Tag Archives: mood poisoning

Tunnel of Transition

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“When someone says ‘you’ve changed,’ it simply means you’ve stopped living your life their way.” This is an interesting quote that I read this week, and it got me thinking about life shifts and transformations. One of the hardest yet most enlightening moments in a person’s life is when they finally decide to leave their unhealthy comfort zone and change the things in their lives that are no longer working.

In one of my recent blogs, I shared that my “a-ha moment” and my personal transformation toward success started with a simple question, “So, how is that life working for you?” As I have explained in that post, this was a simple question that really required me to be honest with myself and address those things in my life that were no longer supporting my desired probable outcomes for success. No excuses and no blame necessary; just me agreeing to take complete ownership of my life, right at that moment.

What I quickly came to realize was that I was no longer pursuing my passions and goals, but instead found myself surrounded by unhealthy people (e.g., emotional parasites) that did not support me and who did not have my best interests at heart. I recognized that I was simply making excuses as to why my life went off course, while at the same time continuing to enable my own bad decisions rather than deal with my immediate despair. Let’s face it: I had a bad case of mood-poisoning.

When I first began to write my upcoming book, Growing Success: A Young Adult’s Guide to Personal and Financial Success, I had to ask myself a lot of difficult questions. It forced me to reflect on how and, more importantly, why I allowed myself to feel this way. Once I began to own the decisions and mistakes I had made, I started to re-claim my life. I soon began to realize that the awakening (e.g., the realization) phase of the transformation process was relatively simple. Through my own heightened awareness, I started to identify my bad behaviors including the negative programming and emotions I was feeling and projecting, as well as the re-alignment of my goals and probable outcomes. I did this by letting go of the people who had been unhealthy influences in my life and about my goals… It was exciting and reinvigorating. I was starting to become stronger as I felt things shifting. Then, as if I was running a marathon, I hit the wall. It was my tunnel of transition.

I define this “tunnel” as that uncomfortable phase of the transformation that resides between awakening and the new paradigm (e.g., the shift). And just like traveling through a real tunnel, at times it can feel claustrophobic. The darkness and uncertainty often trigger the anxious feelings you may get when you start to feel overwhelmed, especially when you begin questioning all the negative behaviors and obstacles you will have to overcome in order to break out of your current unhealthy comfort zone.

Despite these feelings of anxiety, I can assure you it is worth your efforts. As you enter your “tunnel,” you will need to remind yourself that you have chosen this new path for a reason; “your old life didn’t work anymore.”  If you choose to be patient, focused and disciplined, the discomfort you are likely to encounter on your personal transformation will result in your desired probable outcome of achieving success.

I am extremely fortunate that I did not allow fear and uncertainty to derail me from my new life. I had to persist until I found the light at the end of my tunnel. As a result, I was able to figure out how to re-align my future goals with my desired outcomes. I felt compelled to share the necessary steps you will most likely need to take if you choose to do this for yourself through these blog posts and in my upcoming book.

I hope I can inspire you as well to commit to growing your own future success.

Unleash Your Successful Wealth Creator

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Recently my wife Kate and I were discussing her ground rules regarding our shared key ingredients for success: determination, smarts, talent (creativity), perseverance, the need to be inquisitive, and others. Then she brought up an excellent point: what if young adults began manifesting wealth at an early age using the same ‘what would you do…?’ mentality that many adults only seem to exhibit when playing the lottery in the hopes that they would miraculously win and let all their money fears disappear?

Sadly, Kate is right. Most adults never learned the discipline of wealth creation at an early age, which was evidenced by last week’s PowerBall frenzy that sent Americans scurrying to their favorite “dream brokers” in order to purchase a “financial do-over” as the Powerball jackpot reached a whopping $550,000,000. The reality is (as most of you Monopoly® aficionados know) that they will never ‘pass go’ or collect $200.

What is amazing to me is that despite all the perceived value Americans seem to place on education, why then are Personal Finance and Wealth Creation classes neglected from most middle school and high school curricula? I’ve often wondered why most schools spend so much time teaching us the basics: math, English, history, science, foreign languages, and more, yet they fail to teach us the most important and practical life lesson: proper money management. Then it dawned on me, the reason why most teachers probably never teach their students anything about these subjects. Perhaps it’s because they were never taught either, and you can’t teach what you don’t know.

In my humble opinion, ignorance about money is not bliss. It’s costly. It literally blows my mind how little regard Americans have for financial education, considering that “money” now appears to be one of the most controversial topics within our society. Conversations about the state of the economy, both nationally and personally in our own households, as well as the “fiscal cliff” tend to dominate the proverbial “water cooler” chit chat online and offline. Not only is it extremely personal, but most people tend to have very different opinions and experiences regarding money. One size definitely does not fit all. For example, if your parents are/were conservative, then most likely you will also be conservative with your money. However, if you disliked how your parents either saved or spent their money, then you may decide to be the exact opposite. The point is that people tend to develop their habits and values regarding money from a very early age, consciously or unconsciously. They are usually swayed by parents, teachers, friends, or even worse, the media (e.g. TV, radio, magazines, etc.) that loves to prey upon America’s ignorance by constantly advertising and reminding us of what we either think we really want and need or what we basically don’t have and why?

In fact, millions of dollars a year are spent by companies on advertising in order to reap profits from America’s monetary spending dysfunction, which I call financial obesity. Companies deceive us with ads about what we should be driving, wearing, eating, living, playing, and thinking, and then shame us into a bad case of ‘mood poisoning’ if we don’t own what we “should” or if we don’t abide by their definitions of success.

The truth is: we need to educate our young adults to break free from the “must have” mentality often created at a young age. We need to empower our youth to start thinking about why they are spending their money and cultivate their desire to understand how each dollar spent will lead to their successful outcomes. To help you avoid the  “must have” mentality, I suggest that you ask yourself the following two questions before each purchase in order to ensure that every dollar spent is truly helping you to achieve your overall financial success:

1) Could this money be better invested than spent? and

2) Will this money generate the means for other future successes?

In my book, Growing Success; A Young Adult’s Guide to Achieving Personal and Financial Success, my goal is to educate and help young adults and adults of all ages understand and seriously think about the concepts of personal finance and wealth creation. Your ability to understand and adopt these important concepts from an early age will definitely help you to become a successful young independent monetizer /income generator, which will enable you to always produce multiple streams of income toward achieving your probable outcomes for success.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~ Dale Carnegie

Begin educating yourself. Avoid the unfortunate and avoidable financial pitfalls that currently plague so many adults between the ages of 40 and 60.

It’s time to grow your financial success and unleash your successful wealth creator now.

 

Mood Poisoning Affects Your Success

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Recently, my half marathon races have sent me all over the country: Los Angeles, Chicago, and more. During my travels, I realized that not only were the places I encountered starting to affect my mood and demeanor, but the people were too.

It was truly amazing! I could literally feel my entire physical and emotional being change, as if I had contracted a bad case of mood poisoning. The more I stopped to look at how people were dressed, the way they ate, and especially the way they communicated back and forth with each other, it really started to wreak havoc on my central nervous system.

As I have mentioned in my earlier blogs, I recently moved back to Indiana because it was a place that I believed I energetically resonated with. I also recently started reading William Bloom’s book Psychic Protection in which he discusses that “atmospheres, primarily your current surroundings, can dramatically affect how you feel and behave without your being conscious of them”.

This all started making sense when I recently stayed at a “less than stellar” hotel in Los Angeles when I was co-teaching stock option classes. Each morning while waiting for my co-instructor to meet me in the lobby before heading over to the trading school, I would be negatively overwhelmed by both the other guests and the energy of the hotel itself.

It then got me thinking: what would happen to me if I had to stay in this environment for any prolonged period of time? What would be the long-term of effects of this so-called mood poisoning? Maybe it would start to play on my self-esteem, my ability to motivate myself, or even worse, impact my own self-identity.

It may sound silly, but what if I started to believe that this is who I was, or even worse, where I was supposed to be? My doctoral professor, Vance Caesar, once told us: “Happy high achievers make it a habit to associate and hang out with other happy, high achievers.” Maybe I wasn’t crazy and just maybe I was starting to feel uncomfortable because my energy was not in sync with my surroundings.

So, the next time you start to feel out of sorts, take a moment and ask yourself: is it really you? Or are you currently living in a place that cannot help you achieve your goals and success? Are you compromising yourself? Perhaps you’ve discovered that you’re living somewhere that you refer to as a “holding pattern” or “transition place”. You need to be careful that this “transition place” does not turn into some long-term prison sentence, as one of my prior LA apartments did for me a while back. It was a place that I initially vowed would only be for one year, yet I wound up staying for seven.

You also want to make sure that you associate and surround yourself with people that provide you with support and positive energy. Unfortunately, a lot of people in our society are not pursuing their dreams. As a result, these same people are incredibly bitter and negative.

There is an old saying: “Misery loves company”. You need to energetically avoid these people if they do not resonate with you in a positive way.

This past June, I decided to move back to Indiana because I wanted to re-charge my batteries. So what are you going to do to reverse the effects of your so-called mood poisoning?