10 Things You Can Do This Year to Be a Better and Happier Person

The secret to substantial and enduring happiness, I have discovered, has nothing to do with putting yourself first, nurturing your inner child, or any of the many other forms of narcissism so popular among today’s pop psychologists. As someone who has spent too much time in the vain (and I do mean vain) pursuit of self-satisfaction, I am here to tell you that fulfillment in life is usually about doing less for yourself and more for others.

This is not a revolutionary concept. It was, it seems to me, the essential message of Christ and Gandhi, to name just two. “Happiness and fulfillment in life,” they seemed to have been saying,” will come to you not when you are making yourself the center of your universe but when you forget yourself and look outside.” You may know that already. And you may be much further along in making it part of your life than I am in making it part of mine.

When I think about the happy people I admire, they are invariably those who are always looking out for others. I’m not speaking of missionaries and professional do-gooders but of ordinary people who make it a habit to care about those around them. They are the people who ask you how you are doing and care about your answer. They visit you when you are ill, and give you little gifts or kind words when you need them.

When involved in a negative conversation (particularly one that involves gossip or badmouthing), they find something positive to say. They are ordinary people with the same number of problems that other ordinary people have — yet, they don’t ask you to pity them. When they see you limping because of an injured knee, they don’t tell you about their aching backs. They give you sympathy and recommend helpful treatments.

When everyone gets up from the holiday meal and rushes off to have an after-dinner drink or smoke, they linger with the host — helping out by cleaning the dishes or wiping off the table. They know the names of your children. They remember your birthday. They know how you take your coffee. And though they want you to be better and stronger and more successful than you are, they never give you the feeling that they are unsatisfied with what you are, in fact, right now. I know people like that. And I am fortunate enough to be around them. 

They are also, I am really blessed to say, in my extended family and among my closest friends. And although I don’t say so enough, I am always astonished by their goodness and humbled by their strength. I am naturally inclined to be one of these good people. I am a living composite of every bad habit, obnoxious inclination, and selfish reflex known to man. But lacking those qualities makes them all the more admirable to me. And makes me want to be, a little bit each year, a better man.

So that’s my 10th big resolution this year — as it was last year: to be a better person. I invite you to make the same New Year’s resolution — to spend less time thinking about your own happiness and more time trying to make other people happy. Start with your immediate family. Your spouse and children, mother and father, aunts and uncles, and nieces and nephews were not brought into this world to listen to and/or solve your problems.

That’s your job. Resolve to spend less time complaining to them and more time listening to their complaints. Do share your dreams and ambitions with them, but don’t talk too long. And be sure you give them the time and attention they need to share their dreams and ambitions with you. Make your friends happy too. Smile when you see them. Listen to their stories. Give them the advice they want and shut up when they don’t want any. Become the person they turn to when the chips are down. Learn to love their relatively minor sins or annoyances and encourage them to overcome their faults.

Above all, be loyal to them. Be a reliable and steady resource for your business colleagues. Help them achieve their goals — not because you want their loyalty but simply because you care about them and want them to succeed. And do something for someone you don’t know — a stranger you come upon, a foster child, or a sick or poor person who can benefit from your help. Spend time and money.

Make this outward focus a natural part of your daily life. Do it purposefully and deliberately — by beginning with a set of resolutions and then transferring them to your weekly and daily task lists — till it becomes second nature to you. This is not the kind of resolution one can make and achieve in a single year. It will be on my list next year. Perhaps it will be on your list too.

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

Your First and Most Important New Year’s Resolution

“There is no achievement without goals.” – Robert J. Mckain

Every year, we make 10 New Year’s resolutions — one each weekday for two weeks. The idea is that by spreading out our promises over two weeks, instead of making them all on New Year’s Day (the way most people do), we will take the time to really think about what we want to accomplish over the next 12 months.

This year, like last year, your first and most important step is to identify one significant goal in each of the four most important areas of your life:

1. Your health (without which most of the others don’t matter)

2. Your wealth (which is undeniably important — so treat it as such)

3. Your personal self (your hobbies and interests)

4. Your social self (your friends, family, and community)

Make each of your four goals significant yet specific. To do so may require setting several subordinate objectives. For example, “Being in better shape” is a significant goal, but it is not specific. “Being able to run a seven-minute mile” is specific, yet it may not seem significant to you.

Here’s my goal for health: To continue to modify my diet to help bring my blood pressure back to normal range (120/80) without the use of medication. 

Your health goal might be fitness oriented, such as: To become measurably stronger, leaner, more flexible, and to have greater endurance. Specifically, that would mean adding three pounds of muscle to your body, taking off four pounds of fat, being able to do a proper Sun Salutation in yoga, and running a mile in seven minutes.

You see how it works?

For the financial part of your life, your goals will probably be more ambitious than mine. My goal is to “stick with my seven-year financial independence plan.” That plan was set three years ago. All I have to do next year is get, overall, a 8% return on my investments and earn enough to live on. I’m probably going to do better than that. But I’m not going to think about it too much. For now, for me, health and personal goals are more important than my financial goals. For you, it might be different.

Your job today is to set these four big goals. To set them and commit to them.

The year 2016 can be the healthiest, wealthiest, and wisest year of your life. It starts today. Set your goals.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

How to Stay Motivated About Achieving Your Long-Term Goals

 

“The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes.” – John Ruskin

Your most important goals — becoming rich, famous, etc. — can take time to accomplish. Sometimes years and years. How do you stick with them? How do you avoid distractions? How do you keep yourself from losing interest?

There’s only one answer to all these questions: Learn to love the process.

The process is what you engage in while you are on your way. It consists of the steps you take on your journey. It includes the little breakthroughs, the small triumphs, and the pleasure of overcoming adversity.

I do that by breaking all my long-term goals into shorter-term objectives. I’ve broken down all my lifetime goals into five-year objectives, then into yearly, monthly, and weekly objectives, and finally into daily tasks.

Each completed effort is something I feel good about. Often, I reward myself with small psychological prizes. Usually, the reward is simply the gratification I feel when I check the task off my task list. Sometimes, I reward myself with a monetary reward — a hundred dollars here, a thousand dollars there.

Let’s say you want to save a certain sum of money every month but find you don’t get any pleasure out of doing it. In that case, what you could do is pay yourself off each time you achieve that goal … perhaps with a small sum of “fun” money that you can spend any way you want to.

If, for example, your savings goal is $3,000 a month, you might give yourself a $100 bonus. The money might go to buy a nice dinner or to pay for some toy — almost anything, so long as it feels like an “extra.”

I like to give myself a cash bonus. There’s something tangible about a $20 bill that I am still very fond of. I usually spend that reward on music downloads.

Think about a long-term goal you might apply this idea to. Make deciding what the reward should be part of the enjoyment.

Hint: It’s sometimes fun to let someone else — a partner, your spouse, or even your assistant — award the bonus. That way, it feels more like a pleasant surprise.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

The Best Way to Surpass Your Peers and Rise To The Top Of Any Business

What’’s the best way to surpass your peers and outdo your competitors? Work harder than they do. If that sounds daunting, consider this: Most people don’t work very hard. Some people spend their time doing as little as they possibly can. Most do stay busy, but they are not always very productive. They write long memos, discuss issues that don’'t need much discussion, contest insignificant points, and attend to the tedium. But only a very few apply themselves — long and hard — to the critical business challenges.

According to Saul Gellerman, who was an expert on the subject, people at work form a bell-shaped curve when it comes to diligence and follow-through. At the bottom are the loafers and goof-offs. In the middle is the silent majority that does just enough to get by. At the top are the relative few who are motivated to achieve. When you understand the dynamics of any such group, you understand that a modest amount of hard work will put you beyond both the terminally lazy and the lump-along middle crowd.

Just by being modestly ambitious, you will rise to the top third of almost any organization. But getting up the last few rungs of that ladder will be tough, because the few you are competing against are competing hard. Chances are they are as smart and talented as you, with the same (or more) basic resources. They may even have better contacts. But there is one thing they don’’t have more of — and that is time. If you can use your time more effectively than they use theirs, you will move ahead of them.

Hard workers eventually succeed even against those who have advantages. You can do better than someone who is smarter, richer, and luckier than you — so long as you are willing to work harder than he does. As a friend said to me the other night, “Life isn’'t fair. When it comes to money, beauty, intelligence, and talent, the distribution is uneven and arbitrary. But one thing we all have an equal amount of is time. We each have 24 hours a day. Even the length of life you get is not fair, but the 24 hours you have each day is the same for everyone — and what you do with those hours will determine your success and happiness.” 

Planning your day the night before gives you the chance to increase your productivity and think about new ways you can use your hours better. People who rise to the top work long hours, but not excessively long. They are at their desks early — at least an hour before others — and they stay later (though it may be only a half-hour later).

But what they do best is work harder when they work. They do the necessary things first, even if they are difficult. They learn what they need to know and don’'t waste business time learning unimportant stuff. They are willing to harass and cajole, tease and criticize, flatter and pout to get the job done. They spend a few minutes every evening organizing their days and a little while every Monday morning planning their week. They select their tasks based on what will achieve their goals, not on what happens to end up in their in boxes.

They manage their jobs; they don’t let their jobs manage them. Hard work is a lot of, well, hard work. But if you break every job down into little, easy-to-handle pieces, you can accomplish an extraordinary amount. And once you get into the habit of working harder and smarter than the people you compete with, your success is guaranteed.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

What Is Your Valuable Skill? Are You A Master At It?

In all human endeavors, there are four levels of accomplishment:

1. Incompetence

Regardless of how smart or gifted you are, to learn a new skill you must go through a period of not knowing — of taking the baby steps and stumbling. This is the very necessary stage of incompetence. Being incompetent is nothing to be ashamed of. Not trying to learn something because you are afraid to show incompetence is.

2. Competence

If you persist in your learning, you will eventually arrive at a level of skill that is competent for most situations. For example, you will be able to play the piano at parties, dance at weddings, or write an effective business letter. It takes time to become competent. I’ve suggested, half seriously, that it’s always the same amount of time regardless of the skill: 1,000 hours (with a 30% discount if you are lucky enough to have masterful instruction).

3. Mastery

Most people stop learning after they achieve competence. They know enough not to get fired, laughed at, or rejected (in other words, enough to avoid pain), but they have no desire to go beyond that. The few people who are not satisfied with merely “good” push on and continue to practice and learn for years and years. At some point (and my guesstimate for that is after about 5,000 hours), because of all that extra work and especially because of that extra attention, they achieve a level of accomplishment that distinguishes them from their competent peers. They become masters of their skill. One person out of a hundred competent people achieves mastery.

4. Virtuosity

The virtuoso is not only extremely focused, determined, hardworking, and persistent, but also divinely gifted. He is the one master out of a hundred masters that has a genius for the skill that allows him to be a world-class performer. Even so, the virtuoso must put in the time — I’d guess a minimum of 25,000 hours — working at it. Like Michael Jordan, Fred Astaire, even Bill Clinton, and others of that ilk. Back to you. If you want to keep your job, you need to become competent at a skill that is valuable to your business.

If you want more than that — if you want to become extremely successful, make a lot of money, have control over your future and influence over your peers — you must step up to the next level: You must become a master at your valuable skill.

So today, ask yourself two questions:

1. “What is the valuable skill I am developing that is contributing to my company’s goals?”

2. “What do I need to do to achieve mastery of that skill?”

Break the necessary tasks down into years, months, and weeks. Then put them on your daily “to-do” list and start to feel the progress you are making.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the Internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

Success Loves Speed

“There are no speed limits on the road to excellence. We can’t be fined for speeding.” – David W. Johnson

I’ve written a lot about the importance of acting sooner rather than later, without waiting to figure out everything in advance. Nothing says this more succinctly than Joe Vitale’s aphorism: Money loves speed.

Recently, a reader asked my why money loves speed. First off, let me say that this is not just true about money. Success – in all areas of life – loves speed.

• If you want to buy tickets from a scalper for a big game that’s sold out, get there first. Tickets love speed.
• If you want a job that you just found out about, get there first. Jobs love speed.
• If you want to get the guy or gal who has your heart pounding, get there first. Romance loves speed.
• If you want to get the investment property that just came on the market, get there first. Investment properties love speed.

And so on. I don’t recall ever succeeding at something because I got there last.

So, why does success love speed? The answer is to be found in the dictionary. Action is defined as “the causation of change.” Whatever result you want, it’s a change from what you now have. By definition, then, a change has to take place for you to get from your present status to that result.

Following are some of the more important reasons why I believe action begets results.

1. When you do too much planning, there’s a tendency to think of one reason after another why what you’re contemplating won’t work.

Many of the reasons you come up with may be correct. But the important thing is that it doesn’t matter. Why? Because, as you move forward, circumstances continually change – and those changes often render irrelevant many of the concerns you may have before taking action.

In other words, don’t try to figure out steps two, three, and four before taking step one. The legendary Joe Karbo once said that he ran his first ad for The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches (a million-copy seller) before he even began to write the book! In fact, he said that the ad he wrote served as an outline for the book itself. Talk about going against conventional wisdom…

2. When you procrastinate, you tend to lose your enthusiasm.

That, in turn, causes homeostasis to set in. Homeostasis is the tendency to live with existing conditions and avoid change. You get comfortable with the way things are and allow your great idea to fade into the comfort zone of oblivion.

But when you take action, your creative “juices” flow faster, your resourcefulness kicks into high gear, and the things, people, and circumstances you need to accomplish your objectives are drawn to you almost like magic. This is not hocus-pocus. I’ve done it enough times to be able to assure you that it really works.

3. Even though changing circumstances often negate many initial concerns you may have had, they can also place new obstacles in your path.

As a result, if you wait too long before taking action, the opportunity may become less and less appealing as those obstacles start to make their appearance.

Robert Ringer wrote about this danger in his book "To Be or Not to Be Intimidated?" under the auspices of the Fiddle Theory, which states: “The longer you fiddle around with a deal, the greater the odds that it will never close.”

Time is your ally when you take action. But time is a two-sided coin. If you hesitate or procrastinate, time becomes your worst enemy. As a general rule, I assume that if I take action, perceived problems will tend to disappear – and that the more I hesitate, the more time I give new obstacles to come on the scene.

4. Perhaps the most important reason of all for taking action now is that time is finite.

No matter how proficient you are, you can only accomplish so much in a lifetime. Every second that’s wasted reduces the totality of what you can accomplish by one second.

Some people maintain that a constant feeling of urgency to accomplish more is stressful, but I find the opposite to be true. I feel more stress when I procrastinate – when I’m not doing what I know I should be doing. There’s not a worse feeling in the world than to be conscious of the fact that your finite supply of time is ticking away while you’re straightening your desk drawer.

Of course, nothing in life is perfect. There will be times when moving too fast can end up hurting you. Based on my own experience, what I gain from moving fast far outweighs any losses that result from too little planning.

That being the case, when you fall – and you will fall – simply pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and take more action. Success could care less about mistakes. Success loves action. Think seriously about making this your mantra for 2016.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

Life After 50: You’re Never Too Old To Succeed

“The hardest years in life are those between 10 and 70.” – Helen Hayes (at age 83)

Think getting older stinks? Some say that life begins at 50. Here are more reasons to embrace your golden years. Take inspiration from the following "oldsters" who accomplished more after 70 than most do in their whole lives:

* Nelson Mandela, having lived a life dedicated to the realization of democracy and the defeat of apartheid in his native South Africa, emerged from a long imprisonment at the age of 72 and within four years became president of his country and the recipient of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

* Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Christian Science Church, started the Christian Science Monitor daily newspaper when she was 87, two years before her death.

* George Burns, who returned to motion pictures after a 30-year hiatus in 1975 at the age of 79, lived to be 100 and in his later years became the unofficial spokesperson for an inspired old age. He quipped, “I get a standing ovation just standing.” 

* Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) became internationally known when the world took notice of her American folk paintings. During the next 20 years, until her death at the age of 101, she created approximately 2,000 paintings.

Researchers at Stanford University also discovered:

• A third of the accomplishments of the four hundred most famous people came when they were between sixty and seventy years old.

• A quarter came when they were seventy to eighty.

• More than half of what researchers called “the world’s greatest work” was achieved by leaders, thinkers, and creative people, businesspeople, and others who were sixty or older. More than half! Some examples:

• Hillary Clinton was sixty-two when she became America’s secretary of state.

• Golda Meir was seventy-one when she became prime minister of Israel.

• Julia Child was forty-nine when her first cookbook was published. Louise Nevelson was a prolific sculptor well into her eighties. Tony Bennett is a regular Grammy Award winner, and he is an octogenarian.

Even if you are 70+, there’s still time to do something very meaningful with your life. If you are only in your 50s, like me, be very grateful. From a different perspective, you are a kid with the whole world before you.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

How to Achieve Moral Perfection: The Ben Franklin Formula

“What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”– Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon, 1932)

Ben Franklin, one of the World’'s wisest writers and thinkers, began his adult life with a very ambitious goal. He wanted to achieve moral perfection.

Moral perfection. Today, even the idea of it sounds pompous and proud.

Most of the people I know don’t even think in these terms. On a conscious level, they think about their family, their friends, their work. When it comes to achievement, they talk about money or fame or even happiness.

But the idea of devoting your life to an abstraction — and one so hard to define and difficult to reach — well, what’s the point?

To understand Ben Franklin’s ambition, you need to consider that for him morality meant something that may be different than what it means to you. For Franklin, morality was a way of behaving that resulted in a balanced life that contained the best of all possible human experiences.

The kind of morality that might result in self-mutilation, ethnic or religious warfare, or suicide bombing is not the kind of morality Ben Franklin was thinking of.

Morality, for Franklin, was the right way to act in any given situation. That included what you did to earn a living and how you treated your kids. It encompassed your behavior as a friend and neighbor as well as your intellectual pursuits. It was about your personal hygiene and your manner of speaking. It was about all of you — private and public, personal and social, physical and spiritual.

Here are Franklin’s prescriptions for moral perfection:

1. “Temperence: Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.”

2. “Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.”

3. “Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.”

4. “Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.”

5. “Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”

6. “Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.”

7. “Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.”

8. “Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”

9. “Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”

10. “Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.”

11. “Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.”

12. “Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring — never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”

13. “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

As Randy Cohen points out in his column “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine, the particular virtues that Franklin selected “are, above all, practical. They promote diligence and accomplishment.”

That’s what we are doing here, isn’t it? Trying to accomplish the practical goals in our lives?

When I started "Seven Years to Seven Figures", I asked you to identify your four utmost life goals. I suggested that one of them be health-related, one wealth-related, one about the social you, and the fourth about the personal you.

The method we’'ve been using to achieve our goals is both practical and empirical. We imitate the successful behavior that has worked for others with the reasonable expectation that it will work for us.

That’s what Ben Franklin did. And even though he never achieved moral perfection, he believed that his radical idea of attempting the effort was a good one. “Tho’ I never arrived at the perfection, I was (by trying) a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been.”

Take a few minutes today to review Ben’s list and compare it to your own life goals and to the work you’ve been doing to achieve them. Ask yourself if you are doing enough or too much. Consider the more “radical” virtues by today’s standards: chastity, humility, and temperance.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

Need a Boost? Try a Little Gratitude

For my American friends, Thanksgiving is typically a time to look back at the past, and to reflect on all those things we’re grateful for in our lives. Sure, it can be fun to indulge in a little nostalgia. But that gratitude is also tremendously important to your success.

Pausing to think about everything that you’re grateful for brings your life back into perspective. Those small annoyances don’t seem so important anymore. You feel energized. More alive. More positive about yourself and the world around you.

Gratitude also makes you more resilient in the face of setbacks. Tell me, what’s more productive? Getting mad at your staff for making a mistake that just cost you a pile of money and a customer? Or taking a deep breath and feeling thankful for the fact that those very same employees also make it possible for you to avoid the tasks you hate and focus on the stuff you’re great at?

The second choice will melt your anger like a burning candle. And it’ll get you back to focusing on action rather than self-indulgent lamentation.

Gratitude just makes sense.

So how do you do it? How do you actually go about identifying all those areas to be thankful for in your life?

I like to use this great little exercise. I found it many years ago in a rather hokey self-help book. Now that’s not normally my kind of reading at all. But the exercise made me sit up straight, fold down the page and come back later on to make a few notes.

Here’s how it goes…

Grab a piece of paper, and write these words across the top: “I’m thankful for…” And then divide your page into 3 columns.

Label the first column “Things”. Take a few minutes to write down all the material things you’re glad you have. For example, I’m thankful for my Keurig machine. For my collection of books. For having a reliable computer and a nice big Apple monitor. You get the idea.

In the second column, labeled “People”, list all the people in your life, past or present, who you appreciate. I’m thankful for my children. I’m thankful for my old hometown friends, who have been as close as family since our high school days and beyond. I’m thankful for having a great partner in my online business, and an amazing team of dedicated employees. And the list goes on.

Finally, label your third column “Other,” and list anything that doesn’t fit into the other two.

Most people find this last category confusing at first. But I thought it was the easiest one of all.

I’m thankful for my freedom. For having the ability to exercise. For good health. I’m tremendously thankful for my love of reading, because it’s opened so many doors.  And I’m incredibly grateful that I have the ability to travel and experience so many exciting new things, and then to share those things with my readers.

You get the idea.

It’s a really great exercise because it reminds you of just how much you have to be grateful for. It also opened my eyes to how much we can complain in the day to day — when most of us really have so little to complain about.

Sure, I tend to focus on what’s not perfect in my life. I’m driven, so I’m always tweaking things, trying to improve the road ahead rather than just sitting and looking at my past small accomplishments. But still…

Taking a few moments to remind yourself of just how many great things you have in your life changes the way you feel about everything. It brightens up your day. It gives you more energy. You walk taller, and you learn to let those small annoyances slide.

No matter how bad things are, you’ll always find something to be thankful for. And I can say this even about my most frustrating lean years, when I felt so trapped and when I thought I’d never be able to live my dreams. Looking back at those times, I’m thankful I had access to an excellent public library. And that I had a great mentor to teach and inspire me.

I encourage you to find a piece of paper and a pencil and give this little exercise a try today.

It doesn’t matter if you live in the United States and you’re celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday surrounded by family and friends, or if you’re an expat Canadian like me who’s just going along for the ride.

It’s worth a few minutes of your time. I promise.

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The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]