tony robbins

Financial Freedom – keep counting the gains – live your life

Abundance, Financial Independence, life

A lot of times we get obsessed with saving for investing because we are unsure of the actual amount we could need for the future. It becomes a moving target. If you get to 100K you think you need 500K to survive. When you hit 500K you think you 1M to survive. This way you are never happy with what you have. You never learn to live your life in the moment and value what you have.

Something which I have mentioned earlier also, which I learnt from reading Dan Sullivan’s books and watching his videos, is the concept of counting gains.

So I started writing the blog posts on financial independence and freedom not because I had become wealthy but because I saw that I could find systems of investment which can help me grow. As these investments started growing I could take up activities which enhanced and expanded my life. And I wanted to share these learnings with everyone , so that others need not go through the same challenges which I went through.

From a stage where I had zero investments and zero financial backup, I kept clawing upwards. Now I can decide to feel sad that my investments have still not made a dollar denominated millionaire or I can feel happy that I was at zero and today I have hit some value while also living through lovely experiences along the way. This gives me the feeling of abundance.

When you are driving down from Washington DC to NewYork City you see the milestones for the amount of distance pending to reach NYC. Since the destination is fixed, it makes sense to know how much time and distance is left to reach it. However if you were to change the destination en-route from NYC to Rochester, then to Albany, then to Toronto, you will go crazy trying to figure out when you will eventually hit your destination. It then makes sense to think in terms of how much distance you have already gained towards your destination rather than how much is pending.

With your finances also you need to keep counting your gains and feel happy that you have been able to achieve some intermediate targets. Tony Robbins also had this concept of creating buckets and making investments according to the buckets. Once the bucket is full you need to use it. Like if there’s a bucket for vacations, then once the bucket gets full based on the target you need to go out and have a vacation. This way you will actually live your life.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The curve balls that life throws at us

Character, ego, Energy, Fear, Human Brain

Life has a queer way of throwing curve balls (sudden challenges) at us, when we least expect it. That’s why curve balls or googlies (as they are called in the game of cricket) are so effective in getting the person “out”.

Life throws these curve balls to see how prepared we are to handle them and then navigate them and come out a winner. And no one will ever live a life without getting their fare share of curve balls. The type and duration of the challenge may change from person to person but everyone will get them.

Its how people navigate these challenges is what builds character of the person. The bigger the challenges that a person has encountered and successfully managed , more humility the person generally has. Most of the so called “great” people are also some of the most down to earth because of this reason. They recognise the fact that nothing in life is permanent and you never know when things can change within a matter of minutes. That is also one of the reason why, when we are younger we tend to be brash with a lot of ego, but as we grow older, we become more modesthuman

I used to think of the major challenges that life had sent my way and would wonder the typical response “why me”. Then over the years I have read hundreds of books, auto-biographies etc. and one common element in most of them has been the fact that all these people had as many or even more challenges than me.

That’s when I realised the significance of what Tony Robbins says “life happens for me not to me”. I need to build the capabilities to handle the “curve” balls. As I build the capabilities, I will become more successful.

Here I will tie it in with what I wrote in my post yesterday. Fearing the curve ball is a game which your brain plays on you. Most curve balls are not life threatening, but your brain makes you feel scared , because it wants to conserve energy , to use the energy when your survival is at stake.

If you can tame your brain to handle these situations and build capabilities, you can move forward at a much faster and higher level. As they say – a plane will not be able to take -off if it does not get resistance from air. It uses the resistance to get the lift -off.

Till next time then – build your capabilities and love to play the curve balls.

Carpe Diem!!!

Gratitude

Gratitude, mindset, possibility thinking, Uncategorized

I have written a lot about Karma and gratitude even if you don’t believe in God. I have generally used these things with the view that the Universe conspires to do good to people who do good for others.

In the last few days you would have noticed I have written a lot about the book by Steven Kotler , The Art of Impossible, that I am reading.

In this book I came across actual research data by Barbara Fredrickson, that spoke about positivity ratios and that it takes about 3 positive thoughts to nullify the effects of a negative thought.

What better way to get positive thoughts in your mind than being gracious about what you have achieved, being thankful for that.

There will always be things about which you can feel bad. Someone overtakes you on the road from the wrong side or the ticket clerk at the metro station didn’t behave properly. Our mind has the ability to spiral out of control with negative thoughts. More than the thought itself, its the emotion with which we think about the thought that causes the bigger problem.

When you are thanking God, the Universe or whoever for what you have, and where you have reached from where you started the emotions just can’t be negative. When the mind starts having gratitude multiple times a day, slowly the mind gets more restful I have noticed. Maybe its the positivity ratios which kick in. Once the mind is more restful, you start having better ideas for solving problems. Possibility thinking helps find more options to solve the same problem.

When you solve problems, there’s a dopamine kick which comes in which makes you feel even better and the positive spiral starts.

I first got introduced to this idea by Tony Robbins but didn’t actually follow it religiously. But I saw some videos by Dan Sullivan, in which he spoke about how people with a gratitude mindset are able tot create more abundance. That got me hooked on to this idea and since then I have been following it very religiously.

Till next time then, be grateful for what you have today.

Carpe Diem!!!

Delegation to automated systems

Automation, Delegation

I don’t know who said it but its true we waste our life in days not years, we waste our lives in hours not days and we waste our life in minutes not hours.

So our life passes us by every minute of the day if we are not mindful about it.

There have been times in my life, a lot actually when I was wandering aimlessly not knowing what to do and wondering why the day was not ending. When I look back, it seems so stupid that I would do something like that.

Another thing where I used to end up spending a lot of small amounts of time was in paying bills. The electricity bill would come on a different date and the telephone bills on different dates and so on. Every weekend, every month I would find myself busy paying out bills.

Then I heard from Tony Robbins about batching jobs to improve productivity. I tried that and did succeed to a certain extent but since there were different dates o be monitored, the onus was still on me to figure out when to make the payment, before the last date.

My bank then started the facility of doing automated payments for all my utilities. That has created a major difference because now I don’t even have to think about paying of the bills. The bank monitors the last dates and makes the payments. Since my mind now knows that there’s nothing for it to do it just does not bother. So the Zeigarnik effect does not come into play.

When you delegate to people, you have to keep track and monitor. You cannot absolve yourself of the responsibility of the result that has to be achieved eventhough you have delegated the work to someone.

Bu when you delegate to automated systems, you just don’t have to monitor. That’s the advantage of computers. Once programmed they will keep doing the work repeatedly until the system itself gets spoilt, which is very rare.

Amazon, Bigbasket and other similar shopping sites do a similar activity when they prompt you in your monthly grocery shopping, so that you don’t have to remember individual items.

Once you get these small things which eat up the “minutes” in your life every month, you are able to save so much time. However if you end up spending those free minutes just moving around aimlessly then you have lost the advantage.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!