We all grow up believing that money is the green paper that we can hold in our hands. In actuality, those little green papers are the results of good habits that we form. Money is not a tangible item but instead a simple environment of good habits. I say “simple” because there is nothing complex about making lots and lots of money. The hard part is in execution. We are taught that in order to make money we need to get an education, a good job, and work until we are 66 years old. There is nothing wrong with this mindset, however, the ender of dreams is this: we are taught that our free time is our own. Once you put in your 8 hours of work for the day, then you are good to go. If you want to eat burgers, drink beer, or binge Netflix, go ahead. “It’s your off-time, you earned the right to do whatever you’d like”. And that is true. However, don’t expect to become rich with this mindset. Most people who became rich created something in their off-time. They worked their day jobs, came home, and worked on a project that made them wealthy. They also worked on their relationships just as much as their projects.
These creators did not just build something on their off-time, they were driven. They were driven to get out of the rut that they were in. They wanted to buy their freedom from a nine-to-five job. If you are saying to yourself that you don’t have any projects or ideas to contribute to the world, well you are wrong. It is proven that if you do something consistently, your chances of success are extremely high. For instance, every day I watch a Pokemon YouTuber who battles Pokemon online. I find his content amazing and I watch it every morning in the gym. He did not create Pokemon nor Youtube. Yet he is hugely successful. Another example is the stock market. If you came home every night and studied the stock market, you would eventually find pockets of wealth to invest in. Most people do not put in the required time to get amazing results from the stock market, however, you could be that person. All it takes is the right mindset and routine. And this is what separates the rich from the poor. “The main difference between the rich and the poor is how they spend their free time”.
I wasted a lot of my free time growing up in the Marine Corps. The good part was that I raised a family and grew a marriage. But as far as my free time went, I spent it on beer and video games. I had fun, but now it is time for me to become an adult. The more I learn and grow, the more wealth I can leave to my children. Also, this is knowledge, education, and information that I can pass on to my two boys. The reason why many of us start off behind the power curb is that we didn’t get the correct education on how to spend our free time. We were made into perfect employees, but we didn’t learn how to create wealth for ourselves, by ourselves. That stops now. This is the time to form great habits that will make us rich. There are five habits that we need to focus on in order to build ourselves into the Employer Mindset. They are Fitness, Health, Self Improvement, Current Events, and Relationship (in no particular order). As I break these down I will give some examples from my personal routine. You will have to form your own routines based on what personal behaviors you need to flesh out. As long as you are improving on each of your habits, you will see money materialize right in front of you.
1) Fitness– Fitness is a very important part of our physical being. In order to be strong, we need to stay strong. Everybody has varying levels of fitness, along with various methods to stay fit. I personally have a little different approach to fitness. I set my desired weight and I try to stay near it. My desired weight is 150 pounds, and it has been my desired weight since 2010. Today, December 23, 2020, I am 151 pounds. Whenever I feel (or see) myself going up in weight, I watch my diet and exercise a little more. Once I get back to where I am comfortable, I ease off the fitness a bit. I do not want to overuse my body if I don’t need to. It is important to note that most weight loss incurs from a healthy diet. However, being fit is just as important as being at the correct weight. When I exercise, it opens up my mind to new ideas and possibilities. In fact, most of my articles are dreamt up while I am running. For my daily fitness, I usually do 1 hour of cardio or run 3 miles. Some days I combine them, usually on the weekends. I like to hit the gym at 0430 and run directly after. I consider waking up early a huge part of fitness. Waking up early gives you a huge jump over the regular population of people. It tells the world that you are ready to achieve new and different things. I personally conduct physical fitness every day. I am an extremely routine-based individual. So it is actually easier for me to set the same schedule daily, then to do certain days. Think of fitness as your way to prepare your body to become rich.
2) Health– Health is different than fitness because this is more mental and diet based. What you eat is vital to your mind being able to perform at its highest levels. It took me many years to realize this. Even though I stayed at my desired weight, I did not realize how important diet was until 2015. I had a health scare (constipation) coming out of Australia. I thought that something had popped on my right side. Once I got through that, I started to really focus on what I was taking in. Now my breakfast consists of apples, grapes, and nuts and dinner is cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I am still working on something healthy to eat for lunch, but I will find something eventually. I feel great eating this food as well. I am about to turn 40 years old in two months and I do not take any pills or medicines. It is hard to create an environment of money if you are unhealthy. I do not drink nearly as much as I used to. I discovered that I was drinking out of boredom. Now that I have a blog and a Facebook group, I don’t even have time to consider drinking. I am always thinking, reading, or writing. I am not saying that I have given up drinking alcohol, smoking cigars, drinking energy drinks, or eating fast food. However, I am saying that they are novelties now. They are not the norm; they are for special occasions and when I have achieved something worth celebrating. Think of health as your way to prepare your spirit to become rich.
3) Self Improvement– There is an important distinction between education and self-improvement. Many people study for their Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in their off time. These are amazing feats, and I commend them. These degrees will definitely make people better employees. In fact, most people who study for these degrees tout that they will get advanced jobs with these advanced degrees. Good for them. However, I am not about that life. I do not need anyone telling me what to do anymore. Full disclosure, I have not taken one college course in my lifetime and I am still an employee. I have a few more years in the military, and I am off to the wild blue yonder. Self Improvement means just that, improving yourself via books, YouTube, online courses, seminars, and mentorships. You can improve yourself on anything, as long as it is productive and can make you money eventually. Hobbies are great but with self-improvement, you can learn how to monetize your hobby. For example, let’s pretend that I could sew really well. I could start a community for people who sew. As I did projects, I could record them and upload them to my group as well as YouTube. People could see my work and ask for mentorship or even buy some of the projects that I created. I could eventually open my own sewing academy, once I prove to people that it can be a lucrative business. Eventually, I could sell my academy to another younger person who could sew, but doesn’t want to build an audience from scratch. Then I could teach my grandchildren how to sew and they can repeat the same process; if they so choose. As I said, the world is full of money. Money is in abundance. Most people live a life where money is scarce. They worry about it running out every minute of every day. They are fearful of their boss and the media. Once you improve your mindset to see and feel money, it will come to you. When we first started investing in 2019, we had $700 in our investment account. I believed it would take 10 years to invest $100,000, or about the time I would retire at 30 years in the Marines. It is December 2020, and we are currently sitting at $57,000. WOW. Believe me, I am not joking about this money environment. You have to prepare your mind to see money and the money environment. You will not be able to see money with an employee mindset, you will only see your boss, job, and co-workers. You will have to learn to create money from thin air. Impossible, you say. What do you think I am doing right now? I started with a blank (digital) piece of paper and my thoughts flow unto this paper. I will post this to my group and maybe someone buys a book because of this article. I can re-purpose it into a book I write later, or I can sell it to a magazine. I can use it to make a YouTube video. I can do many things with this content that will make me money. I have created an asset! Assets produce money. It costs me nothing to produce this content, only time. Even if I only make $1 from this, it is 100% profit. That is why I say re-purpose your free time. That is how real money is made. Think of self-improvement as preparing your mind to become rich.
4) Current Events– I had to make this into its own habit. Most of the habit of current events falls under things not to do. Do not get consumed by the media. The world of news has taken over our lives and minds. Every day there is a 24-hour news cycle of death, bombings, politics, and destruction. When we are not watching the world implode, we are binging Netflix or HBO. Doing these things will lead you nowhere. Also, videogames fall into the do not do list. And I love video games. Currently, I may play 1-2 hours of video games a week. Repeat, a week. I have more important work to do, like becoming rich. However, If I truly wanted to play video games, I would need a way to monetize it. Nowadays, that isn’t that hard to do with Twitch and YouTube. However, that is not something I think is a passion of mine. Politics have become something that is dividing our communities in half. There is nothing that is on TV that is so detrimental to our health that it needs 24-hour reporting. Instead of watching news, politics, Netflix, and videogames, you will need to convert that to a more healthy diet of information. I read books, which falls into the self-improvement habit, but I also consume some media. After I read books for about an hour at night, I then focus my attention on my 4 categories of wealth. They are Retirement, Real Estate, Business, and Investing. I have websites that I go to for each of these categories and I read and save these articles for later consumption. Think of self-improvement as education and reading current events as training. Education provides you with the correct mindset and training gives you actionable step-by-step guidance. For instance, you may read a book and decide that starting a business with just yourself. Then, while reading current events, you may read about the top 10 businesses to start by yourself in 2020. The book prepared your mind, and then the article popped into your news feed. It seems like magic, but once your mind is prepared to accept more information, you be surprised at just how much MAGIC starts to happen. Think of current events as preparing your thoughts to become rich.
5) Relationships– This is a tough habit in today’s world. The world is divided between men and women, and never has the division been as deep as today. Everyone wants to be happy, but many people do not know what that is. There are so many questions about should men pay for dinner, do women need to work, should we split the finances? It is a never-ending quest to find someone who is a perfect match. As our generations start to settle down later in life, the chances of finding a soulmate decrease. We have added a layer of questions on top of an already hard scenario. The original questions were: Is he a provider? Will she make a good mother? (I am not trying to start a gender war) That was pretty much it. However, now we have added; how much do they make? Do they have student loan debt? How tall are they? Do they like to travel? What is their political affiliation? To form a good relationship habit, you will have to let it all go. Go out, be yourself, and ask yourself, am I doing everything in my power to be my best self? Just like the money environment, the relationship environment will materialize right in front of you. In fact, if you surround yourself with happily married (or dating) people they will usually find good people for you. Most times, people disregard people’s suggestions, but that is the best way to meet people. Someone has already vetted someone else for you. Remember, let it all go. If you are already in a committed relationship, ensure you treat that person as the center of your universe. Do not take them for granted. Create habits that ensure that you remember how important they are to you. Habits such as date nights and picking up flowers. I have been married 15 years, and there is nothing like being with the one you love. We started out as two broke kids in our twenties. Now we have accomplished so much together. We will become rich together and give our children and grandchildren all the knowledge of relationships and money that we have learned. That’s my message to the world. Relationships are worth it! They are the best asset you came build because they build more assets! They are worth the hard times. Now Kris and I are getting to the good part. In 5 years, I’ll probably be retired (age 45). We can then wake up and practice our 5 habits together. We can look back at where we started and be proud that we didn’t let the world get to us. Think of relationships as preparing your soul to be rich.
There you have it. The 5 habits that will make you rich. They are kind of vague because how you focus on each category is your own. Find something that works and keep doing it until things start to materialize. Health, Fitness, Self-Improvement, Current Events, and Relationships will prepare you to see a world of love and money. It will make you rich in both. Practicing these habits prepare your spirit, body, mind, thoughts, and soul to be rich.
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Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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