Happiness – Make the Change for the Better

Is it better to be happy or sad?  Obviously there is an occasion for both.  But, when there is not an overriding event that causes temporary sadness in your life, you should at least be neutral, if not happy.  You are the only one who can make changes in your life.  Why choose to be negative, depressed, pessimistic, gloomy or distrustful?  We are bombarded with negativity every day from our news media, television, radio, magazines, family, friends, co-workers, etc.  If you just stop and objectively listen to a news broadcast or read a headline, you can begin to see the negativity that is spewing forth.

I just went to USA Today’s website and looked at a few headlines.  Here are a few:  US shuts 8 more banks, 50 closed this year; Goldman charges raise fears among investors, Suicide bomber kills 41 at Pakistani refugee camp, Bishop convicted for denying Holocaust.  Each headline has a negative undertone.  Yes, it is news, but you don’t have to accept and embrace the negativity in each story.  Can you personally do anything about bank closures in the United States?  Is a bishop convicted of denying the Holocaust impacting your day-to-day activities?  Of course not!  You can certainly read or listen to the news and choose not to be affected by it.

I scan headlines realizing that the intent of the headline writers is to get people to read their articles.  If the headline writer is good, you will read or listen to the information deemed as newsworthy.  Most of us don’t realize that everyone disseminating newsworthy information has an agenda.  The agenda may agree with yours – or, it may not.  If it does, then you reinforce your belief system.  If it doesn’t, then the typical response is anger, disbelief, doubt, distrust, skepticism, incredulity, etc.  It’s at this time you allow your attitude to change from positive or neutral to negative.  Why did you allow it to happen?  Most of us don’t realize that it happened because we’ve become so accustomed or acclimated to responding to everything we see or hear.

Eliminate negativity from your life if you want to be happier than you are right now.  It’s pretty easy to do.  Reflect on a few occasions when you became angry, upset or skeptical about something – when something happened that changed your attitude.  Was it the news, a friend, a family member, a co-worker, or something else?  You are starting to compile a small list of stressors in your life that will automatically change your attitude.  Purge or reduce your dependence on news programs (television, radio, magazine, internet, etc.).  Realize that what you hear has been crafted to illicit a response to the information portrayed.  That one step will eliminate 80% of all negativity in your life.

I gave up watching television news in the mid-80’s.  The first reason why is that they were not reporting news, but interpreting it for me and giving me their rendition.  The second reason was the overwhelming concentration on negativity.  A constant barrage of negativity is going to affect you negatively.  You have a choice to reduce or eliminate the negativity from these sources.  I can scan a bunch of headlines in a few minutes and generally never read the articles.  Occasionally I will download an article and I’ll read the first paragraph and skim the rest.  I usually don’t get past the third or fourth paragraph most of the time.  I know what is being said, but I’m not accepting the negative slant being presented.  I keep abreast of current events on a daily basis, but I don’t let them influence me.  If you have certain people in your life who always dwell on the negative, realize what they are doing and try to minimize your time with them.  Worst case, just tell them that you are not interested in that subject – move on to something else.

When was the last time you counted your blessings?  Have you recently thanked someone for what they’ve done for you?  We typically don’t thank people, even parents and siblings, for the things they did to help us.  If you can’t tell them face to face what a difference they made in your life, write it down in a journal – something only you will see.  You are expressing gratitude and it will be interpreted by your subconscious as such.

When was the last time you practiced an act of kindness?  Something as little has holding a door at a store, picking up some trash, returning a shopping basket to the store, etc.  I carry $5.00 gift cards for my favorite fast food eatery that I give to those asking for assistance on the side of the road.  Sometimes when there is a homeless person outside a facility that I am frequenting, I’ll order something to-go and give it to them on my way out.  I’m not looking for thanks or anything else.  I just want to do a random act of kindness.

We all carry grudges – we’ve been conditioned to do it by our families and by society.  Have you forgiven those people who you resent?  Again, like counting your blessings, you don’t have to confront the person and tell him or her that you forgave them.  That would be nice, but you can write that forgiving statement in a journal and accomplish nearly the same thing to your psyche.  I attended a church service several years ago and the homily talked about forgiveness.  He asked each of us to think about the people in our lives that we really didn’t like – those people who irritated us every time we saw them or thought of them.  He had us take our index finger from one hand and write their names, one at a time, on the palm of our other hand.  We then said to ourselves, that we forgive them – and then we threw our arm upward and released the invisible written name on our palms.  Just that little exercise released a lot of pent up anger and resistance I had been carrying for a number of years.  I still do this process occasionally when I find myself being negatively influenced by friends and family.

When was the last time you just savored the moment – smelled the roses, so to speak?  I walk outside and the temperature is wonderful, the birds are singing, the sun is shining – and I take a second or two and just engulf myself in my surroundings.  I noticed what I’ve taken for granted in the past and realize that happiness is all around me.  I’ll thank God for that quick respite from the pressures and stresses of the day and then go on with my mission for that moment.  It doesn’t have to be something you experience in the here and now.  It can be a moment in your past that you can resurrect and enjoy again and again.  Reinforcement of those positive feelings stimulates a happier you.

Achieving results leads to happiness.  The easiest way to achieve happiness from this method is to set an easily achievable goal and accomplish it.  It can be something as easy as taking the trash out on those designated trash nights, cleaning the kitchen table – things that you might not normally do on a regular basis.  If can be paying your bills on time, going for a walk every day, talking to a family member you haven’t spoken to in a long time.  Set a goal and do it.  Accomplishing lots of these little achievable goals will provoke a feeling of happiness and success in your life.

Don’t allow someone, even yourself, to force guilt upon you for doing or not doing something.  Don’t feel ashamed of doing or not doing something because you feel you must.  Do things that are natural, things you enjoy doing, things you value and can identify with, things that are challenging and rewarding, things that you are not forced to do.  Eliminating the guilt and shame reduces a lot of stresses and leads to happiness.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin

Motivation – At What Point Do You Give Up?

In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear (4.1.32), The worst is not, so long as we can say, “This is the worst.”  How many times have you heard someone say that it can’t get any worse than this?  I know that I’ve heard it number of times, especially when companies are laying off people or shutting down.  Worse and worst are relative terms – obviously evaluated by each person differently.  We forget often that we walk in our shoes all the time and we don’t really have an appreciation for the ordeals that others go through – or the ability or stamina that they exert daily to maintain their lives.

Just because it is a terrible time in one person’s life doesn’t mean that things are necessarily bad all over.  In another play, this time by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, the beginning opens with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”  I didn’t mean to include the entire verse, but after reading it a couple of times, I decided that there was a wealth of knowledge contained in it.

An unemployed person has many choices.  Our comfort zone prevents us from exercising many of them.  We typically apply for something similar what we did – after all, that’s where we have experience.  I’ve had the opportunity to be unemployed for more than a year a couple times – actually more than that.  My choices were not always the best, but they seemed to be the best at the time.  As we approach a very low point in our lives, we make choices based on expediency, fear, convenience and several other factors.  Expediency – we need something now – we have to pay bills, etc.  Convenience – we don’t have to move or change many other things in our lives.  Fear of failure is one of the prime directives of your subconscious – Don’t allow it to happen!  Your subconscious mind will permit you to not do something so that you won’t fail.  That’s why many of us take no action – we accept what comes to us.

Fear causes physical and emotional changes in our bodies.  Many times we have no control over it.  Yet, fear can be approached and overcome.  Fear is a perception at a time in your life.  It is built, developed and maintained into your subconscious mind as most important command, dictate or decree in your life.  The fear itself is one thing, but your opinion of how you will fail if you attempt it is the limiting factor.  We all hate to fail, and the safeguard we have built into each one of our brains is to not do it.  Those following my blogs for the past year know that I have written a lot on fear, particularly how the Spartans addressed fear in their training processes.  Fear of dying is a major fear for most people.  Fear of failure can equal or exceed the fear of dying – fear of failure is pretty high up there on the list of fears.

Fears have to be confronted.  The Spartans had an interesting way of facing and overcoming fear – similar to our military’s current training for combat.  Fear of public speaking is high a lot of people’s lists, but once you have conquered your fear of public speaking; you find that you enjoy it, and then you find that you love it.  The same with fear of dying in combat, that fear can be faced and defeated.  For us, we don’t face public speaking or dying on a daily basis.  We are faced with the economy and bad news and worse news and reinforcement of more dreadful news.  In order to gain the upper hand, you have to face it and conquer it.

How do you do that?  The first thing to do is tell yourself that it is not the worst of times – and, that it can’t get any worse than it is now.  Both are defeating affirmations that reinforce and cement those thoughts into your brain and make them more believable.  Being in charge is the first thing you must do.  Say, “I am in charge of my life, my destiny.”  Let your subconscious know that you are willing to make decisions and take charge.  It doesn’t happen with one statement – it has to become part of your psyche.  You have to look at the bright side you cannot see at this time because the shades have been pulled down over your eyes.  Besides, it’s always darkest before it gets totally black – a saying from an earlier me in a life far, far away.  Affirmations and visualizations are your two friends.  I would also add Emotional Freedom Techniques – they work for many situations.  You have to get your brain in gear with you to overcome those ‘temporary’ fears that are holding you back.  It’s interesting, if you look back in your life at those times things seem so bad then, and you were really worried about the future – how did they turn out?  Did you not overcome them with or without your help?

Keep focused on what you want, and don’t exclude options that seem illogical or unreasonable.  They seem that way because you allow them to seem that way.  Get control of your attitude next.  Your self-image and self-esteem need bolstering and only you can do it.  Spend some time working on you – invest the time necessary to uncover the real you that has been hidden by years of negative programming.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin

Prosperity – Is Your Personal Misery Index Linked to the National Misery Index?

In the 1960’s, Arthur Okun, an advisor to President Johnson designed an economic indicator call the National Misery Index.  It is the sum of the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate.  Misery was assumed to be worse when there was high unemployment and high inflation.  Both conditions would cause economic and social chaos.  There was also a Barro Misery Index that included Gross Domestic Product and the bank rate, but it never got the full back as the simple Misery Index.

Many people have never heard of it, and most of us never track the Misery Index.  It seems to be one of those numbers bandied about by politicians.  In fact, President Jimmy Carter referred to the Misery Index often during his campaign.  It backfired on him because unemployment and inflation spiked during his presidency and hit an all time high – which led to his not winning a second term.  Even though the Misery Index was developed in the 1960’s, it was easy to calculate it by month for previous administrations.  Following World War II the following Misery Index averages were recorded:  Truman – 7.88, Eisenhower – 6.26, Kennedy – 7.14, Johnson – 6.77, Nixon – 10.57, Ford – 14.93, Carter – 20.27, Reagan – 11.19, Bush (41) – 9.68, Clinton – 8.80 and Bush (43) – 8.10.  Each president inherited the Misery Index ending value from his predecessor at whatever level it was when he took office.

Of course the average Misery Index doesn’t tell you the whole story.  As a statistician, I look at the range – the high and low – along with other factors to fully understand the final number reported.  The range for each president was:  Truman – 10.16, Eisenhower – 8.07, Kennedy – 1.98, Johnson – 2.49, Nixon – 5.81, Ford – 3.76, Carter – 9.36, Reagan – 11.63, Bush (41) – 2.83, Clinton – 4.82 and Bush (43) – 5.76.  The absolute lowest measured Misery Index was under Eisenhower at 2.97 and the highest was under Carter at 21.98.  One other factor that I consider in evaluating numbers is the trend – are the numbers going up or down.  In the case of the Misery Index, a downward trend is desirable.

The Misery Index focuses on implied misery in our society – higher unemployment and higher inflation – both infer that citizens in our society would be more miserable if the index number was higher.  A Gross National Happiness (GNH) index was designed to reflect the quality of life in more psychological terms.  Our current chief economic indicator, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures the commerce of our country.  The GDP contains costs reflecting positive contributions to our commerce, but, in reality, there are many costs that do not contribute to our commerce in a positive manner.  Researches thought they could just deduct those costs and the GDP would be a better indicator of overall happiness in our society.  Nevertheless, the GNH index attempted to truly reflect the social and psychological well-being of our population rather than commercial transactions.

The Misery Index is easy to state in mathematical terms – add inflation and unemployment and you have it.  The GNH is more qualitative than quantitative involving the promotion of sustainable development, the promotion and preservation of cultural integrity and values, environmental conservation, and good governance.  It is difficult to attach realistic numbers to measure the breadth of our country.  A Genuine Progress Indicator was developed that focused on well-being and happiness only.  Again, these factors are difficult to measure and Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton University psychologist, began recording this information using the ‘day reconstruction method’ which relies on diary entries recording memories of your previous day at work.

So, where am I going with this?  I started out asking the question about your personal Misery Index.  There is no such thing.  You are either employed or not, and inflation is a factor in your life, but it is difficult to quantify.  Happiness and misery are at opposite ends of a measurement.  Why not look at factors in your life that you can easily quantify or allocate a personal qualitative assessment?  I believe it should include wealth, health and other factors that should be balanced in your life.

I would propose that wealth could be measured in a variety of qualitative ways – are you better off today than last month or last year?  Do you have more disposable cash today compared to last month or last year?  Has your savings grown since last month or last year?  Are your bills being paid on time compared to last month or a year ago?  There are other similar questions that you could design into your personal index.  As a qualitative measurement, you can determine your trend toward happiness or misery.

The same assessments can be done for your health (mental and physical).  Are you genuinely feeling better today compared to last month or a year ago?  Are you medical expenses higher today compared to last month or a year ago?  Are you more active today compared to last month or a year ago?  Is your memory as sharp today as it was a month ago or year ago?  Are you sleeping better today compared to last month or last year?  I would then add topics such as work, relationships, time management, spirituality, personal development, and uncertainty caused by politics, regulations, environment, security, individual freedom, etc.

A personal Misery or Happiness Index could be developed if you so chose.  It would give you trends and allow you to reflect about what needs to be changed in your life to make a difference.  It gives you the ability to begin controlling things that you may take for granted or assume that you have little or no control over.  Attitude is a major driver of our misery and happiness.  Controlling your attitude is the first place I would suggest to begin a trend or shift towards more happiness in your life.  I suggested that these measurements be done today, last month and a year ago.  Why is that?  Today you can assess things pretty well – it is what it is.  You can remember last month fairly easily, at least for the vast majority of us.  Last year is a bit trickier, but it is not too far a time in the past to recollect where you were on certain issues.

It is interesting that when I worked for Memorex in the mid to late 70’s, the company did a random call to workers monthly and asked questions about a myriad of topics in which I (and other employees) chose to answer (not mandatory) about how well we were that day, a month ago and a year ago.  I’m sure thoughts emanating from part of my brain led me to this blog.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin

Motivation – Positively Half-Full or Totally Full

What do you say when someone asks you, “How are you doing?”  I always respond, “Excellent, as always!”  I say it loudly and emphatically.  Then, I ask how they are doing.  I rarely get a response that is equal to mine.  My mentor, Myron Golden, taught me the ‘excellent, as always’ response.  As motivational accelerators, we show an earnest positive attitude at all times.

Your attitude bleeds from your subconscious mind to your entire body.  Responses such as, OK, not bad, could be worse, etc. drive your day and drive your life.  When you allow negativity to enter you mind and stay around for a long time, you begin to regress into your current comfort zone and stay there.  Goals and dreams drift away unattained.
I know some people that lose control when you mention a person’s name – a friend or family member; or even a political figure.  They allow that other person to control their emotions.  Why?  Maybe they have never been trained to control their own emotions.  Yes, there are times that everyone is legitimately upset with certain things that are brought to their attention.  But, these things are few and not very often.  We are human and we do have human emotions.

For most of our lives we should strive to control our attitude, feelings, and outlook.  If we harbor and grow positivity in our subconscious, our mindset will be positive and our posture and way of behaving is positive.  It is hard to be otherwise.  Positive thoughts and visualizations are conducive to personal growth and success.  If you expect good, you will receive it.  Yes, I know, you’ve heard that before.  Like most things in life, you have to cultivate the seeds of success, fertilize them, water them, weed around them, trim them, and nurture your mindset to reap the rewards of your harvest.  Positivity drives positive expectations.

Your positive mindset should be anchored in success, happiness, joy, cheerfulness, accomplishment and victory.  If your mindset is looking for disenchantment, regret, discontent, dissatisfaction, failure, defeat, etc. you will seek situations that will drive you there, and reinforce your negative expectation.  Some people think this is hooey – they don’t accept it and don’t believe it.  However, there are thousands of people who have found that it works – not overnight and not in 21 days.  If you’ve spent the vast majority of your life programming your subconscious with negativity, how can you expect to override that enormous data base with positivity in just a few days or weeks?

Am I always positive?  No, there are times when I dwell on topics that are not desirable for attaining my goals.  As soon as I realize that I am focused in the wrong direction, I stop and reset my mindset.  It used to take a long time – several minutes or longer – to rid my brain of some negative influence.  With concentration and practice, it has become easier to brush those thoughts away and keep them away.

The average person is exposed to negativity – not actually exposed, but literally bombarded with negativity from friends, family, coworkers, newspapers, Internet, television, etc.  They typically retain 70-80% of it on a daily basis.  Your subconscious remembers everything it sees, hears, feels and experiences.  With practice you can dismiss a lot of that exposure to a thought of worthlessness.  I see a headline or hear someone talking about another person and I just dismiss it.  I tell myself, it’s not worth my time or energy to listen or partake in it.  I tell myself that this is worthless and let my mind categorize it as such.

The average person observes about 25-30% of things in the environment as neutral – not positive or negative.  That doesn’t leave much room for positive things being sensed on a daily basis.  You have to dismiss a lot of stuff and create your own positive world.  I read an article recently in which a researcher analyzed published academic journals from 1970 through 2000.  He categorized them as focused on joy and sadness.  It was amazing to me, but it should not have been, that over 46,000 were written on depression and related subjects.  Only 400 focused on happiness and joyfulness.  What does that tell you about our academic focus?  If the audience (we, the people) is negative, then that’s where they do their research.

Start today, with your personal response to the question, “How are you?” and begin exuding confidence and positivity.  It took me almost a month before ‘excellent, as always’ felt comfortable.  It took three or four months before I started to believe it.  I find that just saying ‘excellent, as always’ cheerfully kick-starts my attitude into high gear.  If I’m positive already, I increased that enthusiasm level.  If not, then I get it up to a level that radiates joy, happiness and encouragement to all around me.  When asked if the glass is half-empty or half-full, answer that it is totally full – half-full of liquid and the remainder is full of air.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin

Happiness – Lower Your Expectations to Raise your Happiness

I remember reading a story about the Danes being the happiest people on earth.  They are active people, generally married and healthier than their neighbors.  They live their lives in the present tense – today.  But, their expectations of the future are very low.  So, if today is better than they thought it would be yesterday, then automatically, they are happy.  That’s a difficult way to look at the world.  Expect little to nothing – get a little something – and be happy about it.

Are expectations a good thing to have?  I believe they are.  I believe that it is your expectations that separate you the norm – the 97% of Americans who remain jailed in their comfort zone.  My mentor, Myron Golden, has an excellent presentation on the constant battle between desire and expectation.  I’ve seen it several times and each time I learn something new from it.

Happiness is a result of our expectations.  Why and how, you may ask?  Happiness is the difference between our expectations and our reality.  If expectations exceed reality, then we are happy.  If not, then we are unhappy.  That is a pretty simplistic formula, but relatively accurate.  Yes, there are some other factors, but for the sake of this blog, it will suffice.

So, where does desire fit into this equation?  Desire is related to the present, not the future.  Desire is more representative of our reality – what we live in every day.  If we have it pretty good, then our desires are satisfied and our future expectations are lowered.  If our current reality is lacking, then our desire is for better and our expectations are increased.  Our desires and expectations today are dynamic; they change as our reality changes.

Today I have a desire to go to Corpus Christi, Texas tomorrow morning.  I have certain things that I want to do – they can only be done in Corpus Christi.  Because I have that desire today, I have an expectation to take that trip tomorrow morning.  If something happens which causes me to cancel the trip, my desire and expectation still remain.  We live in a world in which desires and expectations are unfulfilled on a regular basis – in many cases caused by things outside out control.

I have a medium high expectation to go to Corpus Christi tomorrow.  If I complete the trip, I will be happy.  If I do not complete the trip, I will be disappointed to unhappy dependent on the cause.  If I had control over the reason not to go, then I would be more unhappy than disappointed.  We control our happiness to a degree.  As we age our population has a tendency to lower their expectations which results in a false happiness.  Lower expectations fulfilled means happiness achieved – like the Danes discussed earlier.

I believe we condition ourselves to be consoled and assured in our comfort zones, that we don’t dare want to step outside and risk failure, disappointment or catastrophe.  Our reality muscles our desires to accept what we have because that’s what we deserve – what we’ve earned over our lifetime.  We set ourselves up unconsciously for accepting failure that has yet to be proved.  We accept the risk of failure as 100% and go into avoidance mode for greater expectations – all caused by our comfort zone’s safety and security.

Our current economy has many people out of work, or worried about being out of work.  Financial lending restrictions, diminished savings, unexpected repair or medical bills, and other personal factors impact our reality.  As such, in times like these we actually expect less.  We artificially use factors we can’t control for the most part to modify our desires and expectations; and, as a result, impact our happiness.

What is stopping you from having happiness in the face of economic uncertainty?  Your subconscious mind is leading the charge.  The fear, dread, panic, worry, anxiety, etc. impact your subconscious mind and it paralyzes your desires which typically ignite your expectations.  You have control over a lot of things, but you choose not to accept the risk.  A good buddy comes to you and says that he just got involved with this fantastic product/service and for $49.95 you can get in and make a lot of money.  The salesman alarm detonates in your subconscious mind and tells you – NO WAY!  I’ve tried this before and failed and I’m not going to allow it to happen again.

Your subconscious controls your happiness whether you want it to or not.  How do you begin changing it to increase your happiness?  You can’t do it consciously – it doesn’t work that way.  You begin with what you can control – first your attitude.  When things don’t look so depressing, miserable, hopeless or forlorn, you can make strides where others won’t take the time or trouble to do it.  Attitude is a major factor in accepting your reality, understanding that no matter what happens, it is temporary – worst case.  Your attitude will alter your desires to a higher level and cause your expectations to increase.

As Newton’s Law tells us – every object tends to remain constant in a state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.  Thinking gets the change started with attitude.  But, you have to apply a force – take an action – accept a risk – to convert those expectations into reality.  Little successes equal major changes in happiness.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin

Prosperity – Personal Prosperity Checklist

I was at an event tonight and noticed a good friend of mine pull out his checklist for that event.  We’ve been going together to events like this for years.  Most of the people who joined us were also people who attended these kinds of events over the years.  The checklist had items on it to ensure that everyone was aware of: what, when, how, etc.  In the past this information was passed on by memory – most of the time we got it right, but sometimes it was not.

I was thinking back to other things in my life that required checklists.  Obviously any kind of flying requires checklists.  There is a checklist prior to taxiing an airplane, a checklist to take off, a checklist to land, and a checklist for emergencies.  Emergencies are a unique situation.  You memorize the emergency checklist so that you can do what needs to happen instantly.  Then you pull out the emergency checklist and make sure that you covered everything on it.

I used to brief every mission I flew.  Most of the time I would tell everyone what was going to happen based on my memory.  But, when I was ‘graded/evaluated’ for a flight, I would always pull out that checklist to ensure that I didn’t leave anything out.  Success depended on everyone knowing what is required so that the mission can be done properly.  If success depended on doing what was on the checklist, why not have a personal checklist for prosperity.

So, I got to thinking.  I haven’t seen a Personal Prosperity Checklist.  I did a couple Google searches and noticed that there really isn’t a checklist for individual prosperity attainment.  This really got me thinking.  Ah, an e-book needs to be written – monetize this idea – and soon.  I extracted thoughts from 30-40 websites/articles that I visited and I have a hodge-podge of over 40 items that could be assembled into a practical personal prosperity checklist.

As I said, it’s a hodge-podge of terms that apply to anyone wanting to improve their life.  Without spending a lot of time going into the details of what is important and in what order (if that is important), I’m going to list a few now to complete this blog – and do further research to determine if this is something of value – is there a need in the market place for this material?

It’s interesting; I was talking to my dentist today about the current e-book I’m writing.  I asked him about non-prescription options that he has used and he has seen others use in their dental practices.  I told him what I was doing – writing an e-book on non-prescription options for pain management.  He told me that he has not seen something like that in the marketplace – I told him that I had not either.  I’m sure there probably is, but I haven’t come across it yet.  Plus, I’m starting at the molecular level with the biochemistry of pain and what happens in your body when a cell starts screaming out in pain.

Getting back on topic for tonight – what would I put first on my list for a personal checklist to cultivate a wealth formula – something tailored and trimmed to personal needs.  My first thought would be to put ‘Smile while reading this checklist.’  A smile automatically changes your perspective on everything.  Even if you don’t think you can do something, your smile gives you a confident feeling about it.  It’s not as hard when you smile.

Your attitude has to be correlated to match your mindset.  Many people have a poverty or prosperity mindset, but do not exhibit the attitude to go with it.  For a poverty mindset, it is easy to have a negative attitude.  For a prosperity mindset, it is difficult to have a positive attitude – it is something that requires a lot of effort.

Obviously an assessment has to be made – you need to know where you are going.  Only after you know your goal can you develop the strategy to get there, along with the milestones, and other required skills.  Assessments are difficult for most people to do if you have never done one before.

Let’s assume for a minute that you know what you want, and you know how to get there, and what skill sets are required.  What’s the next part of the equation for success?  For me, I would suggest getting a mentor.  The first mentor would be a master who has done this kind of thing over and over again.  Success would be his middle name.  The good part is that he lives very close to you – books, CDs, DVDs, YouTube, articles, etc.  Jim Rohn passed away a couple of months back.  I would place him at the top of my list to use as a mentor to get me oriented and prepared to achieve success.

Other mentors will come as you grow towards your goals.  Mentors will help when they see you have already expended the effort and need some fine tuning to adjust your course.  I used the word ‘monetize’ earlier in this blog.  You need to recognize opportunities when they arise and be able to do something about them.  I used to be stymied by various constraints with a wide range of ideas that I’ve developed over time.  But, I’ve found that these were personal roadblocks that I personally went out of my way to put in front of me to prevent me to attaining what I wanted – part of my subconscious failure training to hold me back from success.  And, it worked in many cases.

I’ve expended 900+ words in this blog already and put out a few critical thoughts for a personal prosperity checklist.  I’ll give it some more thought over the next several days and see if it makes sense to elaborate in a lot more detail for another blog.  I’m definitely going to write a book on this topic.

Choices have consequences.  Your Prosperity Professor, Red O’Laughlin