The Quality of Life Blog
Mark & Jack: Principle #4 - Believe In Yourself
September 23, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
This is the 4th week in my series, Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Principles, my quest to master the Success Principles as written by Jack Canfield in his book of the same name. Last week’s blogs were about getting what you want and my approach to helping people create a Living Wealth Plan. If you didnt read it, check out how I applied this in my own life and some tips on how it can help you to be successful.
This week’s Principle is Believe in Yourself. I have been listening to Wayne Dyer’s latest audio book, Excuses Be Gone (recommended). It mentions another book called The Biology of Belief and how establishing a positive mental position for your intentions at some point goes beyond the thinking and starts to influence your actual cellular biology.
Heady stuff … I believe it. And, as we are discussing, that is the first step. Someone said the same thing about the Law of Attraction: you can either not believe in it and it will act on you without your participation (I prefer “full attention”) or you can believe in it and have it work for you.
At the end of the day, what is wrong with more positive thinking? Decide what one thing you want more in life right now. Financial stability is popular. To be a ranked USTA tennis player. To have self confidence to stand up to a bullying coworker. Put it into words and stand in front of the mirror, looking yourself in the eye and repeat the affirmation over and over, until you feel energized (or someone comes in and wants to know what’s wrong).
After awhile, I find that I cannot help but feel better. “I will be a million dollar a year public speaker in 3 years. I am knowledgeable, funny and helpful and 1000s of people will benefit from hearing what I have to say about being wealthy.”
That’s it - I am heading to the mirror right now. What are you waiting for?
More on Getting What You Want: The Living Wealth Plan
September 13, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Continuing with my exploration of Jack Canfield’s Success Priniciples in my series: Mark & Jack.
As you may have noticed, it’s not working out to one a week either…so what? When I work though each of these principles and figure out what they mean to me and how I can integrate my expereinces into what I teach others, THEN I move on.
Last time time I broke the different areas of our existence (ya know … life?) into 9 areas, physical, mental, financial, etc. (Mark & Jack post No. 6) to be used as categories for goal setting, etc. You may have 5 or 16 or you might like 9. It don’ matter tah me … do your own thing.
Set goals in each of these areas, implement an action plan (a HUGE factor in success … some of us are AWESOME at making To Do Lists and never finishing) and move on to the next fun thing. Some of these can be brief. A Physical goal for example might be “exercise 4 times per week” and/or “weigh 175 lbs. by Dec 31 2009″).
Could be complex too as you figure out your financial goals for different phases of your life. I actually recommend this, SPECIFICALLY for financial goals. If you say, “I want financial independence by age 48″, that is not specific. It is much more realizable to look at the next 30 days, the next 6 months, the range of 6 to 24 months, 2 years to 5 years, etc. and identify things like net worth, cash flow, debt, hard assets, etc. for those time frames.
It’s OK to start with, “$2.5M liquid net worth by age 48″ but you will have to break that down to an action plan that is starts in immediately. Then, and this is the good part, you tie that into the other aspects of your Living Wealth Plan and figure out where that monetary wealth is coming from (vocational), what you need to do to get to it (mental, realtional) and who you have to be (personal, spiritual) to get there.
Someone once said that the best thing about becoming a millionaire is not the million dollars but the type of person you become along the way.
Now that’s a plan.
Be Thankful For the Wealth You Have
September 11, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
A short note on the true nature of wealth…
8 years ago today I was sitting on an airplane in San Jose, CA when they annonunced a short delay.
Then they announced an air traffic control hold on all take offs.
Then they asked us to get off the plane.
When we got back into the terminal, the world had changed forever.
Wealth is not measured solely in monetary terms. Today, remember to be grateful for what you have (that you even have a 401K or other assets to complain about puts you in a small % of people on Earth). My grandma used to say that any day on the right side of the ground is a good day. Today, tell someone… anyone … that you appreciate them. It will make them feel good. Might make you feel good too!
Cheers to your wealth!
CAN You Decide What You Want? Sure You Can ….
September 6, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
The Mark & Jack series continues. This week I am helping you to figure out what you want (and dont want as it turns out).
What I do - and what I teach others - is to break things down into the different areas of their life that are important to them. In my book, The Wealth Manifesto, I use these as the different categories of wealth (or wellbeing) in your life. These are the ones I use (you may have different ones):
- Health and fitness (physical)
- Learning (mental)
- Relationships (relational)
- Service (charitable)
- Self-esteem / Self-worth (personal) Read more
Mark & Jack: Principle #3 - Decide What You Want
September 2, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
This is the third week in my series, Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Principles, my quest to master the Success Principles as written by Jack Canfield in his book of the same name. Last week’s blogs were about being clear why you are here and finding significance and meaning in your life. It can get pretty philosophical if you allow yourself to go there but can come down to a few simple questions if you allow that instead. If you didnt read it, check out how I applied this in my own life and some tips on how it can help you to be successful.
This week’s Principle is Decide What You Want. What DO you want? Aladdin’s lamp type question: if there were no limitations on your asking, what would be on your list?
“If they granted you one final wish, would you ask for something, like another chance?”
- Steve Winwood, fr. The Low Spark of High Heeled BoysUnderstand one thing: this is one of the most important things in your life for you to decide. Consider this:
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If you dont know, who does?
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If you dont say, who will?
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If you dont put these things (what you want) in front of you as goals, values, objectives, dreams … whatever you want to call WHERE I AM GOING TO TAKE MY LIFE, how do you think you are going to get there.
And the other thing that I have found is that it is harder than you think. Next time I’ll post some of what I have learned in doing this in my own life and how you can make some progress on this in your life.
While I am thinking about it, here is one of my favorite quotes on this subject:
Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly… “Would you tell me,
please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Quality of Life According to Mark - Part 1
January 30, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Since this blog is (often) about Quality of Life, how to get there, how to stay there and how to pay for it, I figure a blog or two about that specific subject would be worthwhile.
I look at Quality of Life as fulfillment (satisfaction, contentment, being at one with … whatever you want to call it) in all the dimensions of who you are. If that sounds like the usual self-help blathering woo woo talk, let me be more concrete:
- If you exercise regularly and dont eat like you’re some kind of an idiot that hasn’t read anything about what’s in a good diet in the last 20 years (eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables and avoiding excessive sugar, alcohol, fast food, saturated fats etc. ), you have quality in the physical dimension/aspect of your life. You have physical health/well being/wealth.
- If you are able to turn off the chattering voice in your head where your ego allows you get offended and take personally what people say about you, causes you to feel inferior, insignificant, etc., you have quality in the personal dimension/aspect of your life. You have personal/well being/wealth. Read more
IRS Chief Doesn’t Pay Taxes, Why Should You?
January 29, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Think about this for a minute, the new head of the IRS, Treasury Secretary Timothy Giethner did not pay his Social Security and Medicare taxes for 2001-4, when he was a senior official at the International Monetary Fund (the IMF does not withhold taxes for its American employees).
He (Geithner) ultimately paid a total of more than $48,000 in back taxes and interest. Note of course that part of this (why not all?) was paid ONLY AFTER HE WAS AUDITED in 2006 and the rest last November.
Note 2: “the rest last November” could very well have been after he got the call that he was on the short list for Obama’s cabinet.
I can see the To Do List now: 1) Clean up skeletons in closet. 2) Pay back taxes 3) Convince Congress is was an oversight 4) fix the economy 5) etc.
I have an idea: let’s ALL stop paying our taxes. Everyone refuse to send in their returns. I suppose if you are owed money you would want to get a refund (interesting that they call it a “tax refund” when it was your money in the first place). What are they going to do … come after ALL of us?
Remember Howard Beale in the movie Network? He played the TV guy that exhorted everyone to open their windows and yell: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”
Why aren’t we doing this now? What is going on in our government is lunacy. Our future Quality of Life is being jeopardized by what is going on.
So, what are you going to do?
Quality of Life Daily Nov 11 08
November 11, 2008 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
The purpose of this blog in the broader context is to augment my primary website (www.MarkRafter.com) as a place people can come to learn more about my philosophy of wealth, developing their own Inner Expert, personal mastery and find other resources (websites, articles, products, insight and perspective) about increasing their quality of life.
To that end, there are tons of other people out in cyberspace (do people still use that term?) blogging about similar topics. I check out lots of other sites on a nearly daily basis and am going to start doing a nearly daily entry here to provide my readers with links to those blog postings and authors that I think are worth reading. I’ll weed out the crap and blatant product-selling copy so you can sample the writers that I feel are offering the most value. As an expert in the area of identifying and monetizing individuals’ expertise, I don’t Read more
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