2 questions you need to ask yourself to change your life.

 

If we want to change our life, we have to first ask ourselves two questions: 1. What to remove? and 2. What to add?

 

1. What to remove?

 

You need to ask yourself, “ What do I need to remove from my life that is not helping me grow and achieve the things I want?” For example, it could be certain people that are bringing bad influences into your life. There is a saying in Spanish that says “dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres” which means, tell me who you hang out with and I will tell you who you are. It is just a fact that we begin to think, speak, and act like the people we associate with; however, sometimes these people are not necessarily the best influence in our life. This is a hard fact because sometimes it is people we have known for a long time or even worse, members of our own family. Donald Trump said that on the way to the top one must be prepared to lose friends and family.  We have all experience this, people do change, how many of us have lost friendships with people we were really close with, and now we have no idea where they are or what they are doing. Also, we  need to remove from our life habits that are not contributing anything to our life. One of the worse habits, in my opinion, is Television.

 

67% of wealthy people watch 1 hour or less of television per day vs. 23% of poor people

 

6% of wealthy people watch reality TV vs. 78% of poor people

 

Some interesting statistics to think about don’t you think?

 

 

2. What to add?

The second question we have to ask ourselves is what to add? This is similar to the previous question because we have to ask ourselves “what people and habits do I have to add to my life in order to grow? What people are positive thinkers and bring a good influence in my life? We cannot hang out with people who are complainers and whiners because, with time, we will eventually begin to act and turn into them. Furthermore, we need to create habits that are good for us, habits that have worked for other successful people. If you want to be successful, do what successful people do, if you want to be rich do things that rich people do, if you want to be skinny do things that skinny people do.  This also works vice versa, such as, if you want to be poor do what poor people do; in business this is called best practices. Lastly, we need to start the habit of creating goals and setting up a plan for achieving them. Goals are what propel us forward, goals are what keep us moving; goals keep us grinding through the ups and downs of everyday life.

 

67% of wealthy people write down their goals vs. 17% of poor people

 

84% of wealthy people believe good habits create opportunity luck vs. 4% of poor people

 

81% of wealthy people maintain a to-do list vs. 19% of poor people

 

More interesting statistics to think about.

 

This week think about what you need to remove from your life and what you need to add in order to keep growing.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

Are you happy?

 

What is happiness? Happiness is a state of mind; it is a conscious choice. Happiness is about the here and now, not about the when and where. How many people do you always hear saying “When I have this I will be happy,” or “When I do this I will be happy,” or “When I get that job I will be happy.” Is not on the when, is on the now. Now I have this, now I’m thankful for that. The best antidote for unhappiness is gratitude. It is finding the right balance between the things we have and the things we want. It is realizing that the things that are worthwhile in this life are truly free; love, friendship, and family. Our culture is so materialistic that we even tend to place our own self-value based on the things we have. We believe that by having more stuff we will satisfy our appetite for happiness, and in reality we will never reach that without gratitude. Maturity, sometimes is just realizing all the wonderful things you have around you. Realizing the opportunity you have just by being in this country where we have freewill. Realizing that you are healthy, realizing that you have people that care about you, realizing that you have the opportunity to be the person you desire to be. There is a story about a guy who did not have shoes, and all he would do is complain. He complained that the floor was too hot, he complained that his feet were full of blisters and scratches; all he would do all day was just complain, until finally one day walking down the street he saw a man with no feet; and that day he changed his perspective in life. As I said, the antidote for unhappiness is gratitude; in addition the antidote for complainers is also gratitude. Take time this day, and be thankful for what you have. Just like that guy in the story you might not have shoes, but at least you have your feet.

 

 

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What are you entitled to?

Plain and simple, we are not entitled to anything. One huge problem in our culture and our society is that we are breeding kids and now young adults that are growing up with an entitlement mentality. They believe someone owes them something. They believe that you don’t need to put something in the equation to get a return. They are like a farmer that expects a big harvest without planting a seed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to see this infecting our culture. You see it does not work like that, you can’t say to your boss “ I will start getting to work on time, when you give me that raise,” that is ridiculous. We are still in America, which was built on capitalism, where you can work as hard as you want and as longest you want to reach your goals; never forget that. At the end of the day you have the choice to better your life; you decide when to wake up, you decide whether or not to read, you decide who to associate with, you decide how to dress, you decides how to spent your money, you decided your attitude. YOU, YOU, YOU. You are the one that makes all these decisions and you don’t deserve a single penny, unless you INTENTIONALLY work your butt off to earn it. Nobody falls into success; it is not an accident, the bottom line is that we all need to pay the price to win. The question is: are you willing to pay it?

 

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I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on

 

We all need somebody to lean on right? That’s what the lyrics of the song, “Lean On Me” say, and I agree with this important principle, which we all need to understand if we want to change our culture. I decided to write on this particular principle because this week, I received a couple of compliments on my blog. The compliments really meant a lot to me because I knew that someone was taking their most precious resource, time, and actually dedicating it to read some of my written thoughts. Most importantly, however, I was really happy that I got another mind thinking. I believe that even if you change one mind, then you are a success. Not only did their words encouraged me to keep on writing this blog, but also they where a form of support. You see, sometimes what you just need in your life is that support; someone to lean on. Usually, you know exactly what you need to do, but sometimes you don’t have that support. You don’t have encouraging words, like, “Yes you can!” “You can do it!” or “I will be here for you.” As a culture, a lot of the time we tend to be not very supportive of one another. As I have expressed before, we always seem to be in a competition, it’s always about who makes the most money, who has the best car, who has the best kids, who has the most friends, or who has the better looks. Believe me, I have had these competitive thoughts before, I am not going to lie, but I’m trying each and every day to intentionally change that…and you know what? It is working! Not only am I having greater and more positive results in my life, but I’m also being a positive influence and a type of support to others. One important lesson to learn is that when you give support and help others achieve their goals, then through the principle of reciprocity, they in turn will help you achieve yours.

 

I HOPE THIS BLOG IS A TYPE OF SUPPORT IN YOUR LIFE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING.

 

Together we are stronger.

 

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GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

 Today ask yourself, what is my number one financial goal?

The best answer I have heard to this question comes from John Maxwell, when he stated, “My goal is not how much money I can make; it is how much money I can give .”  One of the most satisfying things we can do with money is to give; think about it, have you ever given even a tiny amount of money? How many times did the action of giving truly come from your heart? Do you remember how good it felt? There is nothing that compares to that feeling. I heard a story about a very wealthy man that took his family out on a $35,000 dollar cruise; after he got back from the cruise, he went to a low income community and gave away $50,000 dollars worth of bicycles. That man said the cruise was a lot of fun, that he and his family visited the most beautiful beaches in the world, but despite this magnificent cruise, what was most gratifying to him, was seeing the smiles of the kids when he would hand them those bikes. You might think or say to yourself, well, I wish I had $50,000 dollars to give away, but unfortunately I have my own financial issues; trust me when I say we all have our own financial issues, but you don’t have to wait to be rich to give, you can start to give now! I used to think: when I’m rich I will donate, when I’m rich I will give. But why wait?  However, you do have to remember to give from a full cup; meaning that, obviously, if you are in a tight budget situation then you can’t really donate money, but you most definitely give in other ways, for example, give time, friendship, kind words, knowledge, or anything you consider that you are wealthy in. I, myself, do not have these huge amounts of money to give away either…..but I will one day, so in the meantime I stick to smaller amounts. The crazy thing is that God will give us what he knows will pass through us. We have to be a river; if we are getting blessed with money then, like a river, the money has to flow through us. Lastly, I’m beginning to understand the power of the law of giving. What is the law of giving? The more money we give, the more money we get. It might sound counter intuitive at first but, trust me, it works. I mean, if you want love, give love, if you want friendship, give friendship, if you want respect, give respect. So it is a no brainer that if you want money,  well….give money.

 

For it is in giving that we receive 

-St Francis of Assisi

 

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Keep growing, keep looking forward!

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

 

Are you disciplined?

Today, after a long day at work, I kicked my feet up on my bed and was about to turn on the TV to relax, which would mean breaking my commitment to 0 hours of TV watching during the week. Ignoring temptation was hard; I had a long day and I just wanted to watch some TV and relax. However, I was disciplined enough to not break my promise and instead I started writing this blog. This blog is about exemptions and discipline. We all have certain things we want to be disciplined on; however, sometimes we try to make exemptions and make ourselves believe that there is a legitimate excuse for breaking certain promises or goals. We have to understand however that if we do an exemption then it will just lead to future exemptions, and this will ultimately delay or stop our goals. The first time I heard about this concept was listening to a podcast by Zig Ziglar.  In the podcast, he spoke about how exemptions will kill you and that no matter what; we always have to be disciplined. Ziglar gives an example in which he had committed himself to a jog every morning at 5:30 am; however, the previous night he had gone to bed a 4 o’clock in the morning. Ziglar said that he debated with himself whether to get up at 5:30am or sleep in. Ziglar says that his body, mind and every fiber of his being  were telling him to sleep in; HOWEVER, he had made a commitment so therefore, he decided to get up and go for the run. Was it a horrible run? Yes. Did he feel really crappy running? Yes. Did he wish he was sleeping like the rest of us? Yes. Did he have a horrible day cause of the lack of sleep? Yes. Nevertheless, he stuck with his commitment and you bet he was in bed already at 8 p.m. that follwing night. Ziglar claims that this was one of the most important decisions he has ever made in his life. He stayed disciplined; he stayed committed based on principle. You see, sometimes we make one exception, then the following week we make another exception, then another, and so on, and as I mentioned before what happens is that we end up breaking our commitment. Sometimes the problem does not even have to do with making an exemption; the problem is that we like to make excuses. As a culture we have excuses for everything. We love to justify our every move and make excuses. I mean, how many of us out there have not tried a diet or a workout plan? And I know that if you are like me, we tend to make exemptions all the time. I’m sure we have made comments like, “It will only be for today,” or “It’s a special occasion, I can eat whatever I want,” or “I don’t have time to go run,” or “I’m tired.” In my opinion, none of those really qualify for legitimate reasons to make any exemption; they are just bunch of excuses. The solution oftentimes is to just be disciplined in our lives. Discipline is tough, and we usually learn discipline from our parents, school, and culture. We must admit, some of us are not very well disciplined; and we all have areas in our lives we wish we were more disciplined in. In my opinion, the best discipline is self-discipline. It is the discipline we intentionally follow, because of principle.  You have to be disciplined with your goals, you have to be disciplined in your relationships, you have to be disciplined at your work, you have to be disciplined with every aspect in your life. So the next time you are going to break a commitment, ask yourself: is this really a legitimate exemption or is it just an excuse?

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CONFORMITY

 

Conformity is a disease that is crippling our culture. If we become conformist, we don’t grow, we don’t plunge forward. How can we conform and settle with what we already have when we are living in America, the land of endless of opportunities; the land with the greatest success this world has ever known. I believe that sometimes we do not possess enough courage to pursue our dreams, simply because we have become conformist, which in my opinion is truly sad. Have you ever noticed people that have conformed to their current situation or a particular lifestyle, and because of this, have put their dreams on hold? In your case it could be a family member, a friend, maybe even yourself; you know they have so much potential! but they are not doing anything with it. I think one of the problems in our culture today is that we don’t think big, we expect too little of ourselves. I have heard a saying that we need to aim high towards the moon, because even if we don’t land there, we will still land amongst the stars.  We should never conform, let’s quit that aspect of our culture because there is always something better, there is always a new project, there is always a new goal, a new book to read, a new person to meet, a new idea to execute. There are no limits, so keep striving, keep growing, and lets encourage others to do the same.

 

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Job Dissatisfaction

 

80 percent of Americans are not happy with their job; that means that 8 out of 10 people in the American workforce would rather be doing a different job. That is an extremely high statistic of job dissatisfaction. Why is that though? Why do we have lawyers and doctors that hate their jobs, even though they are well paid careers? I think one of the reasons has to do with our culture, which emphasizes that we know what we want to be, since a very young age. Specifically in college, we are forced to pick a major when  most of us do not even have a clue where we want to go in our lives. Why do you think people change their majors so often? During college almost every person changes their major at least once. How many times have you asked yourself even now, what is it that I really want to do? I do not understand how at the age of 18 we are supposed to have figured out what we want to do for the next 45 years! You can’t even have a drink yet, but you have to know what job you want to do for the next four decades! That is ridiculous! At that age, our brain is still developing, we, as persons are still maturing, and the majority of us do not really know the right direction for our life yet. So what happens? You pick a major, get your degree and then you realize this sucks! You find out you really like to do something else, however you are stuck with a degree in a different field.  Sometimes, even worst, you are stuck with a degree that you have no idea what you can do with. I mean there are those people that since age 5 they knew exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up, and that’s great; But for the most of us, usually at that age most girls wanted to be princesses and little boys wanted to be ninjas; personally I wanted to be an airplane pilot when I was 5.

 

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Hispanic and Conservative?

I don’t know if you have heard, but the immigration reform bill has passed the Senate overwhelmingly 68-32. The bill will now go the House of Representatives where many believe will face an uphill battle. A couple of weeks ago, I read this article on the Wall Street Journal about the immigration reform and the GOP. The article mentioned, as we all should know, that socialist Obama defeated Romney because of us (i.e. the Hispanic voter). Obama killed Romney 71% to 27% in the Hispanic vote. This really touched base with the Republicans, so they began re-evaluating their whole party for the sole purpose of becoming more attractive to Hispanic voters. Their strategy during the past campaign with Romney, as I viewed it, was basically,  “we don’t need the Hispanic vote. We can win the White House without them.” Well, as we all witnessed, they couldn’t and they won’t if they continue with that strategy.  With the Demographics shifting in America, the Republicans are going to need us to win back Washington.  The question now becomes, do the Republicans really need an immigration reform to do this? For example, the article mentioned that there are really no guarantees that the Democratic vote will increase with the reform or that the conservative message of the GOP will appeal to us. Furthermore, the article brought up an interesting statistic that only about 50 percent of Hispanics that are eligible to vote, actually vote! And guess what else? Usually, that other 50 percent that does not vote are the political conservatives, which is what I consider myself to be. Me, personally, I don’t want government involvement; this is America— a country that grows on capitalism; eat or be eaten! I thought this statistic was really interesting because, as I mentioned before, I was part of that 50 percent! — Hispanic? Yes. Eligible to vote? Yes. Conservative? Yes. VOTED? NO! It seems to me that if the republicans want to win the next election, they need to focus on finding the Hispanic conservatives, and somehow getting us to vote.

In the article, the question “what is suppressing the Hispanic turnout?” was also asked. In other words, why aren’t we going out to vote on Election Day and getting our “I voted” sticker? The author’s answer: conservative politicians are not addressing the issue we want and care about! Which is CARE FOR THE POOR.  His solution is that the GOP should make a real conservative move at helping the poor and the needy. Of course we want care for the poor, who doesn’t? But I don’t think caring for the poor will entirely solve the voting turnout problem; there are other factors that can explain both the behavior of liberals and conservative Hispanics; factors that have to do with our culture and the crappy governments we have in our countries of origin. For example, Liberal Hispanics do want government programs; where we come from, there is a desperate need for the government to interfere with certain policies that will allow trade and other certain subsidies. However, the government is so messed up in our own countries of origin, that it does absolutely nothing to help. Because of this, it then becomes a love-hate relationship; we love the government one second and we hate it the next. We, however, have to change this mentality; we cannot come here, to the United States, and ask for all this Government help like healthcare, food stamps, and financial aid and expect it all to be simply handed to us! Not only that, but the very next second, we usually turn on the government, try to take advantage, and screw the government any way we can. It doesn’t work!

On the other hand, conservative Hispanics are simpler; and I might just be able to explain why we don’t vote. As mentioned before, we come from countries with a horrible government that does absolutely nothing but screw its own people. In our countries, no matter who we vote for or what they promise, it will always be the same clown running the circus; therefore, we lose interest in voting and decide that if we are going to better our own lives, it will be through our own sweat and hard work! We decide to ignore the government and instead of asking for free stuff, we work hard, get money, and buy what we need ourselves… So my goal is this: I don’t care if we vote democrat or republican, all I want is for our culture to change and stop thinking that the government is here to bail us out. Stop collecting money from government programs that you don’t legitimately need. Lets change our culture and forget about what the government can do for us, but instead think of what we can do for ourselves.

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The only person you will ever have to beat

Today, I am going to retell you a story about a boy that I read. So this boy enters a race, but he had a crippling disease, so the boy had a particularly difficult time completing the race. Every so often the would fall. Every time he fell, he would hurt himself and get bruised. He, however, would get back up and keep going; fall after fall he would keep getting up and continue toward the finish line. The rest of the runners finished way ahead of him, but he kept on going. After all the runners had finished the race, all of them, inspired by the boy’s will, came back and helped him until he finished the race.

Now, what does this story teach us? What’s the moral behind the story? You might guess its something like perseverance or to never give up, right? Well, the underlying and important lesson to learn here is that the boy was not competing against the other runners; the boy was competing against himself. The boy was only trying to beat his previous race time.  You see, when you are not competing against anyone else, everyone wants to help you. When we are not competing against somebody else, that other person is more willing to give you a helping hand, such is the example with the runners, who came back to help the boy finish the race and beat HIS previous time.  The runners came back to help him, only after they had finished the race. This is how we humans work; when we don’t feel threaten or in a competition, we will gladly help the other person. Our culture, sadly, is filled with jealousy and envy. We are always jealous of other people, want to do better than them, and hope things don’t go as well for them. Rather than helping each other, we hold each other back. I believe we can change all that. Like I said, let’s help each other; let’s stop competing against our brother, sister, cousin, friend, neighbor or whoever. Instead of focusing on beating someone else, lets compete and beat ourselves. Lets keep pushing forward and beating our previous accomplishments. Let’s get up every morning and say this day is going to be better than yesterday. Implement this in every aspect of your life, school, family, or work. For example, if you work in sales, don’t say to yourself “I am going to beat so and so,” instead say, “I’m going to beat myself today.”  Beating ourselves should be the driving force.  You see, the thing is, that when we compete against ourselves, we grow. We become better. There is no need to compete against each other if we work to compete against ourselves everyday.  Only then will we win and gradually reach all the goals we want to accomplish.

 

Thank you for reading and your time!