power of self-discipline to shape our destinies.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“At the core of this idea of self-mastery is an instinctive reaction against anything that masters us. Who can be free when they have lost, as one addiction specialist put it, ‘the freedom to abstain?’”
“In some ways, the habit itself is less important than what we’re really quitting, which is dependency. What the Buddhists call tanha. The thirst. The craving. Maybe with time, you can go back to recreational usage – of whatever it is – yet even to do that, you’re first going to have to quit the habituation. It’s not the sex or the likes or the drink. It’s the need. And it’s this need that is the source of suffering.”
“Think about it: Most people don’t even show up. Of the people who do, most don’t really push themselves. So to show up and be disciplined about daily improvement? You are the rarest of the rare.”
Read the Full Breakdown: Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday
In the book that many call "How to Win Friends and Influence People for the 21st-Century," serial entrepreneur Joe Polish, "the most connected businessman on the planet," distills his absolute best advice for creating and sustaining win-win relationships that last a lifetime.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“The first secret to the successes I’ve had in life and business is simple: I invest more time, attention, money, effort, and energy into my relationships than I do anything else, and I do so on the longest timeline possible.”
“The specifics can change, but in virtually any situation, being useful, grateful, and valuable are the three keys to connecting with others – and they never depreciate or go out of style.”
“Of course, when it comes to value, as we’ve seen, we have to differentiate between what is real value and what is up for debate.
For the mere fact of being alive and conscious, you have value. You are valuable because you are you and because you exist, and nothing can change that fact (though we find it all too easy to forget).
When we’re talking about value here, it’s built on top of that truth. That secondary value we’re talking about is how you move through the world and how other people respond to you.
It’s not that other people’s opinions of you don’t matter at all, because they do to a degree – it’s just that you can’t stake your value on something that can go up and down every day.
You have to stay anchored in your own goodwill and your own value. Then you have to put in the work so other people can see it too.”
Read the Full Breakdown: What’s In It For Them?, by Joe Polish
No one's ideas are beyond questioning. In this section, I argue the case for the opposition and raise some points you might wish to evaluate for yourself while reading this book.
#1: The Harvard Study That Didn’t Exist
So there's some controversy that has dogged Brian Tracy for a few years now, and it's this: in one of his earlier books, he quoted a research study that didn't...um...exist.
Like, at all. It never happened, but Tracy referenced the "results" of the study in his book as though it was indisputable fact.
The details change depending on the telling, but in 1979 at Harvard Business School - or 1953 at Yale - "they" did a study on goal-setting.
Apparently, only 3% of the class had ever come up with clear, written goals, and apparently, after twenty years or so, follow-up research revealed that the 3% with clear, written goals were earning 10 times as much money as the other 97% with no clear, written goals.
Pretty cool, right?
Except that, yea, no such study was ever conducted. Harvard and Yale both say it never happened. No student from either school remembers it. And yet this detailed story appeared in one of Brian Tracy's books!
This is what Harvard had to say about the whole thing:
"It has been determined that no “goals study” of the Class of 1953 actually occurred.
In recent years, we have received a number of requests for information on a reported study based on a survey administered to the Class of 1953 in their senior year and a follow-up study conducted ten years later. This study has been described as how one’s goals at graduation related to success and annual incomes achieved during the period.
The secretary of the Class of 1953, who had served in that capacity for many years, did not know of [the study], nor did any of the fellow class members he questioned.
In addition, a number of Yale administrators were consulted and the records of various offices were examined in an effort to document the reported study. There was no relevant record, nor did anyone recall the purported study of the Class of 1953, or any other class."
So, where do we go from here? Do we throw out everything that Brian Tracy has ever written about goal-setting and achievement?
I don't think so, and here's why.
While I don't think that "it was a long time ago" is a proper defense - or at least a complete defense - there does come a point when you just have to realize that someone made a mistake, they were wrong, they were outed for it...and then we have to move on.
The book in question, Goals!, came out in 2003. Since then, Brian Tracy has been one of the leading figures in the sales and self-improvement category, writing and producing content that has legitimately changed the lives of millions of people. That's not nothing, although, of course, he should have been much more careful when writing his previous book.
The whole thing also doesn't take away from the fact that it's excellent advice to write down your goals and targets. I do it every single month/year, as do a multitude of other highly successful people who swear by the practice. Of course, we could all be wrong, but I don't think so.
You can't hit a target you can't see, and having clear, written goals focuses your mind on the day ahead - and on the task in front of you - in an exceptionally valuable way.
Having a clear, definite purpose that excites you and calls you forward - urging you to give your absolute best effort in life - is a wonderful thing, and you don't need a degree from Harvard or Yale to tell you that.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. That's also how you get the absolute most out of any book that you decide to read:
You ask great questions the whole time - as though the book was on trial for its life.
Here in this section are a few questions that can help guide and stimulate your thinking, but try to come up with your own additional questions, especially if you decide to read this book the whole way through...
#1: "How healthy is your self-concept? Do you believe that you're worthy of much greater success in life than you're currently experiencing? If not, what can you do today, now, to raise your self-concept and start to feel more deserving?"
#2: “What one skill, if you developed and did it consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on your career?”
#3: "Are you really doing your absolute best in life, or do you have more inside you left to give? What would your true best look like?"
#4: “What is the most valuable use of your time right now?”
#5: "Who are the most important people in your life right now? Who are your biggest supporters? Have you reached out recently to let them know how much they mean to you?"
#6: "Which foundational habit could you adopt today, immediately, that would make every other habit easier to adopt in the future?"
#7: "What's the smallest first action that you could take to make this habit a key part of your life from now on?"
#8: "To become more productive at work, ask yourself, 'Does this task have to be done now? Does this task have to be done by me? Is there anyone else who can do this task almost as well as I can?'”
#9: "What could you do today, right now, that you didn't do yesterday, that could move you closer to what you really want tomorrow?"
#10: "What could you do for yourself that would show yourself how much you appreciate all the hard work you're doing to improve your circumstances? Are you letting yourself feel appropriate pride in how far you've come and what you've had to do to get here?"
"Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."
So you've finished reading. What do you do now?
Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it. However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!
Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.
Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...
#1: Raise Your Self-Concept
It's virtually impossible to act differently than you believe yourself capable of acting. That is, to act against the idea that you have of yourself internally.
This being the case, one of the first and most important steps you can take on any self-improvement project is to raise your self-concept, to raise your standards.
We don't rise to the level of our dreams but rather we fall to the level of our standards and our habits. Raise them. Install good ones. Your life will never be the same.
It's helpful in the beginning to start with just one area of your life in which you'd like to raise your self-concept.
We have a separate self-concept for every area of life, and it can be overwhelming to try and change them all at once. So instead of trying to raise your standards in the areas of fitness, relationships, finances, career, etc., all at once, what you might consider is picking one of those areas to attack first.
What are you willing to settle for in that area? What are you not willing to tolerate? Those are the kinds of questions you need to be asking when you decide to get serious about making a big change to your self-concept.
To take the area of your finances, because that's easier to put a number on, what are you worth in terms of salary and net worth? To be perfectly clear, your self-worth has absolutely nothing to do with your net worth - we're simply raising your self-concept in this important area.
Decide: How much money do you deserve to make this year? What level of net worth are you "comfortable" with? What can you do today to move yourself closer to this level, to be in accordance with your new self-belief?
#2: Practice Writing Out Your Goals
I write out my goals literally every single day, and it's been nothing less than transformational for me. You don't have to get crazy like I do, but I actually have a 100-year plan for how I want my life to unfold.
Obviously, at that distance in time, it's not helpful to get too specific. A lot can happen in 100 years, but it forces me to make long-term moves, and to get serious about maximizing my opportunities today.
All I know is that in 100 years I want to own a large part of a space exploration company, and be intimately involved in travel to other planets and maybe even to other solar systems.
But I also get extremely practical when it comes to the next ten years, the next five years...even the next week. I have written plans for all of these timescales and I can highly recommend doing so yourself. It will give you massive clarity on what's important now, what's not important, and what you should be focusing on.
If you're starting with a 10-year plan, which is what I suggest starting with, simply write out everything you'd like to experience and accomplish in the next ten years.
Then, think about what would have to happen in the next five years to make your 10-year plan a reality. What kind of connections would you have to form? How much money would you have to earn? How much time freedom would you need?
Then, get serious about ruthless execution on both a daily level, and at the yearly level as well. I have specific, actionable plans for the day, the week, the month, the year, the next five years, the next ten years, and the next hundred years, and then I attack them single-mindedly and with extreme prejudice until I accomplish my objective.
I'm serious: write out your goals and watch your entire life transform before your very eyes.
#3: Try the “Wedge” Theory
Brian Tracy's "Wedge Theory" is a method for achieving financial independence that helps you avoid the pitfalls of lifestyle inflation, which is basically the fancy term for when you start to make more money, but then immediately spend even more than the raise you just got.
You might be astonished at how often this plays out in the lives of average people everywhere.
In your effort to replace your average habits with excellent, millionaire habits, you need to fight lifestyle inflation and get serious about saving.
The method is simple: for every pay raise you receive, aim to save at least 50% of the increase and only spend the other 50%. Do the same thing with "found" money as well, such as gifts from family members, tax refunds, etc.
You're allowed to reward yourself every once and a while, sure, but the idea is not to spend $6,000 every time you get a $5,000 raise.
Odds are, you won't even notice the money that you put away, but the laws of compounding will notice, as those amounts start to snowball and years later your Future Self is one very happy, very rich person.
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”
Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations.
Brian's goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined.
Brian Tracy has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5,000,000 people in 5,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada, and 55 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year.
He has studied, researched, written, and spoken for 30 years in the fields of economics, history, business, philosophy, and psychology. He is the top-selling author of over 45 books that have been translated into dozens of languages.
He has written and produced more than 300 audio and video learning programs, including the worldwide, best-selling Psychology of Achievement, which has been translated into more than 20 languages.
He speaks to corporate and public audiences on the subjects of Personal and Professional Development, including the executives and staff of many of America's largest corporations. His exciting talks and seminars on Leadership, Selling, Self-Esteem, Goals, Strategy, Creativity, and Success Psychology bring about immediate changes and long-term results.
Prior to founding his company, Brian Tracy International, Brian was the Chief Operating Officer of a $265 million dollar development company. He has had successful careers in sales and marketing, investments, real estate development and syndication, importation, distribution, and management consulting. He has conducted high-level consulting assignments with several billion-dollar-plus corporations in strategic planning and organizational development.
He has traveled and worked in over 80 countries on six continents and speaks four languages. Brian is happily married and has four children.
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Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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