Seven Rules for Living Your Best Life
- Mindset: Believe in yourself; Have faith in your abilities.
- Attitude of Gratitude. Always be grateful.
- Health is Wealth. Exercise (aerobics, strength and stretching), healthy eating since food is medicine, adequate sleep, hormesis, healthy aging, and relationships.
- Life is about three important loving Relationships: Your relationship with Yourself, God and Others.
- Live with Purpose and Meaning and be willing to take Risks. (You have the gift to breathe and live every day; You only die once; and you will regret the chances and opportunities not taken.)
- Attributes for Wealth Building and Financial Freedom: Mindset, Focus (what you focus on grows}, Discipline (habits, planning and executing) and Patience (compounding and value)
- Grow, Learn and Get Better and Better Every Day.
Living Your Best Life (Financially, Health, and Emotional/Social Well-Being) in Retirement
Gratitude is about being thankful for the things you have in your life right now. According to the Harvard Medical School, gratitude is: “a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives … As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals–whether to other people, nature, or a higher power”
Harvard Medical School
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Our thoughts create our reality – where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go.”
Peter McWilliams
“What we focus on expands.”
Unknown
“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”
Dr. Edward Everett Hale
How people behave — what they actually do — is far more important than the mere words that come out of their mouths.
“Anyone who stops learning is old — whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable — regardless of physical capacity.”
Henry Ford
What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.
C. S. Lewis
“The longer you wait to do something, the scarier it gets. I think the older you get, trying something new feels daunting because you know what the backlash could be.”
Tracee Ellis Ross
Accept the learning process.
Study upon study shows the importance of grit in predicting success. You probably won’t pull off a world-class performance the first, even the 10th time you try something. “Don’t be afraid of failure or slow progress,” Strauss Zelnick says. “There are days when you might get frustrated with yourself but then you realize, you know what? You showed up, you did the best you could, you’ll do better the next time—or you won’t. But you’re still going to keep going.”
The greatest gift of life is to always be learning, growing and getting better.
“No matter what happens today, it will help me grow.” Also repeat: “I choose to grow.”
- A focus on growth makes you more willing to accept both challenges and mistakes with the understanding that you may need to try several times to reach success.
- The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds can continue growing as we continue to live. Mortimer Adler
- A goal without an action plan is only a dream. The powerful belief that supports growing and learning, “I am good enough and I am eager to apply my learning in order to go forward to where I deserve and want to be.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful [and happy].”
Albert Schweitzer, theologian
Living a simple life can be beneficial in a lot of different ways. It should teach the most important lesson of life: living within our means.
Dr. Ali Raza Butt, Living Life While Working and Enjoying All the Blessings of life
“Financial success once meant financial freedom; now financial success means being able to change the world.”
Positive thinking has been scientifically proven to improve your work life, physical and mental health, and relationships. To better manifest positive things happening in your life, it is important to stay mentally and emotionally positive in the present and practice gratitude.
Definitions of success in life.
The attributes that best fit people’s definition of success favor relationships, health and lifestyle over material, career and wealth, according to Northwest Mutual Planning and Progress Study 2019. The top six attributes cited in 2019 include:
- “Spending quality time with family”
- “Being Healthy”
- “Having a good relationship with your spouse or partner”
- “Being financially prepared for the future”
- “Having a good work/life balance”
- “Being a good parent”
Each of these far out-shadows things like “Earning a high income” (No.12), “Owning the home of your dreams” (No.11), and “Having nice belongings” (No.19).
Keys to a Satisfying Life
“Life Is A Journey That Must Be Traveled No Matter How Bad The Roads And Accommodations.” – Oliver Goldsmith
In the journey of life there are some rough roads that seem endless, but the one undeniable key to a satisfying life is to find enjoyment along the way. As Babs (Barbara) Hoffman, infielder for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, once quipped, “stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey”
“If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.” Billy Graham
“There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.” Billy Graham
“When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.”
Billy Graham
Health, not gold and silver, is wealth
Joe De Sena, Spartan Fit
We wonder what life would be like if we could just focus on the joy created by life’s journey more than complaining about the beeping ‘potholes’.
“Two Roads Diverged in a Wood and I – I Took The One Less Traveled by, and That Has Made All The Difference” – Robert Frost
Learning is a life’s work. “We all start out stupid and we all have a hard time staying sensible, and you have to keep working at it.” Investors should turn themselves into learning machines by reading constantly. Charlie Munger
One of the most widely circulated and insightful definitions of happiness comes from Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790):
“There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means — either will do — the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”
Darren Hardy, New York Times best-selling author of The Compound Effect and former editor of Success Magazine, wants failure for you — more of it, faster and bigger.
“Keep this in mind…if you are not scared, not in pain and not failing you are not growing”.
He wants you to be willing to run right at your fears and embrace failure. Since on the other side of your fears resides your power. By facing your fears, then your stretch will be your new normal. If you allow yourself to fall in love with failure, you too will find the experience exhilarating, satisfying and thrilling.
Everyday, make positive declarations:
- I am blessed
- I am prosperous
- I am healthy
- I am talented
- I am wise
- I am strong
- I am courageous
Practice gratitude. Choosing to grow means choosing to be grateful for every moment. Gratitude helps you focus on what is possible, positive and good, instead of focusing on what’s in your way and what you don’t have.
Keep a good attitude. Keep doing your best. You are and become what you think. We receive what we believe. We will never rise above the image we have of ourselves.
Don’t compare yourself; celebrate yourself. Stay focus. Stay determine. Work on the things you’re already good at.
Words are like seeds, we will produce the fruits of our words. We must overcome the low and often negative self-image we have of ourselves.
“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.” – Norman Vincent Peale
Thoughts become a reality! Thoughts are a powerful form of energy that directs the body and actions. What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
I am a child of the most high God.
“Be willing to be uncomfortable. Focus on solving problems. Learn to handle what you already have before you can be in a position to receive more. Believe that you create everything that is in your life…it’s too easy to blame, to justify and to complain. When you complain, you bring more of what you complain about into your life…since, What you focus on expands. “
T. Harv Evers
“Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of the uncertainty.”
Dr. Brené Brown, Ph.D
“Live frugally. Spend liberally on things that bring you lasting joy, and cutting out expenses for things that don’t. The key is to admit what makes you happy and what doesn’t.”
Steve Alcock, Financial Blogger
“#1 key to success in both personal and professional life is the ability to build and leverage your relationships.”
Unknown
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
“It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.”
David Feherty
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”
Oprah Winfrey
“Make loads of mistakes – but learn from each and everyone of them”
Unknown
“The key to success is massive failure. Your goal is to out-fail your competition. Whoever can fail the most, the fastest and the biggest, wins.”
Thomas Watson, President IBM
“Doubt and fear steal more dreams than failure does.”
Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
Every penny matters. A basic principle and most effective ways to eliminate debt is to know exactly where your money is going.
Steve Alcock, Financial Expert
“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.”
William Rudolph
“Allow yourself to go and do it wrong. Don’t expect to always get it right. It will prevent you from doing anything.”
Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.”
J.K. Rowling
“The first thing to do about an obstacle is simply to stand up to it and not complain about it or whine under it but forthrightly attack it. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have. Just stand up to it, that’s all, and don’t give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break and it won’t be you, it will be the obstacle.”
Andrew Carnegie
“If you want to speed up your success, double your rate of failure.”
Thomas Watson, President IBM
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Denis Waitley
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: The fear of failure.”
Paulo Coelho
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
“Failures are bound to come in every human’s life. Without failure, we cannot taste the ambrosia of success.”
Gaur Gopal Das
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-love-the-fword_b_7130128
Hormesis: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? The idea that short, intermittent bursts of certain stressors (“hormetic stressors”) can actually trigger a cascade of cellular processes that enhance overall health, slow aging, and make you more resilient to future stress (both physical and mental).
Financial Literacy Action Items according to J.D. Roth:
- Self-Reliance. Rely on yourself to fix your financial problems. Be positive and repeatedly remind yourself…“I am in charge of my life.” Don’t pay attention to others financial journey and don’t try to keep up with the “Jones”. Do what works for you.
- Be Proactive. Don’t let life just happen to you. Take charge of your life by identifying short-term (1-3 months) and long-term (3-months and beyond) goals you want to accomplish.
- You, Inc. View your own personal finances like a business. Only three expenses account for 50-70% of the average household’s expenses (household, vehicles, and food). Saving, budgeting, and living within your means are how you build a profit for yourself. Maximize your personal profits by spending less than you earn or earning more than you spend. Use the gap between income and spending to invest in yourself to accelerate your profits and financial freedom.
Planning:
- Good Planning is important to achieving life goals and objectives.
- Purposeful end and clear, definable concrete actions.
- Only actions create accomplishments and success.
- Hope is rarely a successful option, you must take action.
- Knowing my purpose in life is one of the keys to Planning and being successful.
What have you failed at this week?
- Life is Like a Pendulum. People want more joy, love, happiness and pleasure, and want to avoid pain, rejection, sadness and failure. But, the only side we can control is pain, rejection, sadness and failure. The pendulum will swing back in equilibrium to joy, love, happiness and pleasure.
- Have a love affair with failures and aggressively pursue failures.
- Only one thing holding you back…it’s fear. Must turn fear into fun. The biggest failures are always the biggest successes. You can accomplish any goal by out working and out lasting everyone else.
But we should first learn how to digest failures better because without doing so you would not be able to convert it into success. If you are strong enough to not let failure weaken your determination, success will reach you eventually.
John Hope Bryant, founder and CEO of Operation HOPE, has developed Five Rules that he believes will lay the foundation for achieving financial freedom. He emphasizes in his book “Memo” the inseparable connection between:
- “inner capital” (mindset, relationships, knowledge, and spirit) and
- “outer capital” (financial wealth and property)
- “If you have inner capital,” Bryant writes, “you can never be truly poor. If you lack inner capital, all the money in the world cannot set you free.”
In his book Memo, Bryant gives readers tools for financial, health and well-being empowerment. He covers everything from achieving financial literacy to investing in emotional-wellness / positive relationships and approaching wealth with a new attitude and mindset.
Bryant makes this bold claim: “Once you have satisfied your basic sustenance needs—food, water, health, and a roof over your head—poverty has more to do with your head [mindset] than your wallet.”
“Silver rights,” – the ability to succeed and prosper no matter what very real roadblocks society puts in their way. We have more power than we realize, if only we can recognize and claim it. “We are our first capital,” Bryant writes. “We are the CEOs of our own lives
“If you want to change the way you feel, change the way you live.” – Gaur Gopal Das
“Every moment lived well is the secret of overall wellness.” – Gaur Gopal Das
“It’s easy to make a buck, but hard to make a difference.” – Gaur Gopal Das
“I Shall Leave the World a Better Place, Then it was When I entered it.” – Gaur Gopal Das