Please welcome with me a Guest post from Agota  Bialobzeskyte.

There are many really strange beliefs that are alive and kicking in our society, yet actually make no sense whatsoever.  It’s actually amazing how masses of people never question the so called common sense. Today, I’d like to invite you to take a closer look at my personal favorite amongst the incredibly stupid yet incredibly popular beliefs: that making loads of money is in conflict with spiritual growth (seriously, people, what’s wrong with you?!).

The main problem with this limiting belief is that most people who accept it never question it. They simply go through their lives believing that it’s bad to want more money, that business people are lost souls and that rich people are greedy and plain evil.

 So, what’s the result of limiting beliefs? Most people with this mindset struggle with money all their lives, accumulating more and more resentment towards anything related with money, yet they don’t realize that it’s their own beliefs that are crippling their lives. The saddest thing is that these ideas would never pass a test of critical thinking, yet most people never question them. Is there a point of struggling with money for the rest of your life because of some stupid ideas that you caught somewhere? Not really.

Money equals Freedom.

 Now, please don’t go all philosophical on me, yes, in reality your freedom depends on your state of mind, not on any external factors.

That being said, many people say that they don’t care about money at all, when the facts show that they actually care a lot. When I was working as a waitress in a metal/rock bar, I used to bring business books with me to read on quiet moments.

One day when I was reading one of those books, a fellow waitress asked are these books really interesting to me. I said yes and asked does she find them interesting, to which she replied “No. I don’t think all your life should be based around money. I don’t care about money that much.”. “Okay”, I said and continued reading a book, but what I really wanted to say was “Really? You don’t care about money and yet you work 19-hour shifts?” (yes, you’ve read it right, no, it’s not legal in my country, but it happens). This is a classic example of being delusional about the effect money have on your life: when you work 19-hour shifts in a job that you don’t really like it would be logical to accept that money does affect your life in a very  significant way.

The sad truth is that most people who claim that they don’t care about money make their decisions based on what they can afford, not on what they actually want. They work in the jobs they don’t like. They take vacations they can afford, not the ones they would really want. They buy the house they can afford, not the one they would really want. They let their kids to the university they can afford, not the best university possible. They base their decisions on money and they spend loads of time worrying about it, yet they still claim that they don’t care about money so much. Do you see the logical fallacy here?

 The main benefit of having a lot of money is not the ability to buy luxurious villas and hot cars, it’s the freedom money can give you when it comes to material things. Is there really a point in spending your precious energy focusing on things that are only slightly above of the level of a mere survival your whole life? Not really. What makes much more sense is to take time to learn whatever you need about making money and achieve financial freedom.. And then direct your energy to much more meaningful pursuits than paying your utility bills.

 Money equals Means to Fulfill Your Responsibilities

 When we become adults we gradually take on more and more responsibilities that also have financial aspects. The most obvious example is having kids. When you have kids, it’s your responsibility to provide for them as long as they need it, including paying their living expenses, their college tuition, often chipping in for their weddings, etc.

There are also emergency situations that might happen, e.g. your kids might get injured, you or your partner (or both) might die, etc. It’s not pleasant to think about it, but you have to if you consider having kids, so in case disaster would strike, they wouldn’t be left alone, poor and hungry. This is called responsibility. Sadly, most people who claim that money is not that important are completely irresponsible in this regard and their financial instability is putting not only them, but also their dependents at risk. Does that really sound very noble and spiritual?

Money equals Means to Make a Difference.

 Let’s get real here: making a lot of money and then donating it to worthy causes is one of the most effective ways to make a real difference in this world. It takes 19 cents to feed a hungry child in a third world country for a day. 19 freaking cents. How many kids you could feed with few million dollars?

How many lives you could change for the better? The reality is that there are many people with great ideas and the limiting step in almost every great project is money: almost all noble projects don’t have enough money to develop as fast as they would like to. What makes more sense: to smoke weed all day long talking about spirituality or to make it your goal to make as much money as you can so you could give it to those in need? Hmmmm, I really wonder which one would be more spiritual?.

                It’s your responsibility to becoming rich.

 We live in a world where everyone who is willing to learn and work hard for it can become rich. Most spiritual people think that it’s an inappropriate goal for someone who’s on the right path. I believe that to those of us who really want to change the world for the better, becoming rich is personal responsibility.

There’s no point in wasting your life worrying about paying your bills: this is something we should learn as soon as we can and then move on to the next level, to bigger things. People around you might think you’re shallow and that you’re a lost cause. Ignore them. Don’t let them distract you. There are too many suffering people out there that need you to become rich.

Bio:

Agota writes a blog, www.outsidethebox.lt, where she questions the common non-sense, admires compassion, courage and independent thinking and explores ways to get extraordinary results in every area of life. You can follow her Twitter ( www.twitter.com/outsidetheboxlt) :she shares great quotes, interesting links and short insights there everyday! 

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I hear someone at least once a day complaining about how broke they are or how they never have any money.  Is there any wonder why these people are broke?  Have you ever analyzed what keeps these people broke?  Do you know that being broke is more of a poverty or scarcity mindset than even a physical reality?  There are many times that these persons actually have money in the bank and still believe themselves to be ‘broke’.

The biggest obstacle to most people’s financial welfare is themselves.  They have so trained their minds to become something negative as opposed to something that supports them.  The negative mind chatter or self talk that constantly reminds them that they are working paycheck to paycheck or they are always broke no matter how much money or abundance they receive.  This is a self sabotaging lifestyle that simply in more ways than one, weakens the individuals spirit, self worth and all around well being.  What is amazing to me is that many of these same culprits of this mindset think it’s somewhat humorous that they are always ‘broke’.

The Biggest Reason that You May Be Broke

If you believe yourself to always be broke, the first thing you need to change is that negative self talk that infiltrates your mind and influences you in the wrong ways.  You want to address this chatter or self talk from the moment it enters your mind.  Instead, you should be telling yourself that “I have a Financially Free mindset” or “I live in abundance” or “I am attracting wealth” and many other affirmation possibilities.  This is the first step in getting your mind right and getting yourself out of the doldrums and see life for what it’s really worth.

Start Building Positive Net Worth

If you are reading this post, you should determine in your mind to distance yourself as far from broke as financially possible.  This means you should start working on building net worth and wealth as soon as possible.  When you have the right positive mindset guiding your financial future as well as the action that builds on your financial future, you suddenly become a beacon attracting wealth.  Get that “I’m Broke” phrase out of your vocabulary for good.  It’s not doing you any good now and it never will.  I really hope you enjoyed this post and if you liked it, make sure to sign up for the RSS feed so that you never miss a new post.  If you haven’t got a Free Copy of my ‘Golden Nuggets, 25 Absolute Steps You Need for Financial Freedom’, you can grab it here as well.

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Believe it or not but you were born with an intuition that comes in the form of a little voice from within.  Many call this your conscience, some call it your inner guidance system, but it is what you need to listen to it and discern to make a good judgement call if you act against it.

Of course it isn’t easy to listen to that inner voice because it often tells you all sorts of things that confuse you rather than clear your brain for single-minded action. In fact our mind talk can be super destructive. We evaluate what we think has happened to us and we put our own spin onto it.

It means we often go off on a tangent because of our misconceptions. When this happens to us we wonder whether we should ever listen to that inner voice. It’s been wrong so often. But it is not the voice that tells us how bad we are doing, or how dreadful life is, or how awful people are towards us that is your inner guidance system.

The self talk you hear every day is just your reactions to external happenings in life. You wonder whether the person who just rudely bumped into you had it in for you. They might not have seen you at all, maybe it was an accident. Your inner voice has a whole different story attached to that occurrence.

You think that you are having an unlucky day because you missed every train and bus and got to work late. You forgot you got up half an hour late because you overslept. These are all reactions you have to what happens in your life on a daily basis. Our self talk is sometimes so loud we can’t hear anything else anymore.

When your inner guidance kicks in is when your instinct tells you to take an option over another, just because you feel it is the right choice. It doesn’t come because you imagine your mother telling you what to do, or because you think you can’t do anything else and therefore have no choice.

Your inner guidance system is also what warns you that you are not living your life according to your life’s purpose. It constantly gives off a warning signal. That could be just a feeling of unease to a full throttle, braking sound.

Have you ever had a warning signal go off for you? A feeling of uneasiness comes about if your job isn’t quite the right thing and you are not sure whether you shouldn’t think of changing the company you are working for.

Your inner guidance or inner voice system can pass on many signals without you understanding them. Mostly you miss the message because you are not aware that what your life is like is not according to your true inner purpose.

When you find your inner purpose and start to follow it you will be amazed at how differently you feel, how ready you are to embrace all of your life’s ups and downs. It’s all a breeze.

When you’re not on purpose then everything becomes an issue. This is especially true the older you get. You find that you are less able to cope with the hurdles life throws in your way.

Usually, you will find that when you listen to that inner voice within, it’s usually right more times than it is wrong.  You can also find your life meaning by exploring what it is that you were really meant to do through your intuitions. If you enjoyed this post, let’s discuss.  Post a comment below.

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Are you really fulfilled and have a real sense of  purpose in your Life?

How do you know whether you are living according to your life purpose statement? If you don’t know what your life purpose is, how can you possible live on purpose? So either way it isn’t easy to work out how your life is going.

Let’s try some questions. If you answer no to any one, or possibly even all, of these questions you might not be living according to your life purpose.

This one is an easy one. Do you wake up in the morning excited to start the day, every day, not just week-ends or on your days off?

How about. Do you love your work and is it a career for you or a burden?

Do you often read a book or article online because it is interesting and will enrich your life and could possibly increase your knowledge for your work?

Here are a few that you might want to answer yes to and id you so might just realise you are not be on purpose.

Do you often find yourself eating because it makes you feel good, and it helps you cope better with the day? Does that mean you are overweight?

Do you look forward to your drink in the evening because it’s the only time during the day you can feel relaxed and happy?

Are you constantly looking to make more money so that you can do something else, although you have no idea what you might want to do?

How do you answer to this one.  Are you and your credit card best buddies? Do you binge shop regularly and have a cupboard full of clothes which you have only worn once, if at all?

Do you long to go on a romantic cruise because it could let you meet up with the man of your dreams?

You’re in a loving relationship but you like to look at good looking people and speculate what it would be like to have an affair with them because there’s no harm in having some fantasies?

When you go on holiday to another city and especially if traveling outside your country do you wish you could live there because things could be so much more exciting, or settled, or interesting, or lucrative?

You would love to buy a new car because you know it will make you feel great to be able to show off to other people that you’ve made it.

You live in the wrong suburb. If you could move to the one on the other side of the park it would be so much nicer. And the houses are much bigger.

So how did you go with all of these questions? Some might have made you laugh, some might have got you thinking a little. In each case there could have been a slight niggle that made you realise that you are doing a whole bunch of things to try and make yourself feel happier. These would be external things to make the internal happier and mostly they just don’t work.

Remember none of the above questions show that you are doing anything wrong. That’s not the point of the exercise. It was just for you to reflect on whether there are things you might be doing on a daily basis that make you feel better about yourself because you are not doing what makes you happy.
Taking your Life to the next level by setting Goals and Mini-Goals will definitely give you a sense of purpose in your own life.  If you liked this post, you might want to see my Post on Setting Personal Goals here.

You may also want to subscribe to my RSS Feed so that you don’t miss any of my upcoming posts.

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Are you a Millionaire Magnet? Are you a magnet for money period? A good benchmark of being rich is to still shoot for the million dollar mark. Some people don’t understand that it’s a mindset that will get you there instead of just saving your money. If you don’t have the required mindset for money, doesn’t matter if you have one hundred dollars or one million, you will find a way to burn through it. Having said that, how many wealthy people that you know out there basically started from basically nothing to building an empire worth millions? It’s usually because those persons actually determined in their hearts and mind that they would make themselves successful. When you have the right mindset, anything is possible.

Repeat Power Phrases
One of the best ways that I know how strengthening and enforcing your Millionaire Magnet mindset is to repeat key phrases daily, over and over. Repeat phrases such as “My Mind is a Magnet for Millions” or “I have a Millionaire Mind”. These are both good phrases to repeat when you are in a conscious and lucid state. Your mind will start to invoke your subconscious and your subconscious will without you even realize it, work towards your goals. This is the deepest part of thought and one of the most unexplained, but just know that it works.

Meditate and Visualize your Outcome
You should also meditate and visualize your outcome. If you are living below your potential now, see yourself as highly successful with a lot of life freedom and maybe living the financially free lifestyle. Your mind is like a supercomputer or even better a DVD player that plays the future. Do you realize there is no man made machine that can do this? Here is an example, sit and relax and close your eyes, visualize and perceive yourself on a beach in Maui on a six week hiatus in the year 2012. I bet in your minds eye, it feels real and perceived as real and you can even touch and smell things around you. That’s the power of your mind.

Practice makes Perfect
To become proficient at becoming a money magnet or even a millionaire magnet, you have to be good with money. You must respect the power of money and what it can help you accomplish in your life. Remember, money is just a tool that you need to get you from A to B. It can move you from being dirt broke to millionaire status, so you need to respect money. You also need a healthy relationship with money. Those that get thrown in jail and so forth for illegal mischief is because they had a very unhealthy relationship with money. This is usually good old fashioned GREED. You must understand that becoming a better money manager, a philanthropist and so on just makes your relationship with money that much better. Remember, no one can help others financially (charity and so forth) before helping himself as well.

I hope you enjoyed this post and look forward to your comments. If you really enjoyed this post please feel free to share with your social media community with the buttons below.

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If you want to truly become successful with your finances and wealth, you need to become a better money manager. Do you realize they are those out there that have been without much money and become rich only to lose everything again? It’s because many of these people are not good with money. To make money become a tool or steward for you, you need to learn how to really control money. Don’t be like most of the world’s population that actually becomes a slave to money.

Want to live Financially Free, Money is a tool that will get you there, want be able to travel extensively or live on your own time, again money is a tool that will get you there. Some see money as evil. They think it is the root of all evil. If that is the case, these same people should shun all their worldly possessions, give up all their money to charity and go live a monk’s life in Timbuktu. Money is not evil, it is an unhealthy love of money that becomes the root of evil (greed), because those same people will commit illegal and immoral acts just to get money. Now that we have that cleared up, now we can move forward.

To become better money managers, we need to put our money where our mouth is. We need to start respecting what money can do for us and help us accomplish in our lives. So, just why is there such an unequal distribution of wealth in the world? You have the extreme rich (more than a billion dollars net worth) that just keep getting richer as money works for them and the extreme poor and the majority of middle class types that falls between the two. If everyone that lived on this planet was a better steward of money, I am convinced that there would be better financial situations for most people on the planet.

Now, how do we become better money managers? Well, here are a few basic steps to get you there:

(1) Journal all spending. Get a cap on all spending and know where you cut unnecessary spending. Most people spend everything and know where nothing went.

(2) Pay yourself first. If you are not currently doing this, you are breaking one of the cardinal rules of money. Remember, if you aren’t paying yourself, you are just paying everyone else.

(3) Save at least 10% and more of your income always. You need to get in the habit of at least making certain 10% goes to yourself. Once you get more out of unnecessary expenses, put away even more.

(4) Learn to become an Investor. Most people are excellent spenders. How many people that you see can actually grow their money into a fortune though? That is the key and all that really matters with money.

(5) Set aside an Emergency Fund. If you can set aside at least four months income (8 months ideally), you are ahead of the game.

(6) Get Passive Income going for you. Any money that you can get working for you without working directly for it is considered passive income. A good example might be leasing a piece of land commercially and collecting every month. Get creative with this.

I hope you enjoyed this post and as usual please feel free to comment as well as share this post. Remember, to really become better money managers, we first need to respect money and know what it can help us accomplish in our lives.

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This post isn’t so much for business owners, but really for those that are employees in corporations. Although, both types, business owners and employees should be able to take away a good lesson in this post. With that, let’s get started. I don’t think I need to mention that the workplace landscape has changed dramatically in the last say 20 years. Heck, it’s changed even in the last 10 years. No longer are the jobs available like your ancestors worked where one could work in the same place for 30 years and expect a handsome pension or nest egg for retirement. These days, those that can expect a fruitful retirement are those that make things happen in their own career.

If you aren’t where you feel you should be in your career and just not making enough, it’s seriously time to look at the person in the mirror. Ask yourself what it would take to catapult your career and get you noticed. Here are 7 Easy Principles that could set you apart from fellow co-workers:

    (1) Better Attitude. Those with a better attitude towards their work are usually more favorable than those who come in and do the bare minimum for a paycheck.

      (2) In House Training. If your workplace offers some sort of in-house training that you could benefit from, you definitely need to take advantage of this.

    (3) Better Work Related, Additional Training. This could take the form of taking a few night classes at even a community or state college to get ahead. It could be simply Course Based Training or a WhitePaper course on the Internet. Maybe even a short seminar on Leadership. Whatever the training, you want a professional certificate for as an accreditation.

    (4) Commitment. When the people in a higher rank than you see your commitment, you will be a more favorable candidate for promotions and career advancement

    (5) Autonomy. In a nutshell, this simply means you taking the reins or showing responsibility and know-how to get things done without people having to breathe down your neck to get it done.

    (6) Voicing your Concerns. This is a good one. If you haven’t had a proper raise in a few years, say SO! Gather your best compliments, workmanship and other benefits that you have accomplished for the company and carry it to your boss that writes the checks. Schedule an informal meeting with them and lay your cards out and your concerns. If you believe you deserve a 10% raise, ask for it.

       (7) Set Career Goals. Of all the above principles, this is possibly the most important. To get where you’re going, you need to know where you are heading. You wouldn’t go somewhere like say ‘Siberia’ without a Map of some kind if you didn’t know where you were heading, would you? Same with your career. You must know you outcome if you are to succeed in where you want to go and what advancement in your career would do for your financial life. Example, you might want a six-figure career so that you can get to your goal of financial independence even faster. For a good reference in setting your career goals, see my Goals 101, Career and Business Goals post.

I’m sure they are a lot more that you add to the list above, and you should, but make sure to make these your core set of principles that you follow to help catapult your career. In order to get your career out of the doldrums, it’s important that you become a likable character within your organization, like a mini-celebrity. By building and forging proper relationships within your workplace, you will go places farther than those just existing in their workplace. Make it a habit to look over your financial goals daily and your subconscious will eventually pick it up and start working for you as well. Wish you the best in your career endeavors!

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I have to give full credit to David Bach of the Automatic Millionaire series of books for this, but in a nutshell he explains in depth what he calls the latté factor.  It’s the notion that an individual can save even for retirement if they even cut out some of the luxury habits we have like buying a latté coffee every morning. If we were to save that money every day, let’s say $3.50 for our example, that adds up to about about $18.00 in a given work week.  That’s $72.00 a month and $864.00 per year.  If you put that in an investment that returns even 10% per annum, that can lead to over $50,000 over the life of that 20 year investment period!  Makes you think twice about ordering that latté every morning now doesn’t it?

It’s not just for latté either, it’s for all the little habits that we have and if we learn to invest that money properly can make us a small fortune down the road.  Let’s look at some other examples.  How about little vices that people depend on like cigarettes?  If each box costs us 4.00 / pack and we smoke a pack a day (based on a normal week) that is $28.00 per week and over $1,400.00 per year!  If you continue on this path, you are literally burning in smoke over $29,000 dollars over 20 years.  What if we took that money and invested it in a good investment that yields 10% per annum?  In 20 years, we could have over $80,000 towards our nest egg or even a wealth builder!  That is the power of compounding and Future Value (FV) of money when invested in something that gives a return %. 

Friend, what I would like to ask you is to simply ask yourself this week when tempted to spend on little habits, say, “Do I really need this or can I invest this?”.  Remember our examples above and you’ll definitely start toward a life of abundance because you will know that little money can lead to big money over time.  I have kept this post short on purpose in order for you to have maximum retention on this valuable subject of building money over time.  A little money as you can see from the above example, can add up to big money over time.   Get on the Financial Freedom road map!

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