Prosperity on Purpose: It's not just about the money

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PROSPERITY ON PURPOSE It’s not just about the money

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PROSPERITY ON PURPOSE It’s not just about the money

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First published in 2006 by Allen & Unwin Copyright © Justin Herald 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Herald, Justin. Prosperity on purpose : it’s not just about the money. ISBN 978 1 74114 794 0. ISBN 1 74114 794 8. 1. Finance, Personal. 2. Wealth. I. Title. 332.024 Set in 11/14 Sabon by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is dedicated to my beautiful daughters Jade and Brooke. I know that you two will one day reach heights that I can only dream of.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1

1 Wealth creation vs. financial prosperity

9

2 Your past does not have to define your future

27

3 On purpose

47

4 How determined are you?

65

5 Your prosperity is bigger than you are

84

6 It’s more than just the dollars

104

7 Your character affects your prosperity level

122

8 Action and attitude

137

The prosperity for a purpose project: Raising future leaders

151

Reading list

155

Also by Justin Herald

158

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INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time there was a rich man. He had all that he could ever need. He had the cars, the house, and the admiration of his peers. He had absolutely everything most people would want—and more. The problem was, he wanted even more. Surely this man who seemed on the outside to have everything anyone could need to live a happy life should be happy? Why was he still dissatisfied? The answers to these questions are what this book is about. In order to meet the desire to improve our financial position, we must first address the areas that will assist that process, and also make sure we are taking the right path instead of the easy path. I am constantly asked to speak at wealth-creation seminars. I enjoy the experience of speaking at these events, all over the world, because not only do I get to talk about how I did what I did, but I also get to impart some of my methods and insights to the audience. 1

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Some of you may be reading this book because you are wanting to find the secret to making your first $1 million. Prosperity on Purpose is filled with the principles I applied to my thinking, actions and direction to get myself from having $1.25 in the bank to owning a business that turned over millions of dollars. You will find as you read that the things I worked on were not just my financial aspirations, however. You will soon see that while we are all aiming to find the key to greater financial freedom, the answers to why you are not there yet are way more important than what it is you actually sell or buy. The topic of wealth creation on the whole tends to unleash a very broad and sweeping collection of words. From my experiences in attending wealthcreation conferences, it seems that a lot of people see wealth creation as no more than a way of changing their financial lives—but that’s not the way it is. To create wealth you need to begin by re-creating yourself. By that I mean you need to work out what it is about you that is stopping you from getting where you want to be. Prosperity is not only about achieving what you want, but also assisting others along the way. You are undoubtedly surrounded by people who need assistance—you would be surprised by how many. Whether it is financial assistance or some other form of assistance they require, they are there and you have the ability to help. That is what this book is all about. I know that the 2

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principles you are about to read will change your life if you apply them. I am often asked to spend time with people to mentor or coach them in their personal and financial lives. Recently I sat with a young man and went through with him just some of what you are about to read. He added an extra $1.3 million to his bottom line in just one year. Before you get excited and start ordering that next car, just take a breath. This young man was in a position where he was ready for the changes he had to make. He also had a good foundation to which he could apply some of the principles you are about to read, and build on them. Nevertheless, he realised the reason he was yet to experience a life of prosperity was that he was focusing his entire attention on what he didn’t have yet, instead of on what he wanted to achieve for himself. I have to say that I have found it very difficult to put together what you are about to read. I see prosperity as a very simple concept, because I have been living my life for some time using these principles, but putting them into words has been another matter. It is my job as the author to express my feelings, offer advice and make these principles clear. It is your role as the reader to take these principles and apply them the way you see fit. If you are already abiding by some of these principles, then congratulations. If there are others that you are yet to apply, all I ask is that you apply them in a way that means you still remain the person you want to be. 3

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There are few things less useful than changing the way you act or operate overnight just because you think a surface change will bring prosperity closer. It won’t. You have to make the changes a real part of your being. You as an individual need to progress towards your financial freedom. If you adopt and adapt the principles of this book into the normal day-to-day running of your life, you will have moved a long way forward. As you read you will see that the decision-making process you follow has a lot to do with where you will end up. We all have decisions to make every day. If you have ever made a bad decision (and who has not?), you will understand that just one bad decision can really slow you down. But whether you have made good or bad decisions in the past, it doesn’t matter now. Right now all you have to do is realise that prosperity is there for everyone. There isn’t a little prosperity club that hands out membership to a select few—we all can operate in a prosperous environment. We just have to make the conscious choice that this is where our lives will operate from. You may at times feel that I am splitting hairs with some of the things I describe, but I can assure you I am being as specific as I can be. I want all my readers to go away and reach the financial goals you have set for yourselves. But I also want to ensure that the new levels you reach are lifelong rather than short term. You might get to some parts of the book and think, ‘I already know that’. Well, knowledge is a wonderful thing. But unless you actually apply that knowledge, 4

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it is no more than a thought process, and certainly not a life choice. I knew from the beginning that I was bad when it came to my spending habits—that is why I only had $1.25 in the bank at age 25. I also knew that I had to change those habits if I was going to move ahead. It wasn’t until I applied that knowledge to my frustration that my circumstances actually changed. In other words, I had to want to get out of the situation I was in before I could move to the next step of my financial life. Recently I was reading The Magic of Metaphor (2001) by Nick Owen. In this book is an interview with a former world champion tennis player. One of the first questions he was asked was ‘Have you always been a champion?’ I thought this was a great question, because we sometimes assume that successful people have always been good at everything they have tried. The tennis champion answered the question. ‘No, he hadn’t always been a champion’. Although when he was a younger player he had been picked as a future prospect. He also stated that there were other players who were always picked before him as they played better than him and they seemed to be naturally gifted. As a result he sometimes had to play the best of the girls’ team as they seemed to be a better match for him than the naturally talented boys. The interviewer then asked, ‘So where are these boys now and what happened to them?’ 5

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‘They didn’t seem to last the distance. Although they had talent, it requires a lot more than just talent to have what it takes,’ replied the tennis great. The interviewer then asked the logical question. ‘So what does it take?’ The tennis great replied with as much conviction and enthusiasm as he could muster. ‘You’ve got to want it bad enough,’ he replied. ‘That is the secret. And there is another secret. You need discipline. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have, you just have to have the discipline to develop and nurture it. You then have to decide what the priorities in your life are and in turn give up the things that may seem attractive right now but will eventually slow your progress down.’ ‘So is that the secret?’ the reporter asked. ‘There is one other,’ replied the tennis great. ‘And it’s harder and more demanding than the two I already mentioned put together. You need to have humility. No matter how good you are and what you achieve, you need humility. You need to be humble enough to be able to take advice, see new ways of approaching things, admit that you don’t know everything and to listen to your coaches. Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Those three things are the secrets to my success.’ And with that the interview was over. The tennis great was Boris Becker, who was the winner of a huge number of grand slam tennis championships. 6

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So why tell that story? I hear you ask. Simple really; there are only a few principles that you need to apply to your life before you prepare to set out to reach a higher financial level: • You have to really want to change your direction and your current situation. If you are aiming for wealth just because ‘everyone else is doing it’, odds are you will not be that successful at it. Your desire is what will drive you to achieve success in this area of your life. You really have to desire it. Liking the thought of being in a better position, and wanting it badly, are two different things which will result in two different actions. • You have to apply great discipline if you want to go somewhere that you haven’t been before. Especially in the area of your finances. It isn’t going to be easy. If it was easy, then everyone who decided one day that they were going to live a life of financial prosperity would have made it there with no problems. So being realistic, you must be prepared to apply a great deal more discipline to your life. • Be humble in your success. If and when you do reach that higher level of financial success, ensure that you are humble about your achievements. Don’t think that you are now above others and that you will now associate only with those who have ‘made it’. Be open to criticism, listen to advice and assist those who are yet to reach where you are at. The minute you think you are better than 7

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your reality, you open yourself up to fall down to your reality. • Lastly, be aware of feedback. Not all feedback is going to be verbal or from other people. Your results could be giving you feedback. If things aren’t working out for you the way that you want, that is feedback you need to take notice of. I am positive that the following pages are going to assist you in your journey towards prosperity. Whether that is prosperity in your finances or prosperity in any other part of your life, I am sure you will be able to take on board what you are about to read. Justin Herald

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1

WEALTHCREATIONV VS. PROSPERITY FINANCIALP This chapter is not about blowing apart your desire to attain wealth. In fact, if you take on board what you read here, you will find that I am showing you the exact opposite. We live in a world that seems to put wealth as the number one ambition for most individuals. What I want to explore in this chapter is the idea that maybe there is a way to get what you want and at the same time assist others along the way. I am all for people reaching a better financial position in their lives. I just believe that there are right and wrong ways to go about it. Creating wealth is just one step towards prosperity, which is why we should continually aim higher than just becoming wealthy in our own right. To start, let’s look at the meanings of the words ‘wealth’ and ‘prosperity’, just to set the foundation. • Wealth The Macquarie Dictionary’s definition includes the terms fortune, money, riches, possessions, 9

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means, abundance, affluence, quantity and luxury. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these meanings. In fact, they cover part of what I have been aiming at for the last ten years or so. The problem with aiming just for wealth is that it can become a very self-centred, self-focused and selfish pursuit. The pursuit of wealth can sometimes consume our entire lives, so much so we can end up focusing our attention on it and nothing else. That opens us up to all kinds of potential problems with our thinking, our actions and our relationships; if our focus is only on making money, we can miss some of the needs around us that have nothing at all to do with money. • Prosperity The Macquarie Dictionary’s definition includes the terms flourishing, thriving, gaining, succeeding, winning, rising and prevailing. As you can see, the meanings of prosperity are very different in their outlook to the meanings of wealth. Wealth is self-centred, whereas prosperity is about excellence. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, ‘Well, I can’t see much of a difference’, but as you read on you will start to see a great deal of difference. Financial prosperity is not just about the money, or about the stuff you can buy or collect along the way. Financial prosperity is about using what you have got and what you have made to help others reach another level in their lives. Financial prosperity is about taking the focus of your needs and wants away from yourself and directing it towards others. 10

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Money comes after the conscious decision to head towards a life of prosperity. The money is just part of the process in reaching a higher level of prosperity, whereas the money is the only part of the process when aiming to reach a higher level of wealth. Let me explain. Everyone seems to be madly working towards the dollar figure that they think will make them happy. While there is nothing really wrong with that, I believe that it really limits you to focusing on only one thing . . . the money! But when you decide that you want to live a financially prosperous life, what you do will be done with a level of excellence. For example, if you own a business and you are aiming for prosperity, everything you do will be done to the best of your ability with one thing in mind: ‘I want to make an impact on other people’s lives through my business today.’ In turn, because you are aiming higher than the dollars, the dollars become just part of the process that makes up a prosperous life. I know this may seem a bit confusing, so let me give you an actual example to highlight just one of the meanings of wealth. One of the dictionary meanings for wealth is ‘possessions’. Now I have to admit that I love my stuff. One of the main reasons I started my first business, which propelled me to a higher level of success than I had ever experienced, was that I wanted to buy a really nice car. I just love cars. I saw my business as a way of getting ‘possessions’. Now I want to give you an insight into what my actual thoughts and feelings were towards that stuff 11

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(which I have written about in some of my previous books). A person aiming at wealth creation is aiming to get the nice stuff, the nice car, the nice house, the nice jewellery and even the nice holidays—and I was just that type of person at the start. A person who is working towards a life of prosperity will aim for that nice stuff as well, but they will also see that those possessions aren’t the things that make them a success. I want to give you a personal example of this. I was a bit hesitant about it at first as I don’t want to be thought of as big-noting myself, but it is just that it really shows what I mean. Late in 2004 I was asked to speak at a conference in Thailand. As the date of the conference coincided with my wedding anniversary I took my wife Vanessa with me. (If I didn’t I would have been in big trouble— you know what I mean, guys). We decided to have a mini getaway in Singapore after the conference so we could spend time with each other. On the last day we were doing a bit of shopping and walked past an amazing jewellery store. I love spoiling my wife, especially when it comes to jewellery, and because it was our anniversary I decided to buy her a ring to celebrate our special day. The ring was spectacular, and Vanessa loved it. Some time later some good friends of ours, Maria and Mark, came to our house for dinner. When I noticed that Maria was missing her wedding and engagement rings, I asked what had happened to them. She had put them down at the gym to get 12

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changed, totally forgotten that she’d done it, and gone home. When she realised the rings were missing she went back, but by that time the rings were gone. As our friends did not have the rings insured, and were not in a position to just go out and buy replacements, they had accepted that they would have to wait a long time until they could afford new ones. Later that evening, I was talking to Vanessa as we were getting ready for bed. I commented that I would be gutted if that had happened to us, and that I would feel even worse if we could not afford to replace rings that hold so much meaning. I wanted to look for some way of helping them out. That was all we said about it at that point, and we went to bed. The next morning we were getting ready to go out. I asked Vanessa if she’d had any thoughts about our discussion the night before. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, she said. We decided to look at the rings Vanessa didn’t wear any more and choose one to give to Maria. But something didn’t feel quite right. Eventually I said to Vanessa that we should not be giving her a ‘leftover’, something we didn’t want any more. I took a deep breath and said I felt that we should give the ring that I’d bought Vanessa for our anniversary. I have to admit that I was sort of expecting a big ‘no way’, but Vanessa turned to me and said, ‘That was what I was thinking too’. That night we asked Maria and her husband to come over as we had something we wanted to discuss with them. When we sat down we gave them the ring, all wrapped up in its original box. 13

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You should have seen their faces. They knew where the ring came from and what occasion I had bought it for. They knew its significance to both myself and Vanessa. They tried to say they couldn’t accept it, but we wouldn’t take no for an answer. They were blown away. So why did I share that story with you? Well, many of us are so focused on getting what we want out of life that we miss opportunities to help others in their lives, something which I believe is a moral obligation for us all. Sure, that ring meant a lot to us, but we were in a position to be able to help someone else. The joy Vanessa and I got out of that night was a lot greater than the joy we felt on the day I purchased the ring. As a possession the actual piece of jewellery didn’t hold much value for me monetarily; what was important were the feelings and sentiment that went with it. Vanessa and I love each other and our marriage is going strong. The ring was just a thing that symbolised that fact. Now we were able to bless someone else with our happiness and give them something that they would not have had otherwise. I have to make one very important point here. I am not at all saying that you need to give away the most expensive thing you can find. It isn’t about the monetary value of what you do to assist other people, it’s your intention that matters. So please don’t misunderstand what I am trying to show you. Helping someone has to do with a decision from the heart, not a dollar decision. That is what being prosperous is about! 14

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Financial prosperity is not just about money, as I stated before. Money is a wonderful thing, but it is not the only thing I focus on. Wealth creation is focusing on just one goal with one outcome in mind. When all you focus on is making more money, all you will see will be dollar signs. Every decision you make will revolve around a financial outcome. If I was wholly and solely focused on wealth creation, no way would I have given away something like that ring, because I would have seen it as something that took a long time to buy due to its cost, and whose value to me was based solely on its dollar value. Financial prosperity is a lifestyle choice. Wealth creation fulfils the desire to make money and to gain more stuff for yourself. Prosperity sees money as a source and a tool to also fulfil other people’s needs, not just your own. Wealth creation is very one-dimensional. It is all about you. Sure, you are probably trying to make the money for your family as well, but it is very selffocused. When you live life from a prosperity perspective, however, you are constantly looking for ways that you can assist others. Your life becomes a lot bigger than yourself. Your focus is directed onto other people’s situations and circumstances as well as your own. I am not saying that you should work only to meet other people’s needs. Go after all that you desire. But 15

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don’t be focused only on what you want—keep an eye out for opportunities to impact someone else’s life in a positive way. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine wealth creation as a bucket under a tap. The bucket starts off empty and it is up to you to fill it up. But once that bucket is full, any extra water just flows over the sides of the bucket and is wasted. Now imagine prosperity as a bucket, but this time one that is placed in a stream. Again, you can fill the bucket up as much as you want. But this time, when it starts to overflow, the extra water is taken away downstream and can be used for other purposes; to make other things grow. This analogy might sound a bit weird, but you have to understand that your financial prosperity is there to assist others. I am not for one minute suggesting that you give all your money away and live a life of poverty. What I am saying is that you should still aim for all the things you want to achieve, but make sure you keep an eye out along the way for others who are in need, or for opportunities that may present themselves where you can impact positively on someone else’s life. So often, people think that if they can just get rich, their life will be perfect. The reality is far from that. This leads me to talk about two people at the opposite ends of the wealth journey. You will see by the time I finish telling you about them, that sometimes wealth is not what we all hope it will be. 16

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About a year ago I was playing golf with a few of my mates. We try to do this once a week but my speaking schedule often makes it hard to get together. As we were about to tee off we were asked by the golf shop staff if we would mind if a single player from overseas joined our group. Jeff introduced himself and off we went. After a few holes of idle chitchat and playing at a cracking pace, we ended up behind some slower players and had to wait a while for our turn. At this point Jeff said to me, ‘I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?’ As I had never come across him, I answered ‘no’. Then he wanted to know if I had been on television lately, which I had. He was then able to put my face to a story he had seen on a current affairs program that was televised overseas. Out of nowhere he suddenly said, ‘I am really rich too; I am worth $300 million.’ Now I am not sure about you, but that is not the kind of remark I would have expected. ‘Can you prove it?’ I asked. Jeff looked a bit shocked at that. ‘No one has ever asked me that before,’ he said. ‘No one has ever told me that they are worth $300 million before,’ I shot back. No more was said about Jeff’s wealth as we played on. At the end of the game Jeff invited us back to his ‘little’ holiday house which wasn’t far away. When we got there we were somewhat stunned. His ‘little holiday house’ was a 25-hectare estate. Jeff showed us around, introduced us to his fiancée and asked us inside for a drink. As we sat down I asked Jeff if 17

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he could back up what he’d said to me earlier about his wealth. He looked a bit put out, but went to his office and came back with a bank statement. I turned to him and said, ‘You lied.’ He looked at me perplexed. I finished, ‘You said you were worth $300 million but you are only worth $298 million.’ We all had a bit of a chuckle, sat back and relaxed for the afternoon. Jeff and I hit it off pretty well that day. We met up every now and then over the following three months or so. Then Vanessa and I got an invitation to his birthday party at his mansion in the city. I am not one for flashy dos or hanging out with a whole bunch of rich people just for the sake of it, but we went anyway. The party had everyone and anyone you could think of who was famous. During the night Jeff came up and told me that he had just broken up with his fiancée, as he’d met someone else at the party. Yes you read right, it was that quick. Vanessa and I hung around for a while but it really wasn’t our scene so we headed home. Three weeks later Jeff rang me to tell me that he had just got engaged to the woman he’d met at the party. He went out and bought her very expensive gifts to celebrate and paid a fortune for an engagement ring. All seemed to be bliss. Four weeks after that Jeff rang me to tell me it was all off. He’d tried to get his expensive gifts and ring back but no way was that going to happen. His emotional life seemed to be spiralling downwards— and fast. He bought another house to ‘make himself feel better’, and started another relationship. 18

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Jeff’s roller-coaster of ups and downs, combined with his rather irritating habit of always asking for my advice and never taking it, eventually led me to ease myself out of the relationship. I heard recently that he got married but that the marriage ended in divorce a few months later. Jeff had everything and more of what most people would want in life. The problem as I saw it was that it was all for his own gratification. There was no sharing of what he had. He might have found that the secret to happiness was giving instead of wanting more all the time. While he had all the possessions most people could only dream of, he was still looking for more things to fill the void. Now let me tell you about Dianne. Dianne was a successful lawyer who one day decided that her life was bigger than herself. Sure, she had the trappings of wealth and that was one of her goals, but there was something missing. She had no sense of fulfilment. One day Dianne quit her job and sold her possessions. She moved to Africa, where she set up an orphanage. She was responding to the feeling that if she gave more of herself she would be worth more as a person in her own eyes. She did all the work herself. There was no guaranteed income. She just put in the hard work required to assist others in need. Today Dianne runs one of the largest orphanages in Africa. Each week she feeds over 20 000 kids. Now I bet that was not on top of her list when she left school, but she realised that she needed to do what she needed to do—and she’s happy. 19

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These are two extreme examples. I am not for one minute suggesting that successful people need to sell everything and move to Africa. What I am pointing out is that I believe only one of these people has found true happiness. Dianne saw success as more than just a dollar figure. She saw that she wanted to live a life of prosperity with purpose. Jeff is relying wholly and solely on money to bring him happiness. I believe that most of us need to operate somewhere in the middle of those extremes. In this day and age far too many of us seem to be wanting more, wanting it faster and wanting to keep it all for ourselves. Once we realise that we have the opportunity to help others with what we have, we will be living and operating on a totally different playing field. In general, people in Western societies have become extremely greedy about what they have. We look after ourselves, and tend to forget about others around us once we get what we want. Please don’t think that I’m standing on a soapbox trying to preach to you. I was just the same before I figured it out.

Greed I would like to touch on the topic of greed for just a minute. Please don’t think that I am trying to bash you over the head through the next few paragraphs— that is not my intention. Greed is just one of several areas that I want to highlight in a way that may help 20

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when you are having problems, that may help you operate on a better platform so that you will be able to achieve all you desire. Greed is a horrible concept to think about. Writing this chapter has not been an easy thing, to be honest. At first I tried to water down what I wanted to say, but in the end I felt I had to say exactly what was in my head. I was a very greedy person. Because I didn’t have any money for years, the minute I started making money I decided I should hang onto it, keep it for myself, just in case something happened and I ended up back where I started. I finally realised that my results and achievements were the measure of my success and that the money was just a by-product. The day that I took my eyes off the dollars and put them back onto my goals was the day everything started to fall into place. Greed is a terrible thing. Lao Tzu once said, ‘There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed.’ How true is that? When you live a greedy life, what you are doing is limiting yourself. You are holding yourself back from what you would be able to achieve if you were living a prosperous life. Let me elaborate: if all you do is hold close to you your talents, your money and your potential (to name just a few things), so that no one else is able to share in them, you are limiting your ultimate achievements. Your true potential will never be seen, as you yourself have decided that you are only willing to give so much. 21

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True success requires two things: taking and giving. You can’t take, take and take all the time without giving something in return. Without wishing to oversimplify the point, let me give you an example. Imagine deciding that you are going to buy a new car. You do your research, decide on a particular model and even pick out the colour you like. You go down to the car dealership and find the exact car you are after. You sit in the car with the salesperson and make it clear that this is the car you want and that you will take it today. Do you think for a minute that the dealership will allow you to drive out of the car yard without even paying for it? No! The dealership expects payment from you for the privilege of owning that car. This is the same principle you need to apply in your journey towards living a life of financial prosperity. I don’t mean that you will have to pay cash for every step towards success, but there is a price to pay if you want to move upwards throughout your life. Greed keeps you shut off from potential opportunities. What you end up doing, if you operate within an atmosphere of greed, is become focused only on what you have and what you don’t want to lose. The problem with that is that you stop looking up and out for more opportunities, you become consumed by what you could lose instead of what you could gain. You may be saying to yourself, ‘Come on Justin, this is a bit deep and heavy, isn’t it?’ Well, I don’t think so. I think that many people aren’t thoughtful at 22

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all when it comes to wealth creation. They don’t look at how things could be done better, or look for the things that could be approached from a different perspective. All they are after is the immediate result. Greed is one thing that can stop your progress towards all that you desire in one fell swoop. Greedy people are totally self-focused. All they worry about is how they will fare in a deal or what they could lose if they do something else. This creates the problem that your achievements become limited by your fear of losing what you already have. You may disagree with this statement, but greedy people will never grow any further than their greed allows them to. Think about it for a minute. Your success, which includes your financial position, is not only up to you. There will undoubtedly be people you come into contact with in your life who can play a part in your success. If you are a greedy person, you will have shut yourself off from people who might help you because you are afraid their help might cost you. My success came not only because I knew what I was doing. My success was also the result of a lot of people around me helping me to get to a better position than I was in. And you may be just like me. You may have loved ones, friends or even strangers around you assisting you to reach the next level in your life. So why then would you treat people who might need your help any differently when you actually reach the level that you desire? Sounds selfish, doesn’t it? 23

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Selfishness Selfishness is another problem we can all face. Selfishness is a bit different from greed but part of the same unfortunate family. Let’s explore this for a minute. Greed is about the possessions you have, which may include information you hold that you could assist others with, whereas selfishness is about you not giving yourself to other people. Greed is an action, whereas selfishness is an attitude. Once again, if you are a selfish person, you will limit who you can become. The problem with selfish people is that they measure themselves against what other people have, which in turn makes them focus on what they don’t have, which in turn makes them even more selffocused and more selfish. It becomes a vicious circle that ends up consuming them. We all need to stop comparing ourselves with others. Who says you would be happy living their life anyway? As soon as you decide that you will be happy where you are right now you will be able to move forward in a contented manner. If you are constantly dissatisfied with your financial position, and you are operating from a selfish platform, you will become reactive instead of proactive. Every decision you make will be a reaction to your situation. And in the vicious circle I spoke of a few sentences ago, you will end up making poor decision after poor decision. 24

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Abundance versus just enough for me I believe reaching a higher level of prosperity comes down to an attitude. Obviously skill, timing, planning and focus are also needed, but unless your attitude towards what you want to achieve is solid, you could end up just wasting your time. If you want to reach a greater level of prosperity you will need to have an ‘abundance’ attitude. By that I mean that you will have to realise that your finances need to do more than just take care of your own needs, which is an attitude held by a surprising number of people. I sat next to a man on a plane recently who came out with an absolute pearler. After talking for most of our trip, he turned to me and said, ‘I really don’t want to be wealthy; I just need enough to get me by.’ I found that very sad. First, he has already limited his potential outcomes to what he currently thinks will make him happy. All he will ever achieve is what he is currently aiming for, unless he changes his attitude towards what he wants. Second, he has missed the fact that he could help people in need around him if he wasn’t so selffocused. You need to aim higher than yourself and just your own needs. If you are like the man I talked to in the plane, it is up to you to aim higher. I want to touch on a final and very important issue here. You need to remain diligent in your efforts to 25

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reach a higher level of prosperity. We need to be wise with our money, wise with our investments and wise with our financial decisions. It’s not about looking at your current financial position and resigning yourself to the fact that you will never reach those heights you once dreamed of. Just remember that becoming prosperous is more than just making money. It is about making that money work for you instead of you working for it. You may think that I have been splitting hairs by contrasting wealth creation with financial prosperity, but as you read through the rest of the book you will realise that they really are miles apart.

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YOURPASTD DOESNOT HAVETOD DEFINEYOUR FUTURE In a book about moving to a greater level of prosperity, I have to address the reason some people may never experience it. I believe it is because they have not addressed certain issues from their past financial situations. While it is fine to want to move on to what you are yet to have financially, unless you understand why you are where you are right now, you may continue to experience the same problems over and over. You may be struggling with the thought of getting to a better financial position because your upbringing never embraced the fact that you could achieve whatever you wanted to achieve. You may be living from pay cheque to pay cheque each week and unable to see that you will ever be able to improve your financial position. You may be concentrating on paying off a huge credit card debt and thinking of nothing else. 27

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Whatever your current situation is, that’s all it is— your current situation. That is it. You need to look beyond where you are right now, otherwise you end up focusing on the problems instead of trying to find solutions. Understand that some people (and it might be you) need to give themselves permission to move forward in their financial lives. You don’t have to continue struggling for the rest of your life. I want to show you how you deserve more and how you need to aim for more. At this stage in your life all you may be focused on is how you are going to get back on your feet. That is a natural feeling, and I have been there too. But I also want to show you that your desires should be more than just to look after your own needs. But before we can go there we will all need to work through certain issues, especially financial ones. A lot of people will not even try to better their financial or personal position purely because they see where they have come from and assume that they will only be as good as their past history. This is the wrong way to think, and this chapter is all about changing that type of thought process. Your past does not have to affect you forever, and it does not have to play a part in where you end up in your future. I want to highlight the various reasons people can end up in a negative financial position, and how you can get yourself back on track. Have you ever looked at people who have ‘made it’ financially, and said to yourself, ‘Oh, they were just lucky’ or ‘If I had what they had, then I bet I could have made it as well’? 28

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If you have, don’t be too hard on yourself because I am sure most people have had similar thoughts at some point. It’s true that some people are born into wealth and some people do get that lucky break. But have you ever addressed the reasons why you haven’t got yourself to the financial position you desire? There are probably many more reasons (and excuses) than can fit into one chapter, so I just want to touch on a few that may assist you in understanding why you either have never reached financial freedom or why you are constantly falling short.

Poverty mentality What do I mean by ‘poverty mentality’? You may have people around you whose whole outlook on life, not only from a financial viewpoint but also a personal viewpoint, reveals that they have come to the conclusion they will never achieve anything with their life or their finances—and they are going to make sure that everyone around them feels their pain. They have been stuck in this rut for a long time and seem to have resigned themselves (resentfully) to the fact that they will be there for the rest of their lives. You know the type—when you have saved up and finally bought that nice thing you wanted, they don’t share in your excitement, they make you feel bad for having it. One of the main reasons people become stuck in the cycle of poverty thinking is that they assume they 29

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will have to put up with the type of lifestyle they endured in the past for the rest of their lives, that they will be stuck in that situation forever. (I will pick up on this further on; I just want to touch on it briefly right now.) Some people actually think they don’t deserve anything better than the poverty thinking and lifestyle they have been living for years. Today is the day to break that cycle. The only way to get out of a poverty way of thinking is to acknowledge it and move on. Don’t think I’m only referring to financial poverty here; I am also addressing the poverty mentality that some people have when it comes to their relationships, their personal desires and maybe even their outlook on life. Some people think they will never be able to reach greater heights for no other reason than that their perception of themselves is far from positive. One of the main feeders of the poverty mentality is focusing on what we don’t have instead of what we do have. If you start concentrating on the things you have not achieved or the stuff you don’t have you are setting yourself up for disappointment, resentment and a negative outlook on everything you come across. There can be only a very small number of individuals on the planet who actually have everything they desire. The reason I mention this is to emphasise that in reality we all want to get somewhere we haven’t been yet. We all want to achieve greater things, whether that is a better financial position, a nicer house or more impact on the people we come in contact with, so in reality we are all aiming to be better than we are. 30

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So why then do some people get motivated by wanting to achieve more, while others get disheartened by not having more? I believe that it comes down to attitude and thinking. It is the ‘half-full, half-empty’ glass contrast. Some people see that they are able to fill up the empty part of their half-full glass. They see that it is up to them to take control over adding more to their lives. Others see that their glass is half empty, think that it is not fair, and sit around waiting for someone else to come along and fill it up for them. They will never learn until they see that this type of thinking gets them nowhere except on the fast lane to frustration, which focuses their attention even more on what they don’t have. They never stop to look at what they do have, to see how they could utilise it and turn it into something bigger and better. If only we all stopped in our busy lives and took stock of what we do have. (I am talking here not only about possessions, but also about potential, foresight, personality and all the other things and attributes that make up who we are.) We have air in our lungs, clothes on our backs, friends around us, and a tonne of potential sitting inside us waiting to burst out and propel us to greater heights. Every single person reading this book could have a million stories, a million excuses and reasons for what is stopping them excelling in life. I mean, look at my story. At the age of 25 I had failed school, had had heaps and heaps of jobs with no real satisfaction and had only $1.25 in the bank. But I was able to see past what I didn’t have and 31

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focus on what I did have, and I used that and made my success out of the little I had. Having a poverty mentality isn’t confined to one’s financial position. It translates right across our entire lives. Don’t allow your history or things people have said to you in the past to rule you and dictate where you will end up. Having a poverty mentality is not an honourable thing. In fact it is a selfish thing. The more you hang onto your self-doubt, old thinking and selfish motives, the more you will focus on why you don’t have what you want instead of how you can change your situation. You close yourself off from all that you could potentially achieve, all because of your selfish concentration on your own potential (or lack of it in your own eyes). As I will demonstrate over and over again, the more you understand that you need to have a prosperity mentality, the more your current circumstances will change for the better. Your attitude towards money really is the key here. While it is easy to focus on why you don’t have as much money as you would like to have, stop and assess what your attitude towards money really is— and I mean your real attitude towards it. Most people’s attitude leans solely on getting more money, which makes them think that in turn they will get to a higher level of happiness. That is so wrong. If your attitude towards money is a negative one or a wrong one, no matter how much money you get that attitude will always rule your situation. As I have stated in my other books, I had no money when I decided to start my first business (Attitude Inc.®). 32

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I never blamed anyone for being in that position; the fact was that I had not yet realised the true value of money. Most people would think that if I could get myself out of that financial position I would be on the road to success. Well, I don’t agree with that at all. I could have made millions, and changed my bank account’s dollar figure, but until I addressed the reason for being in that position in the first place, I would simply have wasted the money that came in through the doors of my business. I had to address my attitude towards money, which had long been of the ‘easy come, easy go’ type, and learn ways of using it to get to where I wanted to be. The quicker you can do that, the quicker you will be able to make some progress towards getting yourself out of a poverty mentality and into a prosperity one. I had to get myself to a point where I was not going to settle for the financial situation I was in. Sure, I could have tried to find someone I could blame for where I was at, but ultimately I had to take ownership of where I had got myself to. If you are in that same boat right now, take ownership of your current position. People are quick to take ownership and recognition of the good things that happen in their lives but too many fail to address the reasons they fall short in the financial areas of their lives. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself the why question? By that I mean have you ever addressed why your attitude towards money is the way it is? Why is it that you seem to be making the same mistakes all the time? 33

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Why can’t you save? Why do you see people better off than you as people who just got ‘lucky’? These questions and more need to be addressed. As human beings, we are complex creatures, made up of past events and thoughts that bring us to where we are right now, here and today. To change your current position to a better one, you will have to— and I’ll say it again—you will have to address those past thoughts and events to give yourself any chance of heading down a different and better path. You will not just magically wake up one day with a different outlook on life. Change requires work, especially within financial areas. Another thing that plays a big part in preventing you from getting to a higher level financially and further into the area of living a prosperous life is ‘learnt behaviour’. As kids we take on a lot of beliefs, methods, and in turn actions, especially from our parents or carers. Just because your family had no money when you were growing up does not mean that you have to carry that torch for the rest of your life—or pass it on to your kids. There are a lot of good things that we learn from our parents, so please understand that I am not trying to put down your upbringing. What I am focusing on here is that sometimes we are who we are, we think the way we think, because that is all we were surrounded by as we were learning about life. 34

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My father was a minister, which meant we never had a great deal of money when I was growing up. Not that we realised it at the time, but now, looking back, I can honestly say we were on the lower side of the family income range. While that was the way it was, my parents never instilled in any of us kids that that was what we were going to have to live with for the rest of our lives. My mum and dad instilled an attitude of excellence and achievement within all their children. Just because my parents didn’t have a great deal didn’t mean that I was destined for the same. I am not sure if you had similar thoughts, but I remember thinking to myself when I was a kid that I was not going to let myself get into a position where I would be struggling to make ends meet when I grew up. Admittedly, my financial decisions probably weren’t the best up until age 25, but I never wanted to have my kids go without. Please understand as well, I am not saying that my parents never provided well for us— they did—but I wanted bigger and better things for my kids. I was determined that my past was not going to translate into my future and in turn into my kids’ future. As it turns out, my brother and I have excelled in the area of business, and my sister in the area of teaching. Were we taught this at school? Well, not exactly. As I said before, we were taught at home that we could achieve anything we desired, but we were not taught any business or teaching procedures whatsoever. What I can remember is that my parents never let us know how badly off financially we were. That really has played a part in each of our successes. 35

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Our learnt behaviour was a positive experience. Now think about negative learnt behaviour. There is no wonder some people never get out of financial difficulty when all they learnt from their parents as kids was how to get from pay cheque to pay cheque. If that happened to you, and you understand where I am coming from here, it is up to you to break that pattern. While I was writing this chapter, I had a phone call from a young guy, Mike, who was experiencing the effects of negative learnt behaviour first hand. He had started a business about eighteen months earlier and had been constantly chasing his tail financially. He had made a series of poor decisions and as a result the finances of his business were drying up, and drying up fast. He had done what he thought was the right thing at the time, but in fact he was reacting to his financial predicament with short-term solutions that ultimately started to have an effect on his longterm position. After asking him a series of questions, it came down to one thing. His results (or lack thereof) were a direct consequence of learnt behaviour. His parents had had no concept of financial freedom, no understanding of getting themselves anywhere other than lurching from one financial dilemma to the next. He had learnt from his parents that he should react instead of respond to the financial decisions he had to make. After he told me of the problems he had faced over the previous twelve months, I asked him one 36

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question: ‘Are your past, and the principles you were taught, going to take you to where you want to go in your own future, for you, your wife and your children?’ After what seemed to be an eternity of silence at the other end of the line, Mike came back with, ‘You are right. I have to address that straightaway or else I will end up just like my parents.’ He understood that the only way to move forward was to address and undo the kind of thinking that was instilled in him, by default I might add, when he was a kid. We went through a few techniques that would assist him in getting out of the financial mess he had got himself into. As we discussed these methods, every now and then Mike would come back with, ‘Oh you can’t do that’ or ‘That will never work’. I asked him after a while why he kept saying those things, to which he replied that the methods in question never seemed to work for his parents. Despite realising, in an intellectual sense, that he didn’t want to end up like his parents, he still had a way to go before he let go of his automatic emotional reactions. He understood he was in the financial position he was in because he had been operating from what he was taught, from what he experienced as a kid, but he had to really act on and address those areas. Here are some practical tips to help you overcome financial adversity. I found these tips on <www.rediff. com> when I was looking for more ways to assist Mike with his predicament. This list helped Mike enormously and I know it will also assist you if you are 37

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facing financial problems. I have taken the liberty of adding my own comments, as I did with Mike, after each of the seven tips listed below.

Recognise and name the problem for what it is What you first need to do if you are having a few problems with your finances is to really admit that there is a problem. You cannot, like Mike, just hope that it will go away by itself, or fix itself with no action on your part. You need to face the problem head on. You need to confront it before you can correct it. Many people use the ‘sweep it under the carpet’ method in this area. The problem here is that after a while there is no more room under the carpet, and the problem starts spilling out at the sides. Your issues will now be ten times worse, because not only do you have to address the current issue or problem, you are now faced with the issues and problems that have never been addressed in the past. The day you recognise that you have ongoing problems with finances, and you begin to address the areas that you have neglected, is the day you start making progress towards securing a better environment to operate in.

See your problem as a project A lot of people are constantly getting themselves into the same problems—time after time after time. They 38

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don’t see that the reason they never get out of their situation is that they only look at their problems as ‘one-offs’ instead of as issues that have been around for a long time. The longer you have had a problem with something, the longer it will take to get out of that way of operating. A lot of people never address their problems with financial issues because they see the situation as all being too hard. There is no way out of it, so why bother even addressing it, they think. That is really sad. It comes back to the half-full, half-empty glass I was talking about earlier. Once you understand that you have an area that needs attention, you have the opportunity to fix a part of your life—and that may send you down an exciting and rewarding path. Who knows, you just might enjoy it. Sure it will be a challenge, but how much more of a challenge can it be than continuing with your current situation? Seriously, weigh it up. You can either stay in financial trouble and end up somewhere you never wanted to be, or work hard at getting yourself out of there and potentially enjoy things you never thought were possible. Try pushing yourself outside the boundaries you have been operating within. I know which path I chose, and I have to say it has been totally worth the challenge. Don’t think you are too far gone. It is not the end. The question is, how badly do you want to get out of your hole? 39

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Identify the reasons you are in crisis One of the main causes of getting stuck, going around the same financial roundabout time after time, is that people have not addressed the real reasons they ended up there in the first place. They may have done a lot of surface work, but they haven’t delved deep enough to find the roots of the problem. I can guarantee that there won’t be just one issue that needs addressing. There will be at least two, more likely a series of issues that have meshed together. At worst, the issues that have been brushed aside will explode in your face. As I explained this to Mike on the phone he really started to make sense out of his current predicament. He had never addressed the ‘how’ or the ‘why’. He only ever looked at the ‘when’. Most people never address how they got into a financial mess. All they seem to be looking for is when are they going to get out of their mess. Recently, after a period of heavy rain, a whole heap of potholes developed in the streets around where I live. About three weeks later the local council sent work crews to repair the holes. All they were doing was shovelling blue metal and bitumen into a hole, smoothing it over and moving on to the next one. I asked the worker standing next to my car whether they should be packing it down more. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s the way it’s done.’ Now I am no expert in pothole technology, but this didn’t seem to make sense. 40

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Sure enough, after a few weeks, the cars driving over the potholes had compressed the filling down to the point where we have half-filled tar-lined potholes. This is the way many people deal with things when they are in a financial pickle. On the surface they appear to be doing the right things. They talk to the right people, they try to understand what it is they are doing wrong; they may even look as though they are making progress. But unless they address and identify the core reasons they are in a hole, all they are doing is papering over an ongoing problem.

Create alternative spending patterns Now this point is a very practical one. If you are in a financial mess because you spend too much, then (and I know this is going to sound like common sense) you really are going to have to deal with that, and as soon as you can. I know quite a few people who cannot walk through a shopping centre without buying something. I was recently asked by one of them for advice on how to stop this happening. My answer was pretty simple —stop going to shopping centres! If you always buy a certain brand or certain type of product, ask yourself, ‘Is this really within my budget, or can I find a cheaper version?’ If people addressed every area of their spending patterns when they face difficult times, they would probably find that it is the things they really don’t need which have put them in the position they are in. 41

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Unless you are prepared to make a change to what you are currently doing, nothing is really going to alter. You need to force yourself to make changes.

Re-evaluate your spending habits When do you buy and what do you buy? This point is directly related to the preceding one. I recently spoke at a business function in a country town. The day I arrived I noticed big queues out the front of most of the banks in the main street. As the banks weren’t open yet it had me wondering what was going on. A few hours later I took a walk down the main street to kill time. There were still a fair number of people in the various banks. I asked one of the security guards what was happening to attract so many people into his bank. He told me that the town had a high unemployment rate, and this was the day that unemployment benefits went into people’s bank accounts. Every fortnight the same thing happened, month in and month out, he said. Some people would run out of money before the day was out, he told me, which meant they had to go for another fortnight without any money. Now I do not want to pass judgment on people in situations I don’t know about, but it seemed a dreadful shame that those who ran out of money on the same day hadn’t addressed the areas that could potentially get them out from under. 42

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If only they didn’t live from pay cheque to pay cheque. If they re-evaluated what they spent their money on and controlled how quickly they spent it, maybe, just maybe, they could change their current situation, perhaps even start saving for their future.

Inform others that you are trying to change your current situation We can sometimes be too proud to let those around us know that we need help. I know that I was like that early on—but I know there will be people around you who could help if only you asked for their advice. Changing patterns takes a lot of time and thought and effort. Why do it all by yourself if you don’t have to? Try enlisting the help of people who might have a great deal of insight into your problems. There are a few practical suggestions that you could apply to your situation right now that might be the answer to moving above and beyond it. Enlist the help of your family If your family is in the same predicament as you, then I would suggest that you might want to look elsewhere for help. On the other hand, perhaps you could get together and challenge each other, make each other accountable, and work together to better all your situations. Honesty is the key here. Don’t share just half your problems—this way you will get only half the answers. 43

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Let your partner or other family members know where you are at. You would be surprised to know how many husbands and wives have no idea that their spouse’s finances are not in proper shape. If you let your loved ones know you need help, you have more chance of getting out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into. You will have their collective wisdom to help you, which could be the key to getting back on track. Use financial consultants and read books on the subject. There are a lot of free services out there that can assist you greatly. Professionals who know what they are doing are a great resource to tap into. I guarantee that your issues and situations will not be as dire as you think they are. There are also a lot of good books on financial freedom and the like which could help you change the way you see things or the way you do things. It’s all about being smarter than your situation. Just remember one thing: you are not the first person to go through this. Someone has been there and done it before. So why not benefit from their experiences? Talk to your creditors This point is really for business owners, but if you can apply it to a personal situation then by all means do so. If you own a business and things just aren’t going well for you at the moment, let your creditors know. 44

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If you keep your creditors informed about your situation, they are more likely to cut you some slack. Don’t fall into the trap of promising and never delivering though, because after a while no one will believe anything you say. Be up-front and honest. Let your creditors know that you are working on meeting your obligations. That way they are kept in the loop and are fully informed of where you stand. The harder they have to chase you to get information, the more put off they will be.

Consider alternative or additional income possibilities I have met a lot of people who are struggling to make ends meet. A thing that is consistent among them is that they nearly all seem to be doing the same things they’ve always done. They never seem to realise that they need to work a bit harder and smarter to get out of their current situation. If you need more money than your current income to move on and upward, you are going to have to do something extra. Common sense, I know, but still there are a lot of people who don’t want to go the extra mile. When I started Attitude Inc. I had two part-time jobs on top of trying to run a business. I realised that I needed to push myself for a period of time. What are you prepared to do to get out of where you are? If the answer is ‘nothing more than I am currently doing’, then I am afraid you may be stuck there for a while. 45

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Look for a second job, look for better ways to do what you are currently doing. Don’t just settle for where you are. One question you may need to stop asking yourself is ‘Do I deserve financial success?’ While this may sound stupid, you would be surprised to know how many people think that prosperity and financial freedom are only for the select few. Everybody can experience prosperity, everybody can work towards it. The people who ‘deserve’ it are the people who have worked hard for it. Another thing you may need to work on is ‘stretchmarks’. I am not talking about the ones on your body, I am talking about stretchmarks on your thinking. If you are stuck in an area where, from a financial perspective, you can’t see a way out, you need to stretch your thinking beyond its normal limits. Who says you can’t live a life that is prosperous? Who says you can’t reach a higher level of financial freedom? Your thinking is the area that needs attention before you even try to change your situation. The bigger your thinking and imagination, the more you can potentially achieve. Albert Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Can you see yourself in a better position or are you stuck focusing on your current situation? Prosperity has many facets to it, but I have to say that developing a bigger way of thinking is one of the keys to unlocking your potential. Remember: your current situation will be your situation next year if you don’t work to change it now. 46

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3

ONPURPOSE

As I have already made clear, reaching a higher level of prosperity takes a lot of work, not only in the area of your finances, but also in terms of who you are and why you do what you do. Unless you deal with the problems and shortcomings in every area of your life, your financial successes will be short-lived and you will have failed to learn some very important personal lessons. In this chapter I want to address the need for being deliberate in your actions. I have already discussed why you need to have a purpose for financial success, but you need to do what you do on purpose as well. Your choices must be deliberate and thoroughly thought out. Some people seem not to put any real effort or planning into their finances, and that is a very onedimensional way to operate in an area that is multidimensional. Financial success is multifaceted, so to concentrate just on what will bring more 47

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money into your bank account is to ignore the bigger picture. You need to be deliberate in your choices, your actions and your attitudes towards financial success. If you are not, you are leaving yourself open to whatever comes your way, good or bad. When you understand this principle, you can focus completely on what you want and where you want to go. Being deliberate about your course and direction will help you make sense out of what is actually involved and what will be needed to get you there. Understanding this will clear away some of the confusion and common misunderstandings about financial security and financial success. There are many myths out there about what you ‘have’ to do to become wealthy. If only it was that easy. Once you have a plan of attack, then and only then are you able to move in a forward direction. Now there is nothing to say that you won’t make a wrong turn along the way. Just make sure that you are at least moving and not stagnating. Don’t react, respond. Sadly, there are a lot of people just waiting for financial success to happen to them. They don’t really want to put themselves out, they don’t really want to think hard, they just think that because they have put in a little bit of effort, and they have been nice people, financial success should just happen for them. Wrong! By now you should understand that getting to a better financial position in your life requires a great deal of focus, direction and deliberate actions, choices and thought. 48

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You need to have a plan of attack. You can’t just do what feels right at the time in the hope that it will pay off. If by some fluke it does pay off, chances are you will kid yourself that you were quite strategic in getting to that point. This lays you open to making a big mistake further down the path by operating the same way in the belief that you were smart the last time. The next time you will have more to lose. Planning your course makes a huge difference. If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you know whether you are heading in the right direction? And how will you know when you get there? The first step is to figure out what you actually want. Making money for the sake of making money really is not the wisest of things to hope for. Without a clear and concise understanding of what that money will bring you once you get it, you will probably fail to appreciate the effort you have put in, because all you will have is money in the bank. Know what it is you want the money for. That way, when you make it, it’s not the money that makes you happy, it’s the reason for making it that does. Don’t just do what feels good for you at the time. Taking the easier, less-thought-through path, reacting to the immediate situation instead of looking at a longterm solution, brings short-term results which can end up making the long-term future look bleak. Recently I have watched the future unravel for a few people I know. They are not close friends, but I have found their plight both interesting and frustrating 49

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to watch. They decided to invest in a property concept which promised huge returns over a year. I too was approached with this ‘opportunity’ but I smelt it for what it was straightaway. Over a casual coffee one day, this group started talking about how they were going to ‘rake it in’ and how anyone who decided to turn the opportunity down was a fool for not seeing a way to get rich. I let them dribble on for a little while, but I just had to speak up. I was one of those ‘fools’, I said, who did turn the opportunity down, on the grounds that if it sounded too good to be true then it probably was. I had decided to do a check on the person running the property investment scheme. The information I received did not inspire me with confidence, and from that, and that alone, I decided it was not for me. I offered to give the group my information but they turned me down. ‘It’s all right for you to ignore this opportunity’, one of them said. ‘You’re doing okay financially, but you shouldn’t stop other people from getting themselves to where you are.’ This upset me for a minute, for it is part of my life to help other people reach a level of financial success. They then basically cut me out of the conversation. I excused myself after a while and went about getting on with my life. Recently I heard of the final outcome. All those people who saw this opportunity to get ahead quickly had lost every cent they had invested with this guy. Now they are in a worse position than before they started with him. 50

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You see, they just did what they thought was good at the time. They didn’t research anything, they simply jumped in boots and all. They focused on a short-term fix. You can’t afford to be like these people. You have to see your finances as a precious commodity. Now I am not saying that you should start holding your money dear, and closer than anything else. What I am saying is that your finances and your financial decisions are not to be taken lightly. Especially if you have a family, because not only are you putting yourself at risk, but also your loved ones. This is one of the main reasons I now take every financial decision seriously. Short-term solutions are just that, short term. You need to be deliberate and thoughtful in every choice you make. And that goes for big and small decisions. You might be surprised to find out that while many people take a lot of time over big financial choices, they don’t take any time at all to think about the small decisions they need to make. The problem here is that if you make mistakes on a lot of small decisions, when they all come together you feel a huge impact. You need to be certain of the bigger goal and bigger picture for your financial life before you can start making progress towards achieving it. A lot of people don’t think like this, and this may be the reason that they continually struggle. If you don’t know where it is you are headed, how will you know when and if you get there? I know I have just repeated myself, but I want the point to really sink in. 51

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You need to be realistic as well. This may upset some people, but having a goal like ‘I want to have $10 million in the bank by the time I am 30 years old’ might just be a bit of a stretch. What you are doing is setting yourself up for potential failure. It would be great if you did reach that goal, and I would be the first to congratulate you, but endeavour to have realistic, attainable goals. Another point I really must mention is that you should not tell absolutely everybody you come in contact with about your financial goals. Be very selective about who you tell. The reason for this is that if things don’t go according to plan, a lot of people now know that you (in their eyes) have failed to get to where you said you would. Their view of you may become less than positive. You need support around you, not people reminding you that you failed last time. There are two more areas which are important to reaching a greater level of financial prosperity. These key ingredients in making sure you are being deliberate in everything you do to reach everything you want are desire and intention. Without them, once again decisions will be based on short-term solutions.

Desire Our desires rule every part of our lives. Whether they are good or bad desires we tend to gravitate towards them nonetheless. So much so one could say that 52

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desire is the force that motivates each and every person on the planet. You can see the effects of desire in every action and reaction around you. A hungry man desires food. A spiritual person has a desire to be spiritual. A person with high morals desires to be moral. Someone who sees devastation within the human race desires to assist from a personal perspective with the giving of their finances. In each of the examples above, the motivating force behind each person’s actions is their wish to fulfil those desires that they have set for themselves. The desires that you have had up until this point of your life, right now reading this book, have brought you to where you are. At some time in our lives most of us will have a desire to do good which in turn will bring good back to us. But there are also people who desire to do bad things. This leads them further away from the success and prosperity they are aiming for. The question that you need to answer right now when it comes to desire is this: Do your desires take you closer to a level of prosperity or do they take you further away from it? Unless you address this question, you may never reach the level that you desire. Try to turn off the desires that you have one day. It just can’t be done. Desire is the power behind all of our actions; it’s just the way life is, whether you like it or not. You need to strongly desire all that you want. Don’t be wishy-washy or your outcomes will reflect that. Instead, dream it, think of it, and always aim for it. You must learn to want it with 53

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every part of your being; if you don’t want it badly enough, you will never reach it and that would be a real shame. Many of us have lost sight of what we really desire in life. We need to remind ourselves of the importance of rediscovering our desires, of regaining the spark which makes life worthwhile. If we fail to do this we are settling for mediocrity and will never make the most of our potential. You need to understand what it is you really desire. There is no point wandering through life thinking that you desire something which in reality has no relevance to what you really want. A good example here is desire that revolves around what other people have. It is fine to look at how other people are doing, but never fall into the trap of wanting to live their life or wanting what they have. When you do that you are focusing on their lives and their achievements instead of your own. Your desire is replaced by their desires. People who fall into this trap see only the façade of other people’s lives and never address the areas of their own lives that could potentially take them way past those around them. Now, I am not for a minute trying to say that life is all about who finishes in front with the most stuff. Not at all. What I am trying to point out is that if you focus on your own desires rather than measuring yourself against someone else’s achievements, you may just surprise yourself with how far you get in your pursuit of your own financial life. So, do you desire financial prosperity? 54

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Are you totally committed to confronting whatever areas need addressing to get there?

Intentions and goals You may know the dictionary definition of ‘intention’ but if you were asked, out of the blue, about your intentions would you just fall over yourself trying to explain them? Your intentions will lead you down the road we call life. If your intentions are true and correct, then chances are you will achieve all that you desire. If your intentions are ‘bad’ or insincere, however, your outcomes in life will be less than ideal. You see it is your intentions which will take you closer or further away from your desires. That is why they are linked together in this book. A lot of people ‘intend’ on making their lives work out the way they originally planned, but intending and acting on those intentions are two totally different things. Your intentions will set a course or a direction for you to now start from. Don’t forget that in order for anyone to accomplish something, there has to be an intention from the start. That is really the point that I want to get across here. Your intentions are just the starting point of your journey towards those goals or dreams that you have. Without an intention there is no potential direction or potential movement. But don’t stall once you’ve identified your intentions. Get up and get going, press on 55

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towards the goals that you have now set for yourself. Intention, desire and goals all go hand in hand. Without a goal your desire to achieve is one-dimensional. That is why intention is so important. It is the spark that brightens up the path that you need to follow. Your intentions are in the present. By that I mean where you are right now, today, as you read this book, whereas your desires are focused on the future and possible outcomes. Intention is like turning on your car lights when driving in the dark. It shows a way. Up until that point, you have a dark outlook. When your intentions are clear to you, they act like a directional path. Now it may turn out that you need to deviate from your perceived course along the way but don’t sweat it: at least you are moving. This is where your goals kick in. You know where you want to go as you have set your course, so no matter what happens to you along the way, ensure that you keep aiming towards your desired outcome. What you now need to do is a self-assessment of where your intentions lie. Do you have good strong intentions for yourself and where you want to go financially, or are they weak? Don’t beat yourself up here. People are constantly short-circuiting their desires and dreams purely because they haven’t bothered to look deep and hard enough into why they are always falling short, especially when it comes to financial predicaments. I would now like to let you in on a secret principle I have followed for many years and which has led to 56

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my achieving financial prosperity. People tend to assume that reaching a higher level of wealth has to do with brains. Sure, you need to have smarts to progress, but I don’t think that’s the most important ingredient. I believe that we need to be passionate about what we do and where we want to go in our lives. I believe that we all need to persist through the tough times to ensure we stay on track. And I also believe that if we don’t know or understand our purpose in life we will never actually reach our goals. If we follow our passions, we all have a greater chance of reaching a higher level of prosperity. Yep, that is it. It may seem too simple to be effective but I guarantee that it is. If you are not passionate about what you want to achieve then it will never happen. You will never reach that level of prosperity you desire all due to the fact you were just not that passionate about it. If you don’t persist through the hard times you will never advance any further. Persistence pays off when it comes to prosperity. Did the wealthiest people on the planet just sit and wait until the money came rolling in? I think not. They pushed through the barriers that stood in their way. And as we have discussed, if you do not have a purpose for what you want to achieve, all you are doing is whatever ‘feels right at the time’. And as we have discovered in this chapter, if you don’t do it ‘on purpose’ and deliberately, all you are doing is fumbling through each situation and fluking your results. 57

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Let’s now have a deeper look at each of the ingredients for prosperity.

Passion Passionate people produce! Without passion you will rarely have any ‘oomph’ behind what you are doing. What life can be great without great passion? Having something in your life about which you are passionate is a great start, but consider this: why not create an entire life that you are passionate about— start to finish, top to bottom? Can it be done? Yes, and it’s not nearly as hard as you might think. I personally find it impossible to be passionate about just one area of my life. Passion permeates every part of my life: my family, my work, everything. Of course, the first task is to figure out what you are passionate about. One of the easiest ways to do this is to figure out what it is you do when you have free time and can do whatever you want to do, such as when you go on holiday, or what it is you do when you’re angry, hurt, frustrated or otherwise needing to get away and make yourself feel better. Another way of discovering your passion is visualisation. What are you looking forward to doing when you retire? What would you do if you had unlimited supplies of time, money, support and resources? Once you have found your passion or passions (most of us have several), spend a little time auditing your life to see where it includes these passions and where it excludes them. Then weed out everything that 58

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leads you away from or denies you your passions and replace these things with work, hobbies, activities, habits and possessions that reflect your passions. Of course I can already hear the cry: ‘Not all of us can pick and choose our jobs and where we live.’ But to a great extent this is your fear and disbelief speaking. It is scary to pull up stakes and move to places unknown, even when your current existence is slowly killing you inside. I know that it would be terrifying to follow your heart when it leads in a different direction to your head. And I realise that it may seem like a foolish step, in the eyes of many who do not dare, to announce to the world that you’re giving up everything you ever worked for to pursue a dream that might fail miserably. But the truth is that it is far better to fail at doing what you love than to ‘succeed’ at a life of mediocrity and regret. Life is not a dress rehearsal. You may not get a chance to use what you learned to do it over again. Who knows? You may have only one shot left at getting to a better position financially. (I am not trying to be the voice of doom and gloom, merely to give you a big enough kick to get going.)

Persistence The dictionary defines persistence as ‘continuing in spite of obstacles or objections’. Let me repeat that, just in case you read over it too quickly: ‘in spite of obstacles . . .’ Obstacles seem 59

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to be the reason we can think that success is for the select few. You need to be aware that in striving for a higher level of financial prosperity you are going to encounter obstacles along the way. That is a given. What you do when you confront these obstacles will have a direct influence on whether or not you reach financial prosperity. You need to be aware that if you are going to reach a higher level of financial prosperity, you will encounter obstacles along the way. That is a given. What you do when you confront these obstacles will have a direct impact on whether you reach financial prosperity or not. When we were young we learnt that things don’t always go our way or turn out the way we had planned. I don’t know how you went in school but I am sure that not everything worked out the way you may have hoped. Some of you (myself included) may not have got the grades we would have liked, but most of us persisted in spite of the obstacles that were in front of us. If you are persistent and determined to overcome anything that comes your way, there is very little that you will not achieve. Now it may take a while, and not everything works out the first time, but a persistent and determined person will press on no matter what the obstacle or hiccup. It is the persistent people who will enjoy the rewards. Don’t mistake talent for persistence though. I have come across many people with huge amounts of talent that just seem to waste it all due to their lack of persistence. They think that their talent alone will get 60

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them through their lives. Look, for example, at the people you went to school with. Where are the ‘most popular’ or ‘most talented’ people today? Sure, some of them might have turned out okay. But many of them are just like the rest of us. Just because we once had talent, does not mean that it will stay with us and give us security for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately it can be tough out there sometimes. If you don’t have the persistence to push through the garbage that gets thrown at you or to overcome the setbacks, you will never get to that result that you desire so much. You need to take your life and your journey, especially when it comes to aiming for prosperity, one step at a time. That way you ensure you are on track. Just think for a minute about the competitors that take part in the Olympic marathon that I was talking about earlier. The pain on some of the competitors’ faces is so noticeable that you feel every bone-jarring action as you sit watching the television. Some even crawl over the finish line. Some people may get to where they want in record time, others may make it over the line by the skin of their teeth. But as I said before, prosperity isn’t a race. You just have to reach that goal whenever you can.

Purpose For the sake of not repeating what I have already said about purpose, I will only say that if you have no 61

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purpose in life greater than fulfilling your own desires, your success will either be very short-lived or very lonely. Harsh, I realise, but so true. Just think of the impact that you and your finances, information or time could have on someone less fortunate. If you think that you are the world’s most hard-done-by person, I guarantee that there is someone else out there (if not millions of people) who would love to have what you have. Just promise yourself to work on areas within yourself that may assist others less fortunate. My equation tells you that you have to have all three elements—passion, persistence and purpose— to reach prosperity. You can’t get there by taking short-cuts.

Being yourself Finally, I want to speak to you as a whole person, not just as someone wanting to reach a greater level of wealth. You really need to enjoy where you are now. I realise that some of you reading this book are nowhere near where you want to be, but that is my point. If you don’t enjoy every aspect of your journey, I believe it is very difficult to move forward. I am not saying that you have to be content with constant financial struggle; what I am saying is to make sure that in your efforts to better your situation you don’t 62

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stop enjoying who you are and who is around you. Your loved ones will be there, whether you have $10 in the bank or $1 million. Your focus through these times will be the key to seeing who you really are as a person. Make sure you take time out to be just who you are, because that is what other people like about you. We all have things to work on in our lives, but make sure it is all done with a measure of evenness. Don’t become one of those hard-core people who seem to cut everything that is normal and secure out of their lives in search of ‘something better’. A miserable person will always focus on their misery first. What are you focusing on? Is it that you want to make more money? If it is, make sure that your focus doesn’t become about the money and nothing else. Also look at where you are sowing your time. If it is in the misery of where you currently are financially, all that will grow will be misery crops. A farmer knows exactly in which soil he can plant which seed. He also knows that some of the seed that he puts out will not grow. What soil are you planting your seeds of financial prosperity into? Is it the ‘get rich quick’ schemes, or something less risky? Once again only you can answer this question, but make sure you ask it of yourself. Some of you may have to spend a lot more time than others on preparing the soil (you) before you can plant your seeds. This is not wasted time. This is time well spent. 63

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Unless you apply a deliberate thought process to what you want to achieve, odds are that you will be at the mercy of what happens to you instead of being in charge of what can happen.

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4

HOWDETERMINED AREYOU? While there are many people who would love to reach a greater level of wealth in their lives, a lot of them give up way too early. Reaching a higher level of financial prosperity will require a great deal of work, and sometimes hard and long work at that. I realise you may already know this but it has to be repeated nonetheless. Don’t assume for a minute that it is going to be easy. It can be easier, however, if you understand the principles and methods behind the process. Once again it has to be said that a lot of people don’t realise there are better ways to achieve what they want to achieve. Once you understand this, your path may seem just a bit clearer. There are no secret ways to prosperity. There are no short-cuts and there is no way of missing steps to get there more quickly. But don’t be disheartened by that. While there may be no short-cuts, when you reach your desired level of prosperity and/or 65

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wealth (if that is your way of putting it for now) you will enjoy it for a longer and more sustained period, as the process and the time you took to get there will have formed a solid foundation for you to build upon. Later in this chapter I want to discuss the ways to build a great foundation and the reason you need to have it. But for the time being, I encourage you to really get into this stuff so you can get to that financial level you desire. I now want to let you in on the secret to reaching a level of financial prosperity. This is something that many people have spent many years to work out, but I am going to let you in on it right now. Are you ready? I mean are you really ready to know? Okay, here it comes . . . The secret to reaching financial prosperity is . . . work! Hello, are you still there? Not what you were expecting, hey? This is the reason many people never reach either wealth or prosperity. They look at financially successful people and assume that the process was easy. Reaching a greater level of wealth or prosperity is not just for the lucky ones, or a pay-off from some exclusive club, it is there for all of us to grab hold of and to own. All we need to do is understand that we have to work at it, and work really hard. Not everything you try is going to work out. Not every investment is going to have a big payout. So what are you going to do about it? 66

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Are you going to give up, spit the dummy, take your bat and ball and go home? Or are you going to develop an attitude of determination that says no matter what difficulty comes your way, whether it is your fault or someone else’s, you are going to get back up and keep going? It all comes down to being resilient. I am frequently asked to speak at various public seminars, on many different topics. I am also regularly asked to speak at ‘wealth-creation’ seminars and conferences. I am probably not the usual sort of speaker at wealth-creation seminars because I approach the subject from the angle that if all you are focusing on is money then (as I have already said) all your decisions will focus on the dollars rather than on more important issues, and I don’t believe this is a healthy way to live or operate. Nevertheless, I am frequently asked to come back and speak again because the audiences really understand where I am coming from. They apply my information to their lives, experience a level of success, and as a result give positive feedback to the organisers of these events. One thing that really bothers me at some (and I have to say only some) of these events is the appearance of financial ‘gurus’ presenting their concepts of how you can take short-cuts to wealth. To them it’s all about how you can get there in the quickest time without having to do what everyone else has done. Now that is a very tempting idea but I have to say it is fraught with danger. Let me explain. Becoming wealthy is not only 67

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about the dollar figure. If it was then anyone who decided one day to aim for a level of wealth would reach it and the entire planet would be filled with filthy-rich people. Building one’s wealth has got a whole lot more to do with the individual, the process and the journey. Sure, there are some people who reach wealth more quickly than others, but they still have to go through the same processes as everyone else. With short-cuts, you face the danger of missing something along the way. It is the same as doing a jigsaw. Imagine that one day you start to put together a 1000-piece jigsaw. You begin with a few pieces, maybe even get the border all connected. Then, because you think that it is taking too long and you want to take a short-cut, you join a whole lot of pieces together to make what you hope is the picture but in reality is a mish-mash of colours and tiny images. While you may think ‘that will do’ or that it’s close enough to the real thing, the truth is that you have not done the right job at all. In fact, you have wasted your time, for you haven’t really completed a thing. This is the same principle as taking short-cuts to wealth. Unless you have all the right pieces in the right order, your picture will not be complete. You will end up with a very short-lived financial experience, and probably with more pain than pleasure. I suppose for me it comes down to the whole ‘easy come, easy go’ theory. If you get something without really having to sacrifice, work and strain for it, you will never appreciate its actual value. 68

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What happens then is that the people who have ‘got rich quick’, start placing value on their worth instead of on their journey and the things they learnt about themselves. (Remember Jeff in Chapter 1?) In my view, success is a whole lot of failures put together to reach a point that you have never reached before. You see, if things happen too quickly without hitting any obstacles, your only guarantee is that an obstacle will be there further down the track. Success, especially financial success, is about pushing through barriers. Once you hit a barrier you need to figure out how you are going to get over it. Then you proceed to the next one, and so on. Success is all about finding the barriers you need to overcome, and conquering them. When it comes to aiming for a level of financial prosperity, however, the reason that there are no short-cuts to be made, is because the process drives the outcome. Prosperity, as I said at the beginning, is about gaining, rising, prevailing and thriving. It isn’t about cheating to get there the fastest way possible. We live in a society that seems to think that whoever gets to a level of success first is the winner. While I admire people wanting to be financially secure at an early age, I don’t feel that we should accord a higher level of accomplishment to those who achieve it early than to those who get there later in life. Whether you are 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years old, when you reach financial prosperity you should feel as though you have achieved and succeeded. 69

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Foundations for success Success depends on the foundation from which you operate. Just have a look at some of the dodgy people who instigate ‘get rich quick’ schemes. Their foundations are small and shaky, only as big as their characters. In these cases, the foundation of who you are as a person is all you have to build your prosperity upon. The bigger your foundation, the bigger the house you can build upon it. Imagine wanting to build a 100-square-metre house. You have planned out how the rooms will be set out, picked out the colour scheme and even chosen the tiles for the bathroom. Then comes the day for the foundation of the house to be laid and paid for. You then, and only then, work out that you don’t have enough money to pay the concreter. So you take a short-cut. You decide you will pay him the money you have, which is enough for the foundation for a 60-square-metre home. He pours the concrete and he leaves. You decide to press ahead regardless and build the original 100square-metre house anyway. Is that house going to survive on the smaller foundation? I think not. But this is how a lot of people go about things, especially when it comes to reaching a greater financial position. They decide what it is they want, what it is they will achieve. Only after they are well and truly on their way do they realise that they have not set a proper foundation on which to build their dreams. 70

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Then what happens is that they start blaming others for their failure instead of looking at the fact that they never really prepared their foundations correctly in the first place. So what is your foundation? Is it making money and becoming wealthy? Is it self-focus or self-importance through reaching a dollar figure? Is it reaching a level of prosperity that will allow you to assist others? Is it just living a life that makes a difference? Is it being the best you can be? Only you can answer those questions. I am not going to say what I think you should do as that has to be your decision. What I will suggest, however, is that you make sure that the foundation you build today will be able to support your accomplishments, direction and dreams for the future, not just your immediate desires. Don’t sell yourself short here either. Don’t only aim for short-term, easily attainable goals that may delude you into thinking you have reached success; aim further than you can even imagine from where you are right now. I can already hear some of you saying, ‘Well, it’s great that you have now shown me that my foundation needs to be bigger than it currently is, but how do I make it bigger?’ I’m glad you asked. Have you ever seen a skyscraper being built? The amount of preparation that goes into a skyscraper’s construction has always blown me away. 71

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While we admire the unbelievable finished product, what most of us haven’t seen is the work that is done even before the building started going up. What the builders have to do is dig down through the ground to the depth of many storeys to ensure that there is sufficient support for the part above ground. The designers and builders of these huge buildings realise that their strength will come not from the façade or the top floor, their strength will come from the foundations. The strength comes from what is not seen by the naked eye. When you are working on your foundation, just as with a skyscraper, you will need to do a lot of work on things that no one else will ever see. If you don’t, just like a skyscraper built with no foundation, your success will be very short-lived. It is areas such as our attitude towards money, our attitude towards generosity, our self-esteem and the like that will be the deciding factors in whether we ever experience prosperity. If you don’t address these areas, you will really be struggling through your journey, because all these issues will pop their heads up at some point—and more than once. Wouldn’t it be smarter to work on these issues now, to strengthen your foundation, before you attempt to head down the path to a better financial position for your life? Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with these issues now, rather than when you have a lot more at stake and a lot more to potentially lose? What you need to understand is that when you are building your foundation you need to have the 72

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right mix of ingredients. By that I mean you need to work on all aspects of your personal life. If you were mixing concrete for the foundation of your house, you would not want to take a short-cut and leave out the sand or the water. You would have to ensure that each ingredient was correct and perfectly measured, otherwise the final outcome would be a total waste of time and resources. In the same way, as you travel towards prosperity, make sure you don’t just focus on making money and disregard things such as personal issues along the way. Ensure that you are constantly addressing your faults. It is those faults that will eventually stop you in your tracks and potentially send you back to where you started, or even further. When you realise that reaching financial prosperity has as much to do with work and your work ethic as it has to do with the ultimate outcome, you will then see that a good foundation is essential. Your journey won’t be easy but it will be rewarding if you put in the effort. I want to share with you a bible parable I was taught when I was very young and which has really shaped my life, especially when I started my business. I have updated it to make it a bit more relevant to today. A business owner was going away on a journey. As he was going to be away for many months he called his three workers into his office, where he gave the first worker $5000, the second worker $3000 and the third worker $1000. It was their job to make 73

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money out of the money they were given so that when the business owner returned he would be able to pick up where he left off. While he was away the workers went about doing what they normally did. Many months later the business owner returned. He called each of the workers into his office individually. The worker who was given $5000 came into his office first. The business owner said to him, ‘I gave you $5000, what do you have for me?’ The man replied, ‘I have put your money to good use and I have made you $10 000’. The business owner was pleased and as the worker had been diligent he put him in charge of a larger area of the business. The business owner called the second worker into his office and said, ‘I gave you $3000, what do you have for me?’ The second worker replied, ‘I have put your money to good use and I have made you $6000’. The business owner was again pleased and as the worker had been diligent he put him in charge of another area of his business. Then it was time for the third worker to come into the office. The business owner said, ‘I gave you $1000, what do you have for me?’ This time the answer was different. The third worker said, ‘I know that you are a good and successful business owner, and because of that I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything like you. So I went out and buried the money so I wouldn’t lose it.’ The business owner replied, ‘You have not learnt from me at all. You have not backed yourself, I cannot have you 74

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looking after any part of my business.’ And with that the third worker was out of a job. You may be wondering about the point of that story. Let me give you the Justin Herald interpretation. Many of us have talents that we will need to use to get to a level of wealth or, as I prefer, a level of financial prosperity. How you use those talents will determine whether you will actually reach what you desire. The first two workers knew that they had to use what they knew to get to a higher level of success. The third worker, however, thought that by not doing anything at all he could just get by. I hate to let you in on a shocking fact—but you will never get anywhere in life, whether personally or financially, by just trying to get by. The other point I would like to make about the story is that not everyone will have the same amount of money. We are not all equal financially, but we can all do the best with what we have. Just because you have less than those around you does not mean that you cannot experience your own level of financial success. You need to be determined to live your life at 100 per cent. Your success with your finances is exactly that. Your success! You need to have the determination that says ‘I am going to back myself today’. This is something that I have to say is evident in every single person I know who has reached a level of success. All of them have backed themselves. They back their decisions and they back their dreams. If you won’t back yourself, how can you expect anyone else to? 75

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Focus and endurance As you are already aware, reaching prosperity will not happen overnight. I have already told you that I do not believe that there is longevity in a quick and easy path to success, so how do you keep focused and motivated along the way? Another important aspect that you need to grasp is the principle of endurance. Once you realise that it may take a bit longer to reach your desired level of prosperity you will be more at ease and comfortable with the time that it does take. If things don’t work out for you the first time, what are you going to do? Will you give up? Will you blame someone else for your lack of success? Or will you get up, brush yourself off and go again? I believe that many people give up too early. If only they could understand that success might be just around the corner. Not everything will work out for you in exactly the way you plan. That is a guarantee. That being a fact, you will—and I say it again—you will constantly need to try new things or approach the same issue a different way. If you were training to run a marathon, let’s say an Olympic marathon, you would need to train over a long period. You would work yourself up to cover that distance during the course of your training. You would not train by doing 100-metre sprints and nothing else. That is the same as aiming for prosperity. The quick fix won’t bring you the big rewards. You need 76

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to have an attitude of endurance. You need to be prepared (and also trained) for a long, winding and sometimes difficult journey. When you realise this you will begin to understand what is actually involved. You also need to understand that what you are trying to do is not new. Countless numbers of people all over the world have been trying to get ahead financially since time immemorial. What you experience along the way, whether good or bad, has been and is being experienced by others. Don’t think of your problems as being too big for you to overcome. The minute you let that type of thinking into your head you have given yourself permission to give up. And here’s another thing. Many people want everything to be perfect before they start, so much so that they never actually start or finish anything. I heard the following example from the American speaker Rick Godwin a few years ago. George Mallory was the first man to decide to climb Mount Everest. He gathered a team to try to climb the highest point on planet Earth, just over 29 000 feet. In his first attempt he failed to reach his goal of conquering the mountain. In his second attempt he failed again, and on his third attempt he lost his life along with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine. Upon returning to the United Kingdom the remaining team held a memorial dinner in memory of their departed colleagues. 77

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In the hall where the dinner was being held, the team covered the walls with pictures of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. Among the pictures was just one of Mount Everest itself. As the sad night closed, one of the team members stood up, crying. He pointed at the picture of Mount Everest and shouted, ‘You defeated us once; you defeated us twice; Mount Everest, you defeated us three times, but we shall one day defeat you, because you cannot get any bigger, but we can’. Eventually it was Sir Edmund Hillary, with Sherpa Tensing, who conquered that mountain and paved the way for those who have conquered it since’. Just start. Understand that things will not be perfect from day one. But you have to progress before you will ever perfect anything. We all have mountains (problems and issues) that we need to face. How you handle mountains is entirely up to you, but if you understand that they cannot get any bigger than your desire to overcome them, then you will in time be able to conquer the mountains standing in the way of your financial freedom and financial prosperity. It really has a lot to do with your degree of determination. I hope you are beginning to realise that making money is just the final outcome of addressing a number of issues you are faced with. As I said previously in this chapter, there are a lot of people who start things but just give up way too early. If only they understood the principle of determination. There are many starters in life, but very few finish what they start. As soon as things get tough, 78

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they are out of there. They don’t understand that they need to build upon the desires that they have; they need to push through their negative thoughts. They need to understand that it is the strong and determined ones that will reap the rewards. You really have to want what you want. It is often said that there are three kinds of people: • People who make things happen. • People who watch someone else make it happen. • People who constantly say, ‘What happened?’ First there are the people who are proactive enough to get out there and make their life work for them. They work hard, invest wisely and enjoy the trappings of their success. They have the discipline to say ‘no matter what it takes, I am going to get myself to where I want to go’. I take my hat off to these people. Sure they struggle and hit hurdles, but they get back up, dust themselves off and start again. They realise that no matter what happens, they only have themselves to get them to their goals. Successful people don’t always have good things happen to them, they make good things happen. Then you have the people who just sit back and watch everyone around them move ahead in their lives and scoff at their success. They see hard work as a type of disease that has no cure. They don’t realise that they too could live a better lifestyle if only they got off their backsides. They just let their lives happen around them; it is a conscious choice not to 79

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participate in their journey. If only these people realised that their destiny is entirely up to them. And lastly there are the people who have no idea what has happened in their life or what may happen. They are so out of tune with their current situation that they just seem to be playing catch-up with themselves. You may know a few people like this. I do. I know someone who is in constant shock that her life is a mess. Everyone around her can see things about to happen to her but she is just off in la-la land. If only she saw that her potential was there all the time and that life isn’t about taking what you’re given. Be smart about what you want to do and how you are going to do it. There are many schemes and scams out there sucking in some of the cleverest people. Always be on your guard. Never accept that everyone else has your best interests at heart. If a thing looks too good to be true, odds are it probably is. The last thing you want or need is to have someone else be the reason that you are now back at square one. You have to be strategic and thoughtful in every aspect of your personal and financial life. When you approach your finances this way, you will soon see the scams for what they are. The reason people get caught up in those kinds of financial messes is that they really don’t have a clear and concise goal to aim for. This can mean that anything and everything that promises quick riches looks good. Sure, these schemes will probably take you somewhere. Too bad if that somewhere is nowhere near where you wanted to be. 80

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I want to finish this chapter by asking five questions, developed by life success coach, Steve Brunkhorst, that will help to advance your enthusiasm and determination. I ask people these questions when mentoring them for the first time. Only you will be able to answer them. Remember, though, to be honest: your honesty may highlight areas that you need to address to get you back on track.

What do you want to achieve? If you have no dreams or goals, you are basically just waiting for the next big thing to come along. The problem here is that you are likely to mistake something that really is nothing for that next big thing. You may pursue it only to realise that it was nothing all along, which will mean that you have wasted both your time and your money.

In which areas of your life are you committed to becoming excellent? If you have read any of my previous books you will know that I place a huge emphasis on reaching greater levels of excellence in every area of life. You can’t just choose a day when you are going to be excellent all of a sudden; you need to be committed to it. It will take time to be excellent. Do you think that Olympic swimmers just wake up one day and win a gold medal? No; they spend many hours, days, weeks, months and years perfecting their talents and achieving their goals. 81

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What are the issues or problems that are holding you back from reaching success or a greater level of prosperity? You need to find the answers to this question pretty quickly if you want to start kicking goals in the financial areas of your life. A lot of people have a good idea of where they would like to go in their lives but rarely look at what is currently stopping them. If you want to move on you have to identify your obstacles. Always address the areas that need working on before you move forward. That way you are not going to be held back further down the path.

How can you turn your hurdles and barriers into positive outcomes? You need to stop focusing on why you will never achieve what you want, and focus instead on how you can use those issues, frustrations or obstacles to your advantage. Don’t think for one minute that you are the only person on the planet who has that particular problem. Those who reach success are those who break through the hurdles holding them back. I don’t see a glass as either half empty or half full. I just see the glass as a glass. It is up to me to fill it and my fault if it is empty. Either way I am in charge of whatever happens in my life. A former boss of mine used to say, ‘We don’t have problems, just opportunities’. This is so true. A problem is an opportunity to overcome an area that you have yet to conquer. 82

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What would be the best way to re-ignite your determination to achieve your goals? Once again this is a question that only you can answer. Investing in yourself by expanding your understanding of who you are is a great start. I am a great believer in learning more about who I am and why I do what I do. If you do this yourself, not only might you be shocked at what you find, but you would then have a greater understanding of how you can address those issues and move forward. Don’t give up. Keep going until you reach the goals you have set for yourself. If you set them a long time ago, however, it’s time to start again. You have read in this chapter that with determination, endurance, a greater work ethic and the right foundation, financial success is a lot easier to contemplate. Only you can get yourself there. Sure, there will be people who can help you along the way, but ultimately it is up to you.

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5

YOURPROSPERITYIIS THANYOUA ARE BIGGERT

Your prosperity has to be bigger than you. When it comes to wealth creation, as I have said, all you are doing is trying to reach the financial goals you have set for yourself. For prosperity, you need to have goals that not only encompass your financial desires but will also fulfil needs that have nothing to do with you. This way of thinking and operating does not come naturally to a lot of people. In this chapter I want to help you get a handle on areas that will release you not only into financial prosperity but also into prosperity in all aspects of your life. I will show you that unless you are deliberate and thoughtful with your actions you may never reach the levels you desire. I will also discuss focus, generosity and purpose, which all play a huge part in helping you reach a better financial position. 84

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Generosity If you have ever heard me speak, you will know that I am a huge advocate of generosity. We live in a world that is naturally selfish. I have to say, though, that recently it has been great to see people putting their hands in their pockets to help out those in need around the world. Think of the money raised after the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami, for example. We all need to be generous, especially because it can push us to a level that for most is not always comfortable. Generosity is something that everyone can be party to. Everyone has something to give. Whether it is money, time or even information, we all have something we can give someone else. The enemy to generosity is greed. I talked about greed in Chapter 1, but let me just address it briefly once again. If you hold onto and hoard your gifts, your money, your time, and even your information, what you are really doing is not allowing yourself to grow. The act of giving is just one part of the process. When you give of yourself, you are opening yourself up to receive from another source. I am not saying that if you give $100 to someone today you will get it back from someone else tomorrow. What I am saying is that you have started a cycle that at some point in time, because of your heartfelt choice to give, may result in your receiving. It is the same principle as the theory of gravity: what goes up must come down. The theory of generosity 85

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says: what you give out must come back to you one day. It may not be the same thing you give out, and I have to say it may not be immediate either. It could be a few years down the track before you receive anything back but it will come to you. Call it being blessed, call it whatever you want, but I have to say this is exactly how it has been in my life ever since I learnt to be more generous. I have to make an important point here though. Don’t behave generously because you think you’ll get something in return. That is the wrong motive. You need to be happy with the idea that you do not expect to get anything in return when you are generous. Vanessa and I have helped some people who haven’t even bothered to say thank you! But that is just the way they are. I am not generous in the expectation that I will get something back—in fact, the opposite is true. I think that if you operate in this way you will find the joy you will receive from the actual giving part is much more than anything you could hope to receive in return. Our daughter Jade, who has just turned fourteen, made us very proud recently when she showed us she has learnt this principle really well. Jade goes to a local youth group. Once a year they have a day called ‘Reach’, when the youth group goes into the community for a day and helps out wherever there is a need. As part of the process the youth group got each of its members to raise sponsorship for the project, and whoever raised the most sponsorship dollars would win a mini motorbike. 86

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This had Jade salivating. She really wanted that bike, so she set about signing up as many people as she could to sponsor her. She raised an unbelievable amount of money, and was well and truly on her way to winning the bike. During this time, however, Jade heard about a particular boy in the group who was having a tough time due to his parents separating. He too had been madly raising sponsorship and desperately wanted the bike. Jade came to us one day and made a suggestion that made us the proudest parents on the planet. She wanted to give this boy the money she had raised so he would be the highest sponsorship raiser. She saw that the boy was having a hard time coping with what was going on in his life and she wanted to bring a bit of relief in the best way she could think of. She realised that while she was going extremely well, her money would make someone else’s desire come to life. She understood the true principle of generosity. That is, it isn’t what you give; it comes down to why you give. I believe there are two kinds of people in this world: those who allow their wealth and possessions to pile up and bring them a false sense of security; and those who use their wealth and generosity to enhance not only their lives but also the lives of others. I believe that the truly successful and generous people are the ones who share their success and wealth with others. In turn they leave an imprint on the world that they live in (Widener, 2002). 87

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Once we realise that money doesn’t necessarily bring us happiness, and that it is there to assist not only with our own direction but also with that of people around us, we can move to a greater level of living. Just think about it. If we were to equate happiness with wealth, then that would mean that if we lost it all we would be miserable and unable to reach a point of happiness until we regained it. Money does make life easier from a comfort perspective, but I know many people who don’t have a great deal of money but are still extremely happy and content with their lives. If you have increased your level of wealth, make sure you don’t forget what it was like before you achieved financial success. By that I mean, many people reach a higher level of wealth and then carry on like they are a cut above the rest. But if you remember where you came from, your heart will always go out to those who are where you used to be. This should ensure that you assist those who are now worse off than you. When and if you decide that you want to be more generous, make sure it is planned and deliberate. This will allow your generosity to have a greater impact. Giving thought to your actions gives them more power. If you are at a point in your life where you would love to give money to charity but you don’t have a huge pool of funds, then why not make small donations. You will be surprised to see how it adds up over time. Sure, we would all love to give a large amount of money in one hit, but giving a smaller amount over 88

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a yearly period can still add up to a significant amount. The other benefit with this approach is that small payments won’t affect your personal finances as much as giving one big amount might. While we all want to use our finances to fix the injustices in the world, make sure your generosity also starts closer to home—with your family and friends. Be the one who pays for lunch. Offer to pay for the coffees. What that can do is set up a culture of generosity among your friends. As my father is a minister I was taught many guiding principles growing up. One of the most powerful of these, which has brought me to where I am today, is ‘you reap what you sow’. What you put out there will be what comes back to you. I want to be more generous within my own life so I need to sow generous actions. You also need to make sure though that you don’t put stipulations on your generosity. By that I mean, don’t remind people that you helped them out and now it’s time for them to help you out. You can’t dictate how people should act and operate with the generosity you have given them. If they decide not to help you or others when you are in need, then they will reap the same when they need help. But don’t allow other people’s actions to stop you being more generous in the future. I realise that I may have covered this earlier in this chapter, but it has to be repeated. There is nothing worse than someone reminding you of the last time they paid for lunch, or reminding you of when they helped you out of a bind, so ‘now you owe them’. 89

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Being generous does not always come naturally. You may need to train yourself to operate on a level of generosity. To be honest, generosity was not something that came naturally to me. I really struggled with it at the start. Because I only had $1.25 in the bank at the age of 25 I was totally focused on never getting back to that financial position again. Eventually I started to see that I was holding myself back. I had to train myself to become generous. Try this little experiment for a minute. Squeeze one of your fingers as hard as you can for a few seconds. You will soon see that you have stopped the blood (life) from flowing to that finger. That is the same as if you hold onto your money too tightly. You will end up squeezing the life out of it. Sometimes you need to let go. You may be amazed at the results when you take the focus off yourself and your needs and put that focus elsewhere. Becoming wealthy and reaching a level of prosperity is an enjoyable thing, as you have already read. I don’t want you for a minute to think that I am saying the opposite. Being generous is not really about giving away your money, it is about sharing it. If you are doing well, think about sharing not only that wealth but also that freedom with others. I guarantee that you will feel an immense sense of satisfaction. I want to now cover a principle which I have abided by all my life—which is something that some of the world’s wealthiest people and most successful organisations abide by as well. 90

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To me it is a moral obligation to give away 10 per cent of my income every week. I can already hear some of you yelling, ‘I can barely survive on 100 per cent of my income. How the heck will I manage on only 90 per cent?’ Well, this is the thing. I bet if you were forced to live on 90 per cent you would learn to cope. By applying this principle you are opening yourself up to being blessed yourself. This is all about retraining or reprogramming yourself to operate on a higher level. There are needy people around the country and around the world who could live a totally different type of life with that 10 per cent that you can give. You don’t need to be the one who actually works with them, you don’t need to physically go to Africa to feed them, all you need to do is make a conscious choice that you are going to start the cycle by giving something that comes into your pocket every week. Just settle in your mind that 90 per cent of all you make is yours to keep. The other 10 per cent was never yours in the first place. It makes it a bit easier to understand that way.

Purpose I guess it all comes down to purpose. If we don’t have purpose in our lives, then what is the point? Sure, we can live for ourselves, which is a perfectly natural reaction, but surely there has to be a bigger purpose as to why we are all on this planet. 91

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We all have to find our purpose in life. For some it may be caring for the sick, for others raising their children, for others going into business. No matter where you are at in your life, the thing that is common to every single person on the planet is that we all have a purpose. What that purpose is, however, is not always the easiest of things to find out. I say it isn’t easy, but it doesn’t require you to go away and stare at your navel for years on end either. It isn’t that hard. Whatever brings joy to your life could be part of your ultimate purpose. You also need to consider that your purpose includes assisting others who need help. As I stated before, generosity does not come naturally to a lot of people. But once you understand that there are those out there who are in need and that you have the skills, the finances or the time required to help them, that is all that you need to do. Once you figure out what your purpose is, you need to plan how you are going to fulfil it. Simple really, isn’t it? That then becomes part of your plan of attack for living the rest of your life. You might be aiming at a greater level of wealth right now. If you realise that you may be able to affect other people’s lives with your finances, then your whole focus on making money becomes a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more important. It will make you realise that you need to make more money than you originally planned. Thus, you can see that when you start operating on a level of generosity, your needs become bigger than your dreams, which in turn will force you to go to a higher level. 92

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Your purpose is really your personal mission in life. If you own a business you will understand the importance of a mission statement, which tells not only you, but your staff and your customers as well, what you promise you will do or what your business is all about. This is the same as our personal mission making us aware of what we are going to do in our lives. In essence, it keeps us accountable to ourselves and our journey throughout life. Your mission in life will affect your goals and goal setting. Your mission gives your life its true meaning. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, ‘Well, my mission is to make as much money as I can.’ Well, that’s great for you, but in my eyes ‘just’ making money is no more than a means to an end. It is also a short-term solution. There needs to be longevity in your mission. If you plan to solve other people’s problems, you will need more money than you originally anticipated to take care of just your own needs. Don’t get me wrong here—I am not trying to make you feel as though you are the only one looking out for yourself, that everyone else is out there trying to find ways to be generous to other people. I used to focus only on my own needs until I figured all this out and started to apply it in my own life. So what is your purpose? Have you ever wondered if your life is heading in the right direction and if the choices that you are making are the correct ones? There is only one real reason why you or I would ever question our choices and that can be summed up in one word: purpose. Do you really understand your 93

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purpose? That is the question! It took me ages to figure this out. You see, if you were to live your life according to the real reason you felt that you were placed on this planet, it would probably go against your natural instincts: for example, putting other people’s needs before your own, giving to others when you believe you need that money more than they do. It is all about going against what is a natural response. It also means being more generous with every part of who you are and not only with your finances. There are millions of web links that talk about the word ‘purpose’. When I looked at some of these web links I saw that they all had one thing in common. They all basically say that purpose is something you have to ‘get’. You have to find it, because it is powerful. So, the first thing I want to do is look at what purpose gives you. Then I want to discuss your purpose. Your purpose comes down to the way that you focus. As I said before, it makes you accountable and keeps you in touch with your bigger picture. More to the point, purpose is what gives the choices you make their direction and meaning. Purpose, choice and focus are keys to this point. Every one of us, including you, has the gift of choice, and we each have a purpose. Without purpose, any decision or choice you make may seem like a good idea to you at the time. Without an idea of where you are heading in life and what you live for, your decision-making process and choices in 94

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life will just be random, flippant and instant as you believe that there is nothing to lose. At the time of writing this book I was asked to spend a week with a group of young Australians who had landed themselves in an overseas jail. Their outlook was bleak to say the least. I learnt a lot from these people. One thing that struck me as I was flying home was that if only they had realised their life had a bigger purpose then they might not have acted on the spur of the moment and might have been in a totally different place in their lives. Most of them will never fulfil their potential. It has been taken away from them due to their actions. Are they remorseful and sorry for those decisions? Absolutely. But unfortunately there is nothing that they can do about it now. Their lives are now determined by their previous decisions and actions. If only they knew that their lives had purpose before they acted, who knows where they might have ended up. You have to understand that choice is why purpose is so important. Don’t dismiss this as an ‘out there’ or ‘rah rah’ theory. Every one of us has a purpose and needs to aim towards it. I would now like to focus on you and your purpose. There are a lot of people and websites already telling you the ‘who’, the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of purpose and I am about to tell you that most of it has missed the mark. Let’s look at what is most commonly understood about purpose. We all know that each of us has a higher purpose, 95

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which may just be something that will benefit all of those around you, including people you don’t even know. Some people were put on this earth to end wars or to stamp out hunger. I personally believe that we were all put on this earth to ‘make a difference!’ Have you ever had someone say something like this to you? Well take a breath, that isn’t your purpose. Yet! Maybe your purpose is to go to school, pass with flying colours, get a stable job, find a life partner, get married and have 2.3 children and retire happy at the age of sixty. I know many people who have tried this but have only ended up living a painful life filled with resentment and regret due to issues within their relationships and mistakes made along the way. So have they failed at their ultimate purpose? I don’t think so. Relax, that isn’t your purpose either. Yet! Maybe your purpose is to be the best parent on the planet for your children or even to be the best husband or wife or partner you can be. Again: relax, that isn’t your purpose. Okay, here it is. Here is the big answer you have been searching for. Here is your purpose. Your purpose in life is to be you! That’s right, you have to strive to be the best you can be. It’s all about aiming at achieving your personal best within yourself every single day. Then, and only then, will you be able to move onto bigger and better things that may include some of the above examples (Smith 2005). Ultimately it comes down to this: what you are 96

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focusing on will determine what choices you make in your life, which will either take you closer to your purpose or further away from it. Focus is a big buzzword at the moment. I have written about it in some of my previous books and you can even do weekend courses on it. The problem I see with focus, however, is that some people are not getting the most out of what they are focusing on. Let me explain. Without clarity your focus will be a bit off. We all need to have clarity about what we are doing on a daily basis. Focus is the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. By that I mean we need to focus on how we are going to achieve what we want to achieve. This is where clarity comes into the picture. Clarity is the ‘why’. Having clarity in your focus will soon show you whether you are focusing on something for the right or the wrong reasons. You may find that your purpose is to be a stay-athome parent. It may be that you will help solve the world’s hunger problem, and yes, you may even make $1 million by the time you are 25 years old. But until you understand that you first need to be yourself, then nothing else will fall into place because you will be doing what you think you should be doing instead of doing what you know you should be doing. So what is your mission? How do you find your own purpose? Once you have realised that you just need to be yourself, how then do you ensure that you are heading for your ultimate and personal purpose? 97

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If you don’t yet know what your ultimate purpose is, don’t freak out and think that you’re a failure. We are all guilty of letting other people’s opinions of us and what we are doing with our lives affect our decisions. But when you have a clear and concise purpose for why you are on this planet, the opinions of others seem irrelevant; they become like water off a duck’s back. When I was overseas visiting the young Australians in jail, I received a few nasty emails telling me I was wasting my time. If I was concerned with other people’s opinions, I would have packed up and come straight home. But for me there was a bigger purpose than other people’s opinions of my actions. I was concerned for the long-term mental wellbeing of the prisoners. I knew that I could assist them and make a difference. I knew that this could be part of my bigger purpose for being there at that time. While it may not have been popular, I knew that it was what I was supposed to do. There are a huge number of people out there who think they can tell everyone else what to do with their lives, but can’t seem to live their own properly. So don’t allow their opinions and comments to affect your choices today or in the future. As you may have read in my previous books, you need to give permission to people for them to offer their opinions and directions about your life. Talking to anyone and everyone until you hear what you want to hear will not help you fulfil your purpose. Sometimes your decisions may not be what anyone else 98

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would do. That doesn’t make them wrong. You need to stand tall and strong with your decisions about where you are headed. Sure listen to other people’s opinions, but go away and digest them before you take action. Not everything that I do is met with a standing ovation. I have to make hard decisions to ensure I am in line and on track with my purpose, and so will you. Aiming at a level of prosperity may be part of your purpose. I personally believe that, to varying degrees, it is probably part of everyone’s purpose. Every now and then I am contacted by someone who thinks it is their right to tell me that being wealthy is a sin or that being wealthy is selfish. This is a narrow-minded way of thinking. Wealth and financial prosperity can unlock many things in other people’s lives. Money does make the world go around so why not use that money for good instead of greed? Being wealthy and financially prosperous opens you up to a whole new world. Sure there are some bad aspects but whether you go down those paths is entirely up to you. One of the good aspects of financial prosperity is that it enables you to experience a greater level of influence. Influence is a wonderful thing if used correctly. The problem most people face is that while they may want to influence others or influence various situations around them, they are often unable to do so for various reasons. I have found that I am now able to have a greater level of influence due to my past and present success. 99

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This really floats my boat, as I am now able to impact areas that ten years ago I never would have been able to touch. You see, with wealth and financial prosperity comes influence. It really is like a gift with purchase. You seem to get it whether you want it or not. The reason I am telling you this is really to give you the heads-up on what your financial success will bring with it. Just as power can be misused, so can influence. If you use your influence for your own gain, then I believe your fortunes will be short-lived. Excellence plays a big part in influence. If you are not operating on a level of excellence, your growth to where you want to be from a financial and personal perspective will be minimised. You can’t afford to be wishy-washy when aiming for a higher level of prosperity, purpose and even excellence. Never let your morals or standards be swayed. While I was writing this, I was watching a huge tree beside my house being tossed around by the wind. It has no control over where that wind blows it. Next to that tree is a telegraph pole. It is not moving at all. You and I need to be like the telegraph pole when it comes to our standards and morals from a financial and personal perspective. Don’t be swayed or pushed into doing things and operating in a way that is anything less than excellent and which goes against what you believe. So how do I live a life of influence, I hear you ask? It’s quite simple. 100

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First, you need to decide that you are going to live that type of life. You need to hold fast to what you want to do, what you believe and where you want to go. Second, you need to understand that living a life of influence is totally self-regulated. It is entirely up to you whether you live a life of influence. Sure, you can also be influenced by other people, but are they influencing you in a positive or negative way? Only you will be able to answer that question. Third, you will be able to see from the people around you whether you are having a positive effect on their lives. By that I mean that if you think you are living a life of influence you should be influencing those close to you. Simple, I know, but this is probably the best self-test around when it comes to influence. I have talked a lot about financial generosity in this chapter. Now let me talk to you for a minute about other areas where you can be generous. Earlier, I spoke about the 10 per cent rule. That rule can be applied to your time if you are not in the right financial position just yet. Being generous with your time is a great way to share yourself with other people. I bet there are a huge number of charities out there which would love a few hours of your time each week. There is also the area of information. I am constantly shocked by the number of successful people who have decided that their success is all theirs, that 101

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they are not going to share any of their information or knowledge with people who are at the start of their pursuit for success. If you are experiencing success in your life, the onus is on you to impart that knowledge to others so they can experience what you have. If you are selfish with your time and information, once again you are potentially closing yourself off to future growth in your own life. I am constantly approached by people who want some help in their business or some advice in their personal situations. Most of the time (and I have to say ‘most’, so that one person I never rang back doesn’t get upset with me) I get in contact with them, to help them out with contacts or information. I have only one rule for this: if I help them out today, they have to promise that they will assist someone else in the future. It is all about creating an atmosphere and a culture of generosity and kindness. In the end it comes down to taking a greater responsibility for being socially aware. As financially prosperous people, it is up to you and me to assist wherever we see a need. Ensure that you are not only focusing on yourself. Some corporations are also starting to see that their role is not just to make a greater profit share but also to become more socially aware. We all need to make sure that we are deliberate and strategic in our pursuit for financial prosperity. I’ll say it again, be deliberate and thoughtful in your actions and attitudes towards money. Have 102

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clarity about your focus and start seeing and meeting needs around you. Sure, look after your desires along the way, but don’t just stop there.

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6

IT’SMORET THANJUST THEDOLLARS So far I have been talking about principles which will assist you in reaching a level of financial prosperity. A lot of those principles apply just as much to your personal life. In this chapter I want to tell you how applying them to your personal life will help you to reach your financial goals as well as to operate with prosperity in every other area of your life. Do you remember that one of the dictionary meanings of prosperity is ‘thriving’? We need to thrive in our finances, but we also need to thrive in our potential, our confidence, our health, our relationships and in our self-belief, to name just a few areas.

Prosperity in your potential We all have the potential to change our current situations. Whether you want to move forward in a financial aspect of your life or a personal one, you 104

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have the potential to do so. But first you need to understand that you do have potential, and that it is a major factor to choosing the direction that you need to follow. Now that you know this, what is this whole potential thing? I personally believe that there is no way that you will ever reach your full potential. Now don’t get upset, let me explain. Every one of you reading this book right now has potential. It is a huge potential and it is not capped. As we move through life, our experiences further our potential. That is why I have a major problem with people who teach courses on reaching your potential in a day. Your potential is not about reaching a point. It is about establishing the methods, the attitudes and the actions that will assist you in your journey. Once you master one area of your life, you then have to tackle a new area. That is why we will never reach our potential. Don’t mistake having achieved a few goals in your life with having reached your potential. That will give you a false sense of security which may result in you losing focus on a better and bigger goal than what you have already obtained. A lot of people really limit themselves with this type of thinking as they rest too heavily on past successes, thinking that that is all they need. Personally I know that I can’t continually sit back and expect my past success with my first company to carry me through for the rest of my life. Did I do well out of it financially and did I learn more about business and life? Sure, but will that last me for the rest of my life? 105

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Probably not. That being the case, I need to continually press forward, to experience all that life has for me. Are you limiting yourself by not focusing on your potential? Do you think that you have already reached your potential? If you answered ‘yes’ to one or both of those questions, you may just have pinpointed the reason that you are not yet where you wanted to be in your life, either personally or financially. So where is this potential that you can tap into to propel yourself along the path to your desired success? I may upset a few of you here, but I am always irritated by the people, articles and even books that tell people they need to ‘unlock’ their potential. Your potential is not under lock and key. It is not something that is so hidden and exclusive that you need to search high and low for those things that will bring it out into the open. Your potential has been there the whole time. You may not have realised it, but what you can potentially achieve has been within you all the time. Simple really, isn’t it? Once you truly believe this, you need to act upon the knowledge that you have the potential to achieve what you desire, aim for it and get on your way. So now we understand that we all have the potential to reach a life of prosperity, what do we need to do? What are the steps that can help us realise and act upon that potential? First, we need to understand that we will never come to the end of our potential. This, I have to say, is a good 106

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thing. Imagine if we could reach a point that meant we could achieve no more, or could grow no more as a person. What a boring life we would then be living! Something that is essential to reach your current potential is the capacity to never stop learning, to see that new experiences are there to force you to grow and to use those experiences to influence your thinking which in turn will affect your actions. The more we take on new experiences, the more potential we have to reach a greater level of prosperity. This means that our potential is limitless because as we grow it grows. Every day you have the opportunity to learn something new and the more we learn the more we grow. You then use that new knowledge to assist you on the following day and so on. Each new day builds on the previous one creating a snowball effect that increases your chances of getting closer to your daily potential. Don’t make the mistake of looking at your current situation and thinking that you will never reach all that you desire. Just work on today being the best you can make it; this will in turn prepare you for tomorrow and all that it brings. While it is great to want to be rich or prosperous, you need to understand the process behind your success, which may not be what you thought it was.

Understanding your potential There are seven principles (Tan 2005) that I now want to share with you to help you understand your potential. 107

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You need to work at your maximum capacity if you want to reach your potential every day. You can’t be wishy-washy Your potential is what you haven’t yet achieved. That being the case, you are required to put in more effort and push yourself harder than you have in the past. It is all about going above and beyond what you have already achieved. To release yourself into a new financial position requires a lot of work as well as brains. If you think that you can just do what you have been doing over the last few years, then you are sadly mistaken. All you are guaranteed to achieve is what you have already achieved.

Whatever you want to achieve in your life will always start with just an idea. That is it! Just a small spark that could turn into something huge Just like a raging bush fire can all start with a tiny spark, so can you change your life with just one silly little idea. There are people out there who think that only a select few are chosen to reach financial success or to experience a level of prosperity in their lives. This is not true. Those ones who have reached success today were just like you and me at the start. The difference is that their journey turned around with an idea that they acted upon. What are your ideas that could potentially take you towards your untapped potential? 108

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You also need to ask yourself what you are doing to short circuit yourself every time you dismiss your ideas. We all have so much potential to achieve, yet only a few people ever do. Do you think the world’s most successful entrepreneurs see the initial idea or the huge business that it could become? You have to look for the bigger picture and not get caught up in the smaller issues. Once you realise that you have the potential to achieve what you desire, you are well and truly on your way.

Comparing yourself to other people and trying to keep up with the Joneses will only force you down the wrong path We all compare ourselves to other people, but why not try to compare yourself to your own past results instead. Your potential has absolutely nothing to do with what others own or what they have achieved. It all has to do with what you want and where you see yourself heading. The minute you start comparing yourself with other people’s results and direction is the minute you take your focus away from what you want to achieve. You then run the risk of veering off the track because you aren’t looking at where you are going.

You need to understand that your potential is not going to be achieved overnight This is something you really need to understand. We live in a world that demands everything instantly. 109

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We can get instant coffee, instant messaging and even close to instant service with drive-through restaurants. We want things done and achieved yesterday and as a result we tend to be very impatient, even more so when it comes to reaching a level of financial prosperity. Sometimes we tend to look for the short-cuts instead of the proper and correct way. I never thought my first business would be an overnight success. I knew that it was going to take time and a lot of hard work. The same applies when reaching and realising your potential. So be sure that you really understand that you have a journey ahead of you and not an overnight trip.

Stop looking at where you have come from. The past has passed Any one of us can look at our past and see failure and disappointment. It takes someone who is extraordinary, someone who sees that they have the potential to overcome these past issues, to see past hurts or disappointments as valuable lessons that they can learn from. When you look back at what hasn’t worked for you in the past, you should see clearly what it is you need to improve and what you shouldn’t do again. How much extra baggage are you carrying from the past that is holding you back and slowing you down? As with Mike in Chapter 2, you need to address your past issues before you can move forward. You need to give yourself permission to move ahead. Too many 110

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people think they have to carry old baggage from their past. Drop it and move on!

You are only successful when you help other people reach a level of success If you start sharing your potential with others, you have just opened up a totally new way that you can prosper. You need to understand that when you assist someone else to reach their potential, you are also helping yourself to see that your potential is bigger than you are, and should be shared.

It can be about what you need to give up There may be things that you need to give up. These could be friendships, direction or even thought processes. But the one thing I can guarantee is that you will have to give up something. You might think that I am wrong here but let me ask you just one question: If you currently had all that was needed to reach a greater level of prosperity, wouldn’t you already be there? You see it is the things that we hold so close to us, our attitudes, our actions and maybe even our close friends, that could be the actual reasons why we have yet to reach a higher level in our lives.

Prosperity in your confidence Improving your prosperity also requires a lot of confidence. If you aren’t confident that you will be able to 111

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prosper in all areas of your life, odds are you will never actually reach what you desire. Recently I was watching a rugby league match involving my favourite team, the Newcastle Knights. This particular season they were not travelling too well—in fact, they were running at the bottom of the ladder. Their main player had been out due to injury for most of the season and the game I was watching was one of his first back. I sat in awe of his talent and his determination. But what I got most out of watching him play this day was his supreme confidence. He knew he would succeed. He knew it was up to him to lift the team to a totally new level. A confident person is attractive in many ways. Their confidence attracts people towards their way of thinking, their journey and their outcomes. Most people just like being part of a confident person’s life. It also has to be said that most confident people I know would like even more confidence. So building confidence is an ongoing thing. A confident person will achieve more than someone who lacks confidence. We all need to develop more confidence within our lives. You may think that confident people are just born that way. I disagree with this line of thinking: I believe confidence is a trait that can be, and has to be, learnt. When aiming for a higher level of confidence, I believe that there are three main areas that we need to consider and focus on. When you do this, everything else seems to make a whole lot more sense. I call it the R.V.C. principle. ‘What does R.V.C. stand for?’ I hear you ask. 112

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R = Realise V = Visualise C = Capitalise Let’s have a look at each of these principles, which will be great building blocks for greater confidence in any part of your life.

Realise In order to push ahead to a higher level of confidence, you need to realise where you currently are on your journey. You also need to realise and understand what you have done in the past to bring you to this point in your life. In doing this you need to be totally truthful with yourself. Most of us have stuffed up in the past, and some people’s mistakes cost them more than others, but the reality is that we all need to understand what has brought us to this point in our lives. Because once you address and realise why you are at this point, you need to confront issues, attitudes or behavioural patterns before you can move closer to the success you desire. If you don’t confront issues in your life, you will never be able to correct them.

Visualise Once you sort out the issues that have been holding you back, you then need to plan a course and a direction that you need to travel to get you to where you want to go. This is where you need to visualise the 113

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outcome. Now don’t freak out here. I am not suggesting that you sit in a corner and stare at your bellybutton for months on end, because all that comes out of your bellybutton is lint! What I am suggesting is that you have a picture in your mind of what it is you want, what it will feel like when you get to that point in your life, and what you think you have to do to get there. Too many people want a higher level of prosperity, without knowing what it is they are really aiming for or what it will feel like when they get there. You need to learn to imagine. The brain is a powerful tool so don’t underutilise it by switching it off all the time. Albert Einstein said: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’. This is so true. Just because you can visualise something today, does not necessarily mean that you will achieve it. But what it does give you is a sense of direction and a sense of ambition.

Capitalise Once you’ve realised you need to make changes in your life and visualised what it is you’re aiming for, don’t forget to capitalise on it. You see, prosperity will not be handed to you. You will need to put in work and effort to achieve your aims. It is up to you to capitalise on your sense of frustration about your current situation. It is up to you to capitalise on the fact that you now have an idea as to what is needed to get you closer to your success. You have to take ownership and control of your journey. 114

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So as you can see, if you work on improving your confidence, you may also improve your results, which will in turn take you closer to a greater level of prosperity. Let’s look at a few other areas in your life where you need to prosper. Remember, prosperity is not just about making money. Your entire life needs to experience prosperity. If you address only one area of your life, other areas will be lacking and weak, and may bring your journey to a complete stop.

Prosperity in your health When you undertake the journey towards living a prosperous life, you need to ensure your health can keep up with your desired goals. A lot of people who work themselves to the bone to reach financial freedom can’t figure out why it is that after a while they don’t seem to have the stamina they once had. It could all come down to their health. You need to take charge of this part of your life. You cannot blame anyone else for your state of health not being what it should be. My busy speaking and travelling schedule means that my health is an area that I am constantly having to address. I realise the difficulty in making the right choices regarding one’s health every day, particularly when you are very busy. But you still need to prosper in this area, for poor health may be the reason that other areas never work out. 115

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Prosperity in your relationships We all have people who are close to us. Whether immediate family or close friends, they are always around you. Now relationships can take up a lot of your time and can sometimes be a lot of work, but to prosper in life you need to have prosperous relationships. That is, relationships that thrive, grow and succeed. If you don’t invest time and effort into your relationships, it may be that the outcome of your attempts to increase your wealth will be less than ideal. Your financial desires and your relationships are very different however. With financial desires it may be a little while before you see a return. But with your friendships and relationships, if you aim for a prosperous outcome your return is almost immediate. You see if you (and I did say you) invest in those around you, what will come back to you will be immediate responses. It is those responses that can and will determine your next response. It will not take long to establish whether or not your current friendships and relationships are going to be prosperous. I say this because not every friendship or relationship is going to work. In fact, being attracted to a certain type of person may be causing you to be competitive or even worse within your relationships. You will never prosper trying to maintain a friendship in that environment. Who you spend time with may give you a great insight into the reasons you have not yet experienced success in your life. 116

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You need to surround yourself with like-minded people who are not only committed to reaching their own desired successes but also to helping you along the way. If you surround yourself with selfish people, all you will get in return is people looking out only for themselves. If you surround yourself with generous people, you will, by default, be encouraged to live a more generous life. You also have the ability to impact those around you by being the person you are, so make sure you are giving out what you want to receive back.

Physical, emotional and mental prosperity Everything needs to come in line when it comes to prosperity, not just the money side. Unless you address every area of your life, your financial ambitions may be just that . . . ambitions! Along with potential, confidence and health are three other states that need to be in alignment, otherwise our moves towards prosperity will be off centre. It is no good aiming at the physical state of prosperity, say, and not working on the mental state as well. To create lasting prosperity you must align your physical, mental and emotional states with your actions. But while this all sounds like commonsense, you would be surprised by how many people only focus on one or two of these areas, or allow their actions to dictate their mental or emotional state. Are you emotionally, mentally and physically equipped to live a life that is prosperous? This is the 117

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question you need to ask yourself before you reach a point of prosperity in your life. You also have to understand that with prosperity comes responsibility. Let’s look more closely at mental, emotional and physical prosperity.

Mental prosperity Have you written down what you want? You may be surprised to know how powerful your thinking is. It reflects on your actions, which in turn reflect your outcomes. From time to time your thinking will make you feel as though it is all too hard and that you should give up, so what you need to do is have a back-up plan. I use the following method when I mentor people one-on-one. First, write down your goals and ambitions. Then when your brain tells you that you should give up, you can pick up your piece of paper and remind yourself of what it actually is you want. I bet that piece of paper gets things flowing again. A lot of the time we have to trick our brains to stop them telling us we can’t do something. Learn to focus on what you do want instead of why it can’t happen.

Emotional prosperity I have come across a lot of emotional people in my travels. Their ambitions and goals seem to be at the mercy of how they are feeling on a particular day. If 118

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you want to reach a level of prosperity, you need to get your emotions in line. The way that you view yourself, your self-esteem and your outlook on life will all have a role to play on your journey towards a greater level of prosperity. Sure, not everything will work out for you. If you understand that you will be able to handle difficult situations when they arise. Dropping in a heap on your bedroom floor when something doesn’t go to plan will not in any way assist you in achieving your goals. Following every up and down of your emotions can be tiring. That is why I am a big believer in getting away every now and then, even if it is just for a couple of days, to clear my head and start afresh.

Physical prosperity While your thinking and actions are important factors for you to address on your road to greater prosperity, make sure you also consider your physical self. First, your journey towards prosperity will be a hard and sometimes taxing road. If you look after yourself physically, you will increase your chances of not burning out. Second, you need to physically do the work. If there are things or areas that you don’t understand, go and find people that do. Don’t expect anyone to just come along and take you to a greater level of prosperity. It is up to you and you alone. Learn from people along the way and be open to exploring opportunities with like-minded people. 119

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Teen Challenge: A prosperous organisation Now I want to show you an example of an organisation which applies everything you have learnt in this book to its work. For many years now I have been involved with the organisation Teen Challenge NSW Inc. I have invested time and money with this charity because I have seen what it achieves first hand. I want to highlight this organisation because when you see how people who are far worse off than you or me can make radical changes and prosper in every area of their lives, you will understand how much easier it should be for you to succeed. Teen Challenge assists young people who struggle with substance abuse. The program aims to eliminate their self-destructive habits by meeting the needs of the whole person. That means not only dealing with the drug or substance abuse but also rebuilding their selfimage, work ethic and relationships. Teen Challenge understands the principle of the whole person prospering; they don’t mend just one area. They also understand that if you take something away from a person who has relied on that thing for many years, you have to replace it with something else. The ‘something else’ they replace it with is hope, acceptance and an understanding that they can prosper in every part of their lives. This organisation’s documented success rate of getting people off their illegal substances (without the

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use of any other drug) is 78 per cent. That is a success rate that has to be applauded. My reason for sharing this example with you is twofold. First, like Teen Challenge, you need to apply in your life everything you have just read. We all know there are issues around us that we must get rid of, whether it’s an attitude that isn’t healthy, the fear of failure or just a lack of understanding of what you can actually achieve when aiming for a prosperous life. You have to remove the issue that is blocking your path and replace it with something that is a positive reinforcement for what you now want to achieve. If you don’t replace it with something that is positive, that will take you closer to a level of prosperity, all you have done is make room for some other negative thing to take its place. The second reason I mention Teen Challenge is that if you haven’t yet found a charity that actually makes a difference, I encourage you to have a look at what Teen Challenge does. I make no apologies for putting in this plug, for Teen Challenge’s results speak volumes. For more information, go to www.tcnsw.org and have a look for yourself.

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7

YOURCHARACTER AFFECTSYOUR PROSPERITYLEVEL We have covered a lot of different areas so far— generosity, purpose, overcoming past financial issues and ways to reach your potential. But that can all come crashing down in one big heap if you don’t address your character. Character is who you are when no one is around. It is the thing that makes you you! If you are constantly falling short of your desired outcomes, maybe, just maybe, it could have something to do with your character. We are all born with different character traits, both good and bad, but the good news is that we don’t have to carry bad character traits all through our lives. It is up to you to address the areas in your life that are holding you back. If those areas revolve around your character, this chapter is here to assist you in fixing this part of your life. Your financial prosperity will be limited to, and 122

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capped by, your character. If your character is questionable, you have limited yourself in what you will be able to achieve in the long term. Unless you address any character problems, you will continually come unstuck. Sure, any fool can make a quick buck, but it takes someone with integrity and high character to keep the ball rolling so that it expands and doesn’t weaken. Don’t assume you can work on character issues later on, ‘when you have time’, for the whole process of reaching financial prosperity, greater wealth or any other level of success within your life depends on, and is built upon, your character. There are a lot of dodgy operators out there. Not just in the business world, but also in their personal lives. You know the type, people who try to manipulate their way into something, or scam their way to the next level of their financial life. While most never get past the first step, the odd one or two seems to experience a level of success. The good news for us honest people is that at some point their whole life will crash down to the level of their character. I don’t like hearing stories of people who have lost everything due to being ripped off, and I don’t associate with scammers who operate at that level. I will not let my character (my reputation) be infected by these people. You need to ensure that you don’t run the risk of being infected by association either. Remember: who you hang around with can be who you become. Another area you need to understand is that of your mindset. Please don’t think I am going to get 123

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all ‘rah rah’ on you. What I want to do is highlight another area that is pivotal to long-lasting success in your financial journey. To define a ‘mindset’ I have gone to the Encarta Dictionary (not many dictionaries have mindset as an actual word). Encarta describes mindset as: ‘beliefs that affect somebody’s attitude: a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determines somebody’s behaviour and outlook’. Your mindset will determine how far you will actually go and what it is you will be able to achieve. If you have a small mindset you will only be able to achieve small things. If your mindset is big then big things can be achieved. You have to remember that having a big mindset does not automatically mean you will achieve a great deal of success in your life. You also need to act upon that mindset. Action is the key here, but we will cover that in the final chapter. If you have big dreams, but your mindset is small, the effect will be very much the same as trying to fit a watermelon into the top of a milk bottle. It is impossible. Small hole, big melon. Now put that in context. Big dreams, small mindset. Can you see where you may run into problems?

The champion’s mindset Champions have a certain type of mindset. Yes, it is one of winning, but it is also one that refuses to let 124

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failure interrupt progress. Successful people also share this type of mindset. Not everything I have done has worked for me. But I just move on to the next thing. I don’t dwell too much on the things that didn’t work. They too are just part of my journey. Do you think champions wake up one day and think ‘I am going to be a champion today’? No, they understand that it takes time, sweat and a lot of tears to reach the pinnacle. This is something you need to keep in mind as you aim for prosperity. The media constantly bombard us with stories about successful people. The problem is that the media tend to focus only on outward success, so there are a lot of frustrations and disappointments that the public never get to hear about. This is a pity as I believe we would often learn more from the disappointments and frustrations than from how much money and success a person has achieved. We all have a champion within us. What we need to do is find it, train it and let it out. There are no special people out there. Just because one person has succeeded does not mean that they are better than the person who is yet to succeed. There is, however, one thing that a successful person has that a person who isn’t successful doesn’t have. Do you know what it is? Is it determination? No, there are a lot of people who are determined to reach a higher level of success. Is it persistence? No, people persist every day but still miss out on reaching success. Or is it desire? No, as we all desire to increase our lot in life. 125

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Are you ready for the answer? Well the answer is . . . luck! Yep, you read it right. It all comes down to luck. It is about being in the right place at the right time and capitalising on that opportunity at that moment. Today could be the day that you capitalise on the opportunity that takes you to the next level of your life. But that is entirely up to you. Your character plays a big part in this. Let me tell you a story that demonstrates just how character and mindset play a part in the way you see things, especially when you are confronted with good and bad things. A Chinese farmer was ploughing the village fields. As the village only had one horse, it was his job to ensure that the horse was looked after and fit, because if anything happened to it, the village would be left without its hardest worker and the villagers would have to put in even more effort than they already were to get by. On this day, as the farmer was tending the field, the horse broke free of its constraints and disappeared into the mountains. The farmer, along with some of the other villagers, tried to find it but they had no luck. The farmer returned to the village and told all of the villagers what happened. When the farmer finished his story someone said, ‘That’s bad luck!’ The farmer thought for a while and replied, ‘Bad luck, good luck, who knows?’ The villagers started to disperse and went on with their day as there was really nothing that could be done about it. 126

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The following day while the entire village was out tending the fields they noticed the village horse returning from afar. But following the horse were two smaller horses. The villagers became excited as now they had three horses that would be of great value to them. Someone yelled to the farmer, ‘Now that’s good luck!’ The farmer once again took time to think and calmly said, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’ The villagers brought the horses into the farm, yoked them together and went back to work. The following week while the farmer was tending the field with his son, one of the new horses, frightened by something in the grass, reared up in a panic and kicked its back legs out behind it. The son, who was standing very close to the horse, took the full impact of the horse’s kick in the lower part of his body. So much so that it broke his leg. The villagers came running to see what the fuss was all about and upon seeing the son of the farmer in a heap on the ground with a broken leg, one of them said, ‘Now that’s bad luck.’ Once again the farmer thought deeply and replied, ‘Bad luck, good luck, who knows?’ About three weeks later, the army arrived to conscript all of the younger men of the village. When they came to the house of the farmer, they realised the son could not go with them due to his broken leg, so he was spared. When the army had left the farmer’s neighbour said to him, ‘That was good luck!’ The farmer once again replied, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’ 127

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So what, you might ask, am I trying to tell you? Simple really; when something doesn’t go the way that you had planned, or something bad happens to you, you never know what good can come out of it. Life will hand us all some curly situations. If we just give up, throw in the towel and sulk for the rest of our lives, then nothing will ever change. We all need to get up and get back on track. Good things will happen to us as well as bad things. The true measure of someone is how they handle not only the bad times, but also the good. That is when your true character will show. If you are in a place in your life right now that is far from pleasant, the way that you look at your situation will be a direct indication of how long it will take you to get out of it. How has your character been affected by some of the hard times you have been through? Many people have had luck come their way but haven’t capitalised on it simply because their mindset and character are not aligned. If your character and mindset are prepared, then things may just fall into place without a great deal of planning. Success can actually happen like that sometimes. But if your character is less than honourable or true, that success or luck will go as quickly as it arrived.

The successful person’s mindset You need to address your mindset every single day. That is, you need to learn to operate from a higher level that is better than ever before. So how do you 128

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actually improve your mindset? What is it that successful people who live a life of prosperity do that ordinary people don’t? Successful people don’t just wake up like that one day. Their success is the result of a lot of effort and hard work over long periods of time. It is also their attitudes towards who they are and how they do what they do that makes them stand out from the rest. Successful people tend to have a mindset that enables them to operate on a top level. What is it that financially successful people have or do that you don’t yet have or do? To answer this, let’s look at some of the mindsets of successful people that I know personally.

They are constantly expanding their comfort zone I am a huge believer in getting better at not only what I do now but what I may do in the future. Now that may sound a bit confusing but let me explain. Too many people have an idea as to where they want to go in their lives and what they want to achieve but they fail to plan anything past that point. Their goals are huge, so big in fact that they think it may take them so long to get there that they don’t plan for anything beyond those goals. But when and if they reach those goals in record time, they plateau. What we all need to do is raise our vision up from our current goals to the ‘what if’ goals. What if you achieve all that you desire? What if your success becomes more than 129

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you had planned? When you see that your comfort zone is only temporary, your chances of constantly improving and growing into bigger and better things is enhanced greatly.

They push past their obvious limits Too often people restrict their success because all they see are reasons why things will never work out for them. We all have limits. What we need is a mindset that remains strong no matter what stands in our way, whether it is current financial situations, location, lack of education or any other issue you can think of. If your mindset is strong, you will reach your desired level of success and prosperity, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. Sure, the successful people that I know have had some minor and major obstacles to overcome. But what they haven’t done is allow those obstacles to dictate their future. You may have no formal education, you may have no finances to start anything with or you may have tried a million jobs, but until you see that obstacles are just signs of progress and not stop signs, you will never realise your fullest potential.

They are never happy to settle on their past successes Just because you may have reached a level of success in the past, does not automatically mean that every130

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thing you try from now on will be successful. I am not sure about you, but I have come across many people who are living off a success from years ago. While it is great that they have experienced some success in their lives, they need to build on that established platform to move upward and onward. Just as we have discovered in a previous chapter with regard to your past mistakes, you past successes are in the exact same place—the past! We all need to learn from our past successes to ensure our future achievements are bigger, stronger, better and smarter.

They never stop looking for that answer to that problem Have you ever had a problem so big that you end up just giving up on solving it or finding the answer to it? Truly successful people thrive in those situations. They relish when things go wrong as it gives them something to fix. Success is not about who solves a problem first, it’s more about who doesn’t throw in the towel when things get tough. Your mindset needs to be similar to that of a dog with a bone. If you are facing a problem today, separate yourself from it for a while and approach it with fresh eyes. If that doesn’t work, ask someone who you respect and you may just be surprised by their outsider’s perspective. Successful people never stop until that problem is solved. Your mindset will determine your prosperity, not only in monetary terms, but also in your life as well. 131

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I’m sure you have many examples to add to those I’ve listed above. The point is that thinking that success, wealth or, as I like to put it, prosperity, is just going to happen out of the blue and that you will just handle it, is totally incorrect.

The character traits of prosperity So now we have seen how your mindset will affect your final outcome, but what character traits do successful people have? What is it that takes them to the top of their game? What is it that financially successful people have or do that you don’t yet do? I now want to give you a list of character traits that you need to have to get to a level of prosperity in your life. You may not see some of these as typical character traits, but I will show you why they are essential to your success and prosperity. They are traits that we all need to aim for if we are going to reach a higher level of prosperity in our lives. Reaching a level of prosperity in your life comes down to having leadership qualities. People think that leadership is limited to business situations. But in reality the best person you can lead through life and towards success is you. Unless we are prepared to lead in our own lives, then we are opening ourselves up to be lead. I am not sure about you, but I don’t want to be at the mercy of others when it comes to my own life. I want to be in control and in charge of my life and its direction. 132

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Your character is what makes you who you are, so the more you can add to your character, the better chance you have in the tough times. That is why we all need to have these character traits and many more. I have only chosen a few to highlight but I am sure that you will be able to add a whole lot more yourself.

Ethics There is a right way and a wrong way to go about reaching greater levels of success and prosperity. Skimping on your ethics will end in trouble. Just because there may be a quicker way, does not mean that it is the right and honourable way. If you skimp on your ethical standpoint in life, everything else around you will suffer as your ethics are the backbone of who you are as a human being.

Commitment Commitment to one’s purpose and desires is essential in order to reach a greater level of success. When you are committed, you will find a way around any issue or problem, no matter what happens. Too many people give up way too soon. They think that success is supposed to just come to them. If only they were more committed to fulfilling and reaching their goals, instead of giving up every time things got tough, they would soon see positive results instead of negative ones. It is the people who tough things out that will live the life that they desire. 133

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Resilience To be resilient is to bounce back. Resilience is a character trait that I believe we all need to have. There is one thing that you need to understand: not everything you try will work out the way you planned. Not only that, not everyone you come in contact with will have your best interests at heart either. There are people out there who will rip you off and use you to get ahead. How you bounce back after these situations will show you whether you are resilient or not. If you drop in a big heap on the ground and pack it all in, then I am positive you will never reach a higher level of success or prosperity. Strive for resilience.

Humility Be humble in your success. Just because life may be going well for you is no reason to big note yourself and rub other people’s faces in your joy. There is nothing worse than that and all you will do is alienate yourself from others. Financial prosperity is a tool to assist others around you. When doing so, ensure that you are humble about it. Don’t make a big deal about it as that goes against what being generous and prosperous is all about. A lot of people have good intentions along with their dreams, but only a few are willing to commit to what is necessary to achieve them. How dedicated and committed are you to achieving all that you desire? Your true character will shine through when things 134

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don’t work out as you originally thought they would. Are you known as a person who is committed and devoted to your goals? If you are, you will become an extraordinary leader of your own success and your own life, which in turn will take you towards the life of prosperity that you desire (Widener, 2002). So, as you can see, reaching a greater level of prosperity is not just about deciding one day that you are going to give it a try. There are a lot of different aspects to it, and your character and the way that you operate are among the most important elements of the process. The character traits that I mentioned above are those which I have put into action in my life. I am sure you will be able to think of others. If you do, by all means apply them to your life. Some of you may need to address some of the areas mentioned above. To address these areas will require discipline. Being disciplined is not as easy as it may seem. Think about it. If you have discipline, then you will already have applied some of those character traits to your life. As author Garry Zancanaro (2005) says: It takes discipline to do the things you know you should do when you don’t feel like doing them. It takes discipline to follow your vision and dreams despite indifference or negative opinions from friends and family. It takes discipline to work on your dreams when you could be relaxing with 135

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friends or watching TV. It takes discipline to search for and read the books, listen to motivational CDs, learn the skills you need, or get the training that can greatly enhance your progress towards your goals. If you want to live a life that is prosperous, you will need to be disciplined. There will be times when your character and maybe your ethics are challenged by others. I know mine have. But if you know that your actions are correct, stand firm in that. Your character needs to be like set concrete: hard and immovable. Never allow others to affect what you stand for or who you are. So there you have it. Character is more than just a trendy word that gets thrown around all the time. Your character forms that foundation we talked about previously. Your character is what makes you you.

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8

ACTIONANDA ATTITUDE So here it is, the last chapter. For a long time I pondered over what I should say here. I have covered so many areas already that I wanted to end with something that not only would be of practical assistance but that also summed up what you have read and hopefully learnt. I also wanted to be direct and firm, with the express hope that if you are still wondering whether this whole prosperity thing is for you I might be able to jolt you into action. In the end I decided to write on action and attitude. You may be thinking to yourself, ‘How is that going to help me reach a life of financial prosperity?’ Well, my answer to that is very simple. Unless we all understand our attitudes towards what we do, whether it is our work, our play or our pursuit of financial freedom, there is absolutely no way we can put into action what we need to do. Chapter 1 was about the difference between wealth creation and financial prosperity. Let me just touch on that again. 137

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Remember, wealth creation is an action. You need to be doing things for it to come to fruition. You can’t just hope and pray that one day you will experience a greater level of wealth without having to do any work to get there. Work is an action, and it will require a lot of work and effort to get to somewhere you aren’t at yet. But prosperity is an attitude. The way you approach prosperity has to do with your attitude. If you want to be selfish, you will not experience anything like a prosperous life. Your attitude towards what you have read so far in this book may be a great indicator of where your head is at. In the same way, action and attitude are separate but need to be linked for you to get anywhere close to where you want to get from a financial perspective. Let’s look first at the area of action.

Action It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said, ‘We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions’. If you want to reach a level of financial prosperity in your life, you are going to have to perform prosperous actions. Just wanting to reach a better financial position means absolutely nothing without the appropriate actions to back up that desire. You will have to act on your desires every day if you want to reach the heights you have set for yourself. 138

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You will also have to inspire and encourage others along the way, for part of your journey will ultimately involve more people than just yourself. Don’t get sucked into believing that you need to have passed with honours at school in order to achieve a successful and prosperous life. Just because someone has more degrees than a thermometer after their name does not mean they have the ability to reach financial prosperity ahead of someone who failed school completely. I keep saying this—prosperity is not there for the select few. It is there for those who take action in their lives to go after what they want. Learn from your mistakes. Be prepared to ‘have a crack’. Your level of formal education is not an indication of your future worth. This is one point you really need to understand if you are still struggling to start on your journey because you think that you aren’t smart enough or worthy enough. You will never reach any goal until you make the first step. While you may continually talk about what you want to achieve, until you actually put actions behind those words all you are doing is wasting your breath and valuable time. As we discussed in Chapter 4, it is okay to make mistakes. You are guaranteed to make a mistake or ten along your path to prosperity. It is only common sense that you will not be great at the start, doing something and going somewhere you have never been before. So don’t sweat it. Don’t think that you have to wait until the ‘time is right’. Start and start now. Take action! 139

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Another point you need to understand is that a lot of people let ‘knowledge’ stop them from taking action. Often what ultimately holds us back from even trying is our perceived lack of knowledge. And please note the word ‘perceived’ in that sentence. We say things like, ‘I can’t set up a business because I didn’t finish high school’ or ‘I am not smart enough to understand what I should address in my financial life’. Constantly pulling yourself down to an old perception of yourself will keep you there, which in turn will make that perception your reality. We commonly mistake the perceptions we have of ourselves as fact. I struggled with having to learn things when I started my business. Every now and then I allowed my mind to remind me that I didn’t do well at school. But I was determined that I was not going to allow my past to infect my potential and my future. Sure I wish I had studied at school. I wished I was more knowledgeable about all the things I had no idea about, but the reality was I could not change anything that had already happened. All I had to offer myself was the present result and my experiences up until that point. It comes down to the way you look at things. Some people see mistakes as fate telling them they are not ready for success. I see mistakes as a guide to let me know that I am further down a path than I have ever been before. I then have to address those mistakes and ensure I never make them again. Then I am even further along that untrodden path. We only know what we know, so we need at some time to find out what we don’t know yet and how that 140

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knowledge may assist us in reaching our financial desires. So now we have looked at action, let’s have a look at its partner, attitude.

Attitude Your attitude will determine whether or not you reach the level of success and prosperity you are aiming for. A lot of people underestimate the importance of attitude. It has to be said that our attitude dictates our actions and the way we go about executing those actions. We all would like things to be better, whether it is a greater level of wealth, a better family or home life or even a better job. We may think it comes down to being lucky, or in the right place at the right time, or maybe even having the right family background. To make things better in those areas of your life, you need to start by addressing your attitude. If your attitude towards life is to blame everyone else for your failures, then you will never reach success. Your attitude will stop you from seeing the right answers and directions because you are preprogrammed to focus only on the negatives and the excuses for your failures. If only you could use all of that energy and effort on becoming more positive in your outlook. You see your attitude shapes your outcomes. It does not get any simpler than that. Your attitudes, 141

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that is the thoughts in your head, which in turn form your mindset, dictate your actions. If you think I’m stretching things here, then ask yourself why it is that two people can fail school and one ends up on welfare, constantly blaming the system, or the lack of care given to them at school, or their parents for not giving them a better start in life, while the other person just sees every failure as a new beginning and perseveres until they reach a level of success they are happy with? Both people had the same limited opportunities when growing up, but one uses their situation to inspire themselves to greater heights, the other uses it as a crutch. It all comes down to attitude. As mentioned in a previous chapter, your mindset makes you who you are and determines how you handle the situations life throws at you. If your attitudes are negative, bitter and blaming, then all your results will reflect that. It is no wonder you are getting frustrated with the lack of any tangible outcomes. If you want your life, your goals or your outcomes to be more positive, then instead of doing courses and spending a gazillion dollars, why not start by addressing your attitude. Your attitudes are easy to assess. All you need to do is look at your current situation. Is it positive or is it bleak? The other way to do a quick check is by watching how people act or react around you. People reflect other people’s attitudes. The people who you come in contact with will mirror you. If people are rude and nasty around you then that may give you a glimpse of what you are really like. 142

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You will reap what you sow. In other words, if you are getting bad attitudes from the people around you, instead of blaming them and thinking that it is all their problem, just check yourself first before making comment. What you put out will eventually come back to you. So make sure you are putting out a good attitude. Your attitudes are like a steering wheel in a car. As the driver you are in charge of that wheel. It is the same with your attitude. You can control and direct it and it’s up to you to steer it in the right direction. Remember though: you will have to constantly keep hold of that wheel as you should never think that you can turn on the autopilot and everything will just go smoothly. Unless you constantly address your attitudes towards money, prosperity and all of the other factors that you have read about in this book, you will face the possibility of ending up in a worse position than where you are right now. So why do you do what you do? What is your motivation behind what and how you are doing what you do? A lot of people never really ask these questions. They go about doing something because they ‘feel’ it is the right thing to do at the time—but it could be the total opposite of what they should be doing, both by reason and by method. We are all creatures of habit. I know I constantly have to address the way I go about things to ensure I am not just operating on autopilot. Attitude has to do with the difference between willpower and ‘want power’. You see many people have the want power; they know what they want but they 143

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lack the willpower to get it completed and turn it into a reality. I know that you may be thinking you already know what you want, and yes many people do. Most people want what they don’t or can’t have. But when your willpower is in tune with your wants, the process is made a bit easier. Not everything in life will be easy. There will be times when determination, resilience and downright guts will be needed. I’m sure many of you want to be financially secure. But whether or not you have the will to make it happen is the factor that will separate those who reach their desire and those who give up and throw in the towel. You first have to want what you want. You must want to change your habits, if you want to reach a greater level of financial success. Want to make an impact on the world you live in? If so, how much do you want to make that impact? You need to address areas in your life that are stopping you achieving what you want. But how badly do you want it? What are you prepared to do or to change to get what it is that you desire? If you want to reach a better financial level in your life, then at some point you will have to overcome your past issues. This is what I had to do when I got into my first business, Attitude Gear®. It’s common knowledge that I started the business with only $1.25 in the bank: I would like to give you an insight into my journey from there. While I wasn’t overly thrilled about only having $1.25 in the bank, I have to say I wasn’t tearing my 144

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hair out in frustration either. I saw starting a business, my business, as a way to change the position I was in at that time, and to move on to a better financial position. It seemed like an easy thing to do. Oh boy was I in for a shock. I never really struggled with the work aspect of improving my financial position. By that I mean I knew that I had to work hard and I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was what to do once the money started coming in the door. Think about it. Here you have a guy, me, who only months before had less than $2 in the bank and all of a sudden there are thousands of dollars at his fingertips. If you don’t see this as a problem to overcome, then you are sadly mistaken. I had no real solid financial foundation. So as soon as all this money started coming in, the first thing that went through my head was that I could just carry on the way I had up until that point in my life. My past came straight back into my present at that time. By that I mean that I had only $1.25 in the bank at the age of 25 for a couple of reasons: I couldn’t handle money and I never understood the true value of money. I just thought that it came in and it went out. So when a lot of money started coming in, I had to make a decision and fast. I had to decide whether I was going to operate on my old level which, from past results, would have taken me back to the $1.25 mark, or address those past issues, build a bigger foundation as a result of addressing those issues, and move in a forward direction. My 145

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motivation needed to be greater than my situation at that time. So while it’s great that you want to improve your financial position, have you given a thought to what you need to address before you get too far down the path to that outcome? A lot of people never address this issue and it can be the single reason why they remain on their financial roundabout, never finding the exit that will take them closer to their financial desires. You have seen throughout this book that prosperity is more than just about what you, and only you, want. The good news is that living a prosperous life will mean that not only will you potentially achieve what you want, you also have the potential to assist others along the way. Now that being the case, don’t you think you need to start addressing some of the areas in your life that you know are holding you back from achieving all that you can? Sure, it may hurt for a little while. It did when I had to stop myself from just spending like I used to. But if I hadn’t made the necessary changes, I would probably still be sitting around with $1.25 in the bank. Yes, it may take a little time to address some of those issues that are causing you to falter. But the time spent now will surely outweigh the time spent having to start all over again if your past behaviours continue to affect your present successes. So how do you keep the longer-term goals in mind, when the short-term problems are staring you in the face? Look up and beyond those problems. Try to find 146

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a solution by looking at your problems from a new perspective.

Motivation Want is a mighty powerful motivator, but surprisingly we aren’t all motivated by what we want. Some of us are motivated by avoiding what we don’t want. (Martyn 2004) So what are you motivated by? Are you motivated by success and the hope of achieving something great one day? Or are you motivated by the fear that you might fail? The motivating force behind why you do what you do is extremely important. A lot of people don’t actually see that they are motivated away from what they desire. They are more focused and motivated on what it is they don’t want. For example, they don’t want to fail; they don’t want to lose money by taking a risk to potentially make more money. So much so that their entire life becomes about avoiding what they don’t want to happen instead of achieving what they do want to happen. Start changing your focus and the way you think. Be motivated towards those things that you desire and not towards why you think you won’t achieve them. You see it is all about having clarity. As we’ve discussed already, it is the person who has clarity in their focus who will reach what they are focusing on and achieve what they desire. Negative people will only ever achieve negativity and negative results until 147

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they see that their negativity is holding then back from all that they desire. So there you have it. You may have expected when you picked up this book to learn new and funky ways to reach greater levels of financial prosperity in your life. I think you have to decide right now that you actually have learnt those keys. Anyone can learn ways to invest in the stockmarket, invest in property and even how to make more money out of their business. But unless you understand the true principles behind who you are and what you do with that money, chances are it could be yours for only a short period. As I was writing this book, I discussed its contents with a lot of people. I sat down with a few people who are not where they want to be from a financial perspective. I also sat down with people who are leaders in their own lives when it comes to being prosperous and generous. I wanted to ensure that I would be giving you everything you needed to get to a better financial position. I believe the book has achieved this. The last and greatest key is whether you want to apply these principles. This has been a very hard book to write, because there were so many tangents I could have gone off on. And I did not want to come across as harsh or preachy. My desire is for every one of you who reads this book to grow as a person, grow in your finances and then grow in your generosity. 148

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My only request is that once you learn these keys and principles, operate with them and see that they have helped you reach a greater level of prosperity. I ask that you then take what you have learned and help someone else reach a greater level—and so on and so on. I wish you all the best in your journey towards financial freedom, the pursuit of wealth or, as I prefer, the pursuit of prosperity. Never stop looking for ways to bless other people with your finances, your information or your time.

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THEPROSPERITYF FOR PURPOSEPROJECT: AP RAISINGFUTURE LEADERS You can make a difference We all want success and prosperity in our lives, but we also need to understand that we can make a difference in other people’s lives as well. My wife and I personally support the work of the Watoto Child Care Ministries in the East African nation of Uganda. That is why I have set up the Prosperity for a Purpose Project. It is my aim to make a bigger contribution by involving more people. Today Watoto is benefiting the lives of more than 1400 orphans by providing physical, emotional and educational care to Uganda’s most vulnerable children: the next generation.

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So how can you help? Uganda has endured the scourge of civil war as well as the deadly AIDS epidemic. Approximately 1.7 million children in Uganda alone have been orphaned by these calamities. Currently there are 940 000* Ugandan children living as orphans as a result of their parents dying of AIDS (*UNAIDS statistics). With your help, Watoto can provide some stability and a future for these children. So how exactly will your money help and how much do you need to give? I am only asking you to commit to a minimum of A$120 a year. That’s right, just 33c a day. Now if you want to give more, then I encourage you to do so, but I want to make this easy for everyone. With your contribution, together we will build homes and orphanages for these children. It is my goal that Prosperity for a Purpose will build at least one home per month for eight orphans and a widowed mother. These homes are constructed to provide shelter for the most desperate children. Children between the ages of 2 and 12 are accepted into the program and remain part of their new family for life. The houses consist of three bedrooms, a kitchen, living area, a bathroom with running water and power. These aren’t shacks. I want us to build houses that are beyond their expectations. I personally challenge you to commit to the minimum amount of A$120 per year. Of course you can 152

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The prosperity for a purpose project: Raising future leaders

give more or get together with friends or colleagues to build a complete Watoto home or even commit a monthly amount to support this worthwhile and urgent cause. To become involved in this cause please go to www.prosperityforapurpose.com or write to me at: Prosperity for a Purpose PO Box 6741 Baulkham Hills NSW 2153

Thank you Justin Herald

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READINGLIST

Brunkhorst, S. 2004, ‘Advance your enthusiasm and determination for success’, In-motivational, <www.in-motivational. com/article/advance-your-enthusiasm-and-determination93927.html>. Cartmill, P. 2005, ‘Achieving your great aspirations’, Zinester, <www.archives.zinester.com/44459/74251.html>. Cholette, C. 2006, ‘The power of desire’, Dubelu, <www. dubelu.com/articles/Fashion-and-Beauty/Attraction/ThePower-Of-Desire-Part-1-By-Carl-Cholette.php>. Dunbar, C. 2004, ‘Goal setting tools for persistence and determination’, eaziGOAL <www.eazigoal.com/goal-setting-toolsfor-persistence-and-determination.html>. Martyn, K. 2004, ‘Want power before willpower’, Ezine Articles, <ezinearticles.com/?Want-Power-Before-Will-Power &id=899>. Othneil, A. 2000, ‘Some steps for overcoming financial adversity?’, Rediff, <www.members.rediff.com/aocc/38-finadv.htm>. 155

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Owen, N. 2001, The magic of metaphor: 77 stories for teachers, trainers and thinkers, Crown House Publishing, United Kingdom. Smith, J. 2005, ‘Taking action now: 9 key strategies’, Motivation Tips <www.motivationtips.co.uk/taking-action-now-9a799.html>. Tan, S. 2005, ‘Unlocking human potential’, Ezine Articles, <www.ezinearticles.com/?expert=Shei_Tan>. Widener, C. 2002, ‘Character traits of extraordinary leaders’, Made for Success, <www.madeforsuccess.com/Article Detail.asp?topic_id=2&art_id=109>. Widener, C. 2002, ‘True success is generous’, Made for Success, <www.madeforsuccess.com/ArticleDetail.asp? art_id=101>. Yeh, S. 2003, ‘Mental, emotional and physical prosperity’, Amazines, <www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm?articleid =57366&title=Mental 0⁄02C 0⁄0CEmotional 0⁄02Cand 0⁄02C Physical0⁄02CProsperity>. Zancanaro, G. 2005, ‘Discipline is essential for self improvement’, <www.ezinearticles.com/?id=9736>.

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ALSOBYJJUSTIN HERALD Books Available from www.justinherald.com Would You Like Attitude With That? What Are You Waiting For? It’s All a Matter of Attitude How to Grow Your Business Without Spending a Single Cent CDs Available from www.justinherald.com ‘Driven to Dream’ ‘Expanding Your Comfort Zone’ ‘Would You Like Attitude With That?’ ‘The Power of Perseverance’ ‘Passion. What is It?’ ‘One on One’ ‘Learning Lessons From a Fish’ ‘For the Young Network Marketing Entrepreneur’ ‘How to Grow Your Business Without Spending a Single Cent’ 158

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Also by Justin Herald

‘The 5 Senses of an Entrepreneur’ ‘The Ultimate Small Business Success Series’ DVDs Available from www.justin.herald.com ‘Impossible is Possible’ ‘The Psychology of Success’

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Personal motivation service How would you like to receive personal motivation directly from Justin Herald on your mobile phone each week? Just go to www.mobilemotivation.com to register and every Monday you will receive motivation that will help you get through your week. It’s just like having Justin sitting with you as you start your week.