Mind Power Mastery: Time to Change Your Mind

This is all very good and well, but how exactly do you go about changing your mindset? How do you take back control, reclaim your happiness and start living a fulfilling and inspiring life again? The thing to do is to diagnose the problem. What exactly is wrong with your mind, to begin with? And how can you fix those issues? Well, not to alarm you, but there’s probably a lot wrong with your mind.

Don’t worry though: it’s fairly common and it’s very much a sign of the times. I can guess that you aren’t completely happy with where you are right now. Maybe you don’t like who you are right now. I know this because you’re reading this article. If what you’re doing right now is working for you then great! But if it’s not, or if it could be working better, then something needs to change.

Here are some starting points that can help you see precisely what you might need to change.

1 Responsibility

The first problem that many of us have is that we don’t take responsibility for our actions and we don’t want to take responsibility for our actions. Now we all know people who don’t like taking responsibility – they will blame others and they will make excuses for what they’ve done. These are the people with the external locusts of control that we have already discussed.

But while this might seem like an irritating problem for people around them, the reality is that this is a much deeper issue that affects them more than it does anyone else. Because a complete refusal to accept responsibility means that you also reject your own autonomy and your control. If you believe that nothing is your fault, then you also really can’t take credit for anything that goes well.

Moreover, it means that you don’t have any power over your life and it means that you can’t choose to change things.

It’s not up to you, it’s up to chance!

It gets worse too. If you are too used to avoiding responsibility, then chances are that you will avoid taking responsibility for other things in your life too. That means you’ll avoid making commitments to people, which might make you feel ‘free’ but ultimately means you get left behind as those around you settle down into relationships and find fulfilling careers.

It means you’ll put yourself forward for fewer tasks in the workplace – at least those tasks that have any major consequences. And if you aren’t responsible for large amounts of money, then you can’t expect to get paid large amounts of money either.

Being afraid of responsibility will even make you less impressive, decisive and confident in a day-to-day scenario. When someone asks you to make a decision, you won’t want to because you won’t want to be responsible for what happens if you get it wrong.

And unfortunately, life has made it all too easy for us to learn this lack of responsibility. We are sheltered by so much technology and for the most part, life has become much easier. Our childhoods have also become extended to a massive degree and especially in the current generation of youths.

These days many of us will stay at school until we are 18 and will then attend college for 3, 4 or 6 years after that depending on the number of qualifications we obtain. Throw in a gap year and sometimes ‘finding our feet and many of us don’t begin our careers until we’re in our mid-to-late-twenties.

This was exacerbated by the economic crash of the last decade. Many people leaving college struggled to find work, which left them without workplace responsibilities and very often still living with their parents. Generations previous were likely married homeowners with children at this point.

And it’s hard to ditch this mentality. It’s hard to stop being a perpetual child. And while there are positive sides to this (it’s good for creativity, for dreaming and for enjoyment in the moment), ultimately life will catch up and we won’t be prepared. We are too soft mentally to cope with the challenges that will come our way. We’ve lost the ability to be decisive, strong, action-takers.

What can you do to fix it? We’ll explore this in more depth in some of the other reports but the key to acknowledge is that you must learn to accept the possibility of a less-than-perfect outcome. Accept that there will be times when things go wrong and it’s your fault.  And when that does happen, be willing to put your hand up and admit it. That’s what it means to be an adult. And that’s what will give you the strength to start taking more chances and making more bold decisions.

#2 We Care Too Much What Others Think

Ultimately, number one comes down to doing away with fear. This is another topic we’re going to address more over the coming reports but for now let’s hone in on one very specific example of fear, one very specific cause. That is that we care too much about what others think.

This is something that occupies a lot of our thoughts for many of us and something that can actually be quite tiring. Many of us will simply not do something if we think it is going to make us look unusual. If we think it will elicit stares.

Not only that but caring too much about what others think is what makes it so hard for us to take responsibility for things: we don’t want to seem to be weak or to lose the trust or respect of other people. Do you know what the biggest irony of this is? It is the refusal to take action and take responsibility that actually makes people lose respect. This is what makes us appear weaker.

Many of us also struggle to go after the things that we want in life because we are too busy worrying about pleasing others. We’re so busy saying yes to invitations that we don’t really want to go to and spending money on things that we think we should own, that we don’t have the resources left to spend on things that really matter to us. And this of course greatly limits what we are capable of and the quality of our lives.

Now I’m not telling you to forget other people entirely and to become an ass. That’s certainly not going to improve your life!

But learn the subtle difference:

• Care if other people are happy


• Don’t care what other people think of you

This is the most heroic mindset because it means you’ll do kind things for people without even telling anyone and even be willing to make yourself look foolish. But at the same time, you’ll be much happier because you won’t be living up to the expectations that you believe other people to have.

You’ll be able to take more responsibility for yourself and you’ll have one less huge thing causing you stress.
So how do you make the switch? It is easier said than done of course but the key to getting started is to stop holding yourself to the standards of others and to start holding yourself only to your own standards. Judge yourself on your own terms and by your own code of conduct.

3 We Are Impulsive and Reactive

Perhaps the biggest symptom of modern life is just how badly impulsive and reactive we have become. And this really is something that has been exacerbated by modern technologies and convenience. Did you know that our attention span has measurably deteriorated over recent decades?

The reigning view is that this is caused by time spent on the internet. When we read a blog post we can skip across the headlines and the bullet points and then stop reading. Often we’ll get our information from YouTube or Twitter – which is limited to only 140 characters! When we find the piece of information we want, we can close the tab and search for the next thing.

It will be there in seconds! We’ve become very good at quickly skimming and assimilating information but we’ve trained ourselves out of sustaining our attention and concentrating. And this is then made a lot worse by all the other things vying for our attention and all the other immediate gratification we get. We have all the food, all the entertainment, all the gratification we could possibly need right at our fingertips.

Much of it is free. And much of it can be served up in seconds depending on your internet speed. Adverts are designed with bright colours and attractive faces to grab our attention. There is noise everywhere. And thus we have become incredibly reactive. Every one of these distractions that leads to rewarding will trigger a dopaminergic response. Eating a sweet, loading up PornHub, playing a computer game, watching a YouTube video.

This reinforces the same pathways in the brain that are present in addicts. And it completely undermines our ability to control our attention and to decide what we want to look at. How we want to behave. So, when we sit down to work towards a massive deadline, it should come as no surprise that the first thing we do is check Facebook. And make tea. And grab a snack.

How do you get out of this rut? There are a few ways and again, we’re going to delve deeply into all of this. But one of the simplest fixes is to try meditation. Meditation teaches us to take conscious control of our mind, to be more at the moment and to avoid distractions. This can help us to become incredibly more disciplined and focused and can certainly do away with a lot of procrastination and impulsivity.

4 We Are Lazy and Tired

The other big problem that prevents us from achieving what we want and that causes a whole lot of unhappiness is laziness. Most of us know what we should be doing but we lack the effort to do it. When given a choice, we will take the easier route. In the short term, this is great. It means you get to spend the evening on the couch with a bag of chips watching your favourite trashy TV.

But in the long term, it means you lack the stimulus for growth. And guess what? Growth is perhaps the most important thing we need to be happy. Because you are never still and stable. If you are not going forward, you are going backwards. If you are not growing, you are regressing. If you don’t exercise then your muscles atrophy. But likewise, if you don’t use your brain and if you don’t challenge your mind, then your brain physically shrinks.

Worse, you unlearn how to apply effort. But part of this is not laziness. Part of this is stress and tiredness. Because the problem is that we typically lead such busy, stressful and fast-paced lives that we simply have no energy left at the end of the day to do anything about it. Is it any surprise? Most of us commute to work for 30-90 minutes on a train or bus or sit in traffic in the car.

We then fight our way through a busy street into the office where we sit in a cramped, stuffy room and get shouted at by clients and unhappy customers. We work to urgent deadlines and end up staying late, then we make the precise same commute back home. You can add malnutrition on top of this for many of us. Halogen lights too. Loud noises. Air pollution.

All these things upset the body and cause physiological stress. These put us further into the fight or flight state and the body simply can’t tell the difference. This exhausts us. And that’s what makes us choose the fast food in the cupboard and it’s what makes us skip the workout. It’s also what causes us to argue with our partners and not have time for our kids. And it’s not even time that’s the issue here so much as energy.

Your psychological energy is a finite resource. So, the first thing you need to do is to start buying yourself more energy. That might mean looking into easier ways into work, or it might mean swapping to an easier job. It means finding space in your life so that you can stop reacting and being in fight or flight. You can start to become proactive and make your way onto your inspired path.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mindset and Emotions – How to Control Your State of Mind

If you could genuinely master your emotions take complete control over the way you felt at any given time – then that would be the ultimate technique. I’m serious. If you could do this, then you would become unstoppable in a fight. You would become relentless in the gym. And you would be able to apply yourself to a task in a way that would previously have been impossible.

I imagine that you’re probably rolling your eyes at this point. You probably think I’ve been reading too many hippy blogs. Maybe reading a little too much fluffy self-help. But I’m serious. Most people seriously underestimate the power and influence of their emotions. So, allow me to elucidate you and then demonstrate how you can get your state of mind back under control. At least to some degree.

Unlimited Strength, Perfect Focus, Incredible

Creativity and Social Skills

That’s quite a bold heading right there and you might already be shaking your head in disbelief. But hear me out.

Emotions and Strength

Want strength? Some of the most feared fighters in history were known as the Berserkers. These Norse warriors were so-called because of their ‘berserker rage’ – a mad fit of anger that they would fly into on the battlefield. In this heightened and agitated state, they would become almost invulnerable and would also be able to accomplish feats of incredible strength.

There have been more recent accounts of something similar too. Hysterical strength is a term used to describe more recent scenarios where individuals have seemingly been able to dig into an immense reserve of strength at will. This is where the stories of mothers lifting cars off of their children trapped beneath come in. Likewise, there is a story of a rock climber who managed to bench press themselves free of a huge boulder likely 200KG or more.

Think it’s just a myth? Turns out there is a solid scientific explanation for how this might be possible. Under extreme stress, it seems likely that the body produces excess amounts of testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones increase the heart rate, focus, awareness and muscle tone and that is where the extra strength comes from.

Actually, it goes a little deeper than that even. You see, all of us have limits to our strength imposed by our minds and our biology. When you go to lift a weight, you do so by recruiting muscle fibre little bands that make up the muscle and contract in order to give us our strength. The most muscle fibre that the average person can recruit at once under normal circumstances is around 30%.

The most that a highly trained athlete can recruit is closer to 50%. So, a highly trained athlete is only capable of tapping into roughly half of their maximum strength. This is what we mean when we refer to a ‘mind-muscle connection’. Ever seen someone get electrocuted in a movie (think Jurassic Park)? As you know, the idea is that the individual will get flung across the room into the far wall.

What throws them? Their own muscle. The electricity causes all the muscles to contract at once, which creates such a jolt that the person goes absolutely flying. Imagine if you could harness that power and use it to leap up onto a roof!
The reason we can’t access so much of our strength is a) that it would likely cause us injury as we would break a muscle, pull a ligament etc. and b) that it would fatigue us.

If we were to use that much of our muscle power in a single movement, we’d have no energy left for anything else!
But under the right circumstances, being able to dip into these huge reserves of strength is incredibly useful. And adrenaline and other hormones under the right conditions allow us to tap into that power.

Studies show that yelling in the gym can actually increase adrenaline and thereby enhance muscle fibre recruitment, resulting in strength improvements! Now imagine if you could tap into even just 80% of that power at will? Simply by harnessing your emotions?

Emotions for Calm, Collected Focus

But there’s only so far that being able to leap tall buildings and punch through walls will get you. In the real world, physical strength isn’t really what matters. This then is where the ‘flow state’ comes in. A flow state is often described as a state of calm, focus, bliss. It is what happens when the world seems to slow down because you are so intently focused and engaged in what you are doing.

Have you ever opened a cupboard and seen everything fall out but move in super-fast motion to catch it? That’s a flow state. More often we hear about it in extreme sports – athletes finding their flow and being able to pull off incredible stunts at incredible speeds. Outside of physical activities, it is seen in music. When the entire band synchronizes during a jam, this is a type of flow state.

When you have a conversation with someone that lasts all night, that’s a flow state. When you’re writing a book and you write so long that you don’t even notice the time passing that is a flow state. Studies show us that executives in flow management are hugely more productive than those that aren’t. The same goes for startups.

So, what is flow? Essentially, it’s another emotion. Another mental state is triggered by the release of hormones and neurotransmitters. In this case, it is a subtle variation on the fight or flight response, a subtle variation on stress and panic. Here, you believe something is just as important as preventing yourself from getting injured, it is just as compelling as fighting for your life but it is also fun rather than scary.

You have the entire attention of your body and mind which brings about a release of excitatory hormones along with calming ones and those related to bliss such as anandamide. This actually suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex, triggering a state known as ‘temporary hypofrontality’. This prevents us from worrying, from second-guessing or from over-thinking.

We just do. It’s the opposite of how most of us live our lives today and that’s why many of us are filled with anxiety, frozen with fear. Imagine being able to talk up to a woman/man in a bar and deliver your wittiest conversation ever. Imagine being able to talk in front of an audience with passion and conviction and enrapture them completely in what you’re saying. Imagine being able to work on the projects that matter to you for hours on end without even looking up.

No fear. No doubt. No bursts of anger or unwanted emotion. And this is when our best work is done. This is when we are happiest. Many people try and live their lives in flow as much as possible. The problem is that most of us are full of anxiety and busy with chores and things we need to do.

These limitations leave us stressed, anxious and busy and they take our minds out of the moment. Our entire body and mind cannot possibly be in-sync when we are worrying about debt, or what our boss said at the office. Entering flow means being in the moment which not only makes you happy and confident it makes you unstoppable.

Creativity

Changing your emotions can even make you more creative. The opposite of a flow state is something called the default mode network. This is a network of brain regions that spring into action when you are engaged in boring repetitious work or when you are just relaxing. This is what happens when you allow yourself to become completely at ease and let your mind wander.

Now many people give this mental state a hard time. They say that this is when your ‘inner Woody Allen’ chirps up. This is the opposite of ‘living in the moment. But in fact, this is also when your creativity kicks in. This is the state that Einstein was in when he came up with his special theory of relativity (while working in a patent office!).
This is daydreaming and that is when we come up with plans, ideas and more.

No emotion is a bad thing. The answer is just being able to tap into the right emotion at the right time. It’s about emotional control.

Social Skills
And finally, the obvious power of emotion: social skill. If you want to seem confident, then you need to stop worrying about what others think. If you want to be a leader, then you need to be able to take command, not second guess yourself and not get upset and visibly riled when things go wrong. If you want to engage others and make friends and partners, you need to be charismatic, engaging and entertaining.

All these things are based once again on having control over your emotions. But the thing is: most of us don’t have any control. Most of us sulk when we don’t have a good day and put ourselves in even more of a funk. Most of us are scared when things are wrong. When we’re stressed, we argue with our partners and avoid important work in the office. We sabotage ourselves, undermine ourselves and struggle to get things done all because we can’t control our emotions.

Taking Control

So how do you take back control over your emotions? There are multiple ways, but let’s address two important points: physiology and mindset. Physiology refers to the fact that your emotions are really an extension of how you feel. Emotions describe things like happiness, sadness, anger, fear. We think that these emotions are born from our minds but a lot of the time, that’s not the case at all.

Rather, emotions come from our bodies. Emotions come from feelings that include things like hunger, tiredness, hot, cold. The very function of your emotions is to trigger behaviours that will help you to fix the way you feel. When you haven’t eaten enough lately, your blood sugar dips. This in turn triggers a release of cortisol – the stress hormone. This tells you that something needs to change and wakes you up and in the wild, this would have encouraged you to look for food.

When you eat, your blood sugar spikes, you produce leptin and serotonin. This makes you happy and content and encourages you to sleep eventually serotonin converts to melatonin the sleep hormone. So, in other words, the way you feel is often the result of your physiology and that changes the way you think. Do you think you’re angry because you had a bad day? Possibly. More likely, you had a bad day because you’re angry.

And you’re angry because:

• You didn’t sleep


• You’re in mild pain


• You haven’t eaten enough


• You’ve eaten the wrong things

Do you get the gist? So, one way to change your emotions and to take back control is to acknowledge this. Firstly, recognize that if you’re angry, it’s probably due to physiological reasons and it will pass. At least it won’t seem so bad later.

Secondly, seek to change this. Eat something. Sleep. Take the cue. Learn to follow your own rhythms and work when you’re naturally most productive. Follow the rhythms of the day and get your circadian cycles in check.
And at the same time, look at ways you can directly control your physiology. The very best way? Breathing!

If you learn to breathe correctly (using belly breathing to fill the lower portion of the lungs, then the upper portion) and if you use slow, controlled breaths, then you will be able to lower your heart rate and calm your entire body. This will change your parasympathetic tone, taking you out of ‘fight or flight’ and into ‘rest and digest.

Try it the next time you feel overly stressed, overly competitive or worked up after an intense workout – your heart rate will slow and your mind will grow calmer. The other tool you can use is something called CBT. Now we’re looking at the psychological, self-talk aspect. CBT stands for ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’ and this is a popular form of psychotherapeutic intervention used to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders.

The idea is to look at the content of your thoughts. The self-talk that you give yourself to work yourself into a panic, or to calm yourself down. If you are thinking things like “I’m worried I might fall off that ledge” then of course you are going to be scared. If you think things like “I’m grateful for my wife” then you will be less likely to feel unhappy with where you are in life.

It goes deeper than that of course. You can use CBT to challenge long-held beliefs and to break negative self-talk habits by challenging your thoughts and testing your hypotheses. This is called ‘cognitive restructuring’.
In the short term, you can use CBT techniques in order to more honestly assess your state of mind and your emotions and to then change the way you feel about a situation.

So if you were stressed that you had a deadline you couldn’t meet and it was ruining your evening, then you might use cognitive restructuring in order to assess the thoughts making you stressed and replace them with more productive ones.

For example, you might consider:

• What is the point of being stressed? Will it make matters better?


• What’s the worst-case scenario? Would it really be that bad to tell the boss you can’t finish work on time? Are they expecting too much of you anyway?


• When was the last time you did this?


• Are there other ways you could lessen the blow?


• What would you rather pay attention to right now?

Combine this with controlled breathing and bring your focus to the thing that is most useful to you right now. In the long term, you can use CBT in order to bridge the gap between your thoughts and your physiology. You see, your physiology and your emotions are designed to drive you toward desirable states: sex, food, shelter, love, success, social acceptance.

The problem is that the tasks you need to accomplish often don’t get you those things in the short term. In the long term, entering data into that spreadsheet helps you keep your job which helps you pay for food and keep your family!
But in the short term, it just means more boring paperwork.

So now you need to remind yourself why you do what you do. And you’ll do this not only with words but with visualization. Picture where you want to be. Picture the wealth you want to have, the success, the satisfaction. Then remind yourself that the things you do today are actually driving you toward the things you want. This is when your heart and mind will finally be on the same page. And that’s when anything becomes possible.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mindset and Wealth: How to Grow Your Wealth

Can you really ‘think yourself rich’? I’m here to tell you that it is not only possible but that it is also actually the best chance you have of making a lot of money. Many of us dream of living in a large luxurious house in a sunny country, we imagine wearing smart suits that exude power and confidence and we wish that we didn’t have to make so many hard choices because our funds can’t support the lifestyles we want to lead.

If that sounds familiar, then you need to make a change. And as with ALL things, that change starts with you and your mindset. If you want to be wealthy, then what are you doing about it? And is there any chance that you may, in fact, be going about it the wrong way?

Wealth and Your Career

Ask the average person in the street what they would hypothetically need to do in order to become richer and 99% of them will tell you the same thing: get a better job. Okay, fair enough. They are not wrong per se. Indeed, getting a better job won’t hurt their income and that in turn will likely mean they get richer at least a little.

But in fact, this is not the whole story. And what’s more, is that this isn’t even the main part of the story. Wealth and salary are not inextricably linked. They are related sure, but only to a small degree. If you wanted to see an equation telling you how to get wealthy, then it would really look like this:

Wealth = Income – Outgoings

So, let’s say that your income is determined solely by the amount of money you are making at work. Even in that scenario, you still have another, equally as an important factor. That is your outgoings. If you earn a cool million dollars a month but you also waste a million dollars a month of lavish holidays and on nights out and clothes, then you are ultimately not going to be very well off. Rather, you’re likely to lose money over time.

But if you are earning a more normal $2500 a month but you only spend $500, then suddenly you are saving $2000 per month. In 12 months, you’ll have $24,000 saved away. That’s a decent down payment on a house! So, you now have two options. Two ways to get richer. One is that you seek to get a better job and increase your income and the other is that you save more money and spend less.

How to Spend Less

When I was at university, my summer job was working at a yacht club. Specifically, I was a waiter in one of the restaurants there that were actually paid for and owned by the clientele of the club. The club was located in Sandbanks, England – an area that is also sometimes referred to as ‘millionaire’s row’ because it has among the most expensive real estate in the world along the seafront.

So, these are people who own yachts and who belong to a club that is situated in one of the wealthiest parts of the world. Suffice to say that they were not struggling for cash. And of course, what many people would point out to me is that this should likely result in pretty big tips!

Except that’s not what happened. In fact, I received some of the worst tips I have in any job. I had a lady call me over to secretively give me 20p (around 30cents) for my hard work. She literally told me to buy myself something nice. And this is bearing in mind that it is standard practice in England to tip 10%. The meals usually cost close to $150.

I told my Mum this and her response was: how do you think they got rich, dear?

Makes sense

Look, I’m not here to tell you you should become stingy with tips. But what I am telling you is that the wealthiest people recognize that every little bit adds up and makes a very big difference in the long run. Your aim now is not to fritter. That $3 coffee you have every morning on the way to work is actually $15 over the course of a week. $60 over a course of a month and $720 over the course of the year.

That is a tiny amount and that’s before we have even considered all those other things you likely pay for that you don’t really need. Maybe your Spotify account, Netflix, 100+ TV Channels, gas for the car for all those trips you don’t really need to make. It adds up. Worse are all those larger purchases we make on an impulse.

These are things like clothes that we think will make us look smart, games consoles, PCs, overly advanced phones. How much did your phone cost you? If you’re on a contract, then chances are you’ll be paying $700 or more for it. Now ask yourself how much more that phone really does than something for $300. Do you really need the fastest processor around? Considering that even an old phone can play everything in the app store?

Do you really need a 30-megapixel camera? Or a 4K screen? Can you even see the difference between 4K and 1080p? The real problem here is marketing, the internet and other people. We have unfortunately been conditioned to associate these items with success and to find them highly desirable. We want to get the latest phone, car, computer etc. because it looks so sexy in those adverts. But the reality is that these things don’t really bring us happiness.

Likewise, we are told that we need to buy a large house, go on lavish holidays. Is this really for us? Or is it so that we can look successful to others? I’m not telling you to cut back on all the things that make you happy here. There is no point in having wealth if you aren’t going to enjoy it and have a better quality of life for yourself and your family.

All I’m telling you is to make sure you are certain of what it is that does make you happy. And that often means deciding what you don’t need and what you should be prioritizing. Have you always dreamed of a beautiful big house? Then why not stop going on those big holidays for a while? Why not stop buying widescreen TVs? And how about considering getting that big beautiful house in a less expensive area?

Heck, if you move to Spain, then there are places where you can live in a five-bedroom home with a swimming pool and roof pool and it will only cost you $200,000. You could almost buy that in cash and think about how much money you would start making then once there was no mortgage!

Conversely, if all you want is to travel the world, then you can change your accommodation to something less glamorous. How about moving to a quiet neighbourhood and living in a spare bedroom for a while?  Your outgoings will be below, so you can enjoy going on more holidays and still save up that wealth. Know what you want to achieve with that money. Know what wealth means to you and then you can focus on being more efficient with your money.

Financial Modelling

This will also help you to set up a budget and/or a plan. If you know how much you have coming in and how much you’d like to be making per month, saving per month and spending on things that make you feel wealthy per month, then you can create a budget that will help you to reach that point within a specific timeframe. This then is where you can look at those small things you can cut out to save money.

If you have a spreadsheet that contains all your income and all your outgoings per month, then you can look at what kind of impact cutting coffee from your routine would actually make. You’ll be left with a total profit at the end of each month and you can decide how much of that you want to put into savings and how much you intend to spend on other things.

You can even set up standing orders in your accounts so that money saved automatically gets transferred to a savings account. With such a spreadsheet, you can then multiply the savings you are making by any given number of months and see projections of what your finances are likely to be at certain points in the future. Need more money for an upcoming expense?

Then look at something else you can do to cut your expenditure. This is called ‘financial modelling’ and it’s a powerful tool for building your wealth rather than just letting it ‘happen’ without your direction or input.

A Couple More Ways to Save Money

And what if you have run out of things you can cut in order to save money? What if you are living on as little as possible? A few other options include changing your providers for bills, selling off old items, or even moving money between accounts in order to receive bonuses. A friend of mine does this religiously and will even take out credit cards with 0%APR, just so that he can put all of that money into an ISA and then make a profit on it.

If he gets a cash incentive to sign up for anything then he will sign up! And he never buys a new piece of tech or even clothing without taking one of the older items to sell and thereby offset the cost. Something else to note is that if you have a dream of a wealthy future, then you might need to ‘be okay with living a little more simply for a while in order to get there.

You need to put the work in now, to reap the rewards in the future. And this is hard because it often once again means forgetting the conventional signals of wealth and success. Once again, you have to do this for yourself and not be worried about what others might think. So for example, if you want to someday have a beautiful home, one of the very best things you can do is to live with your parents if they will let you.

Sure, it’s not glamorous and it’s not fun, but if they charge a small amount of rent you’ll be able to save so much per month that it will help you to get on the property ladder MUCH faster. You could then buy a smaller home in a less attractive area but flip the property to make a big profit. You need to put in the graft and have an eye on the future.

Likewise, you might need to learn to stop trying to demonstrate your wealth and stability to friends. Have you ever met up with a friend and eaten in a restaurant that you can’t really afford because you want to see them and because it is embarrassing to suggest eating somewhere cheaper? As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly conducive to getting wealthy quickly! Again, you need to be willing to tell them that you can’t afford it and to go elsewhere.

How about you suggest they meet you at your house?

Setting Up Revenue Streams 

Next, come the revenue streams. We’ve seen how you can actually become richer without changing your job, simply by spending less. The other strategy is to become wealthier by having more than one income stream. Once again, your salary isn’t determining your wealth! So, what might this mean? One simple option is to take on another job, such as a weekend job.

If you are happy to work on a Saturday, then you will have potentially $150 extra to spend each week! That’s $600 per month or $7,200 per year! Save that and in a couple of years, you can be living in a nice house – or you can use it right now to feel that bit wealthier and wear those fancy clothes. This is a big sacrifice though granted. So, what would be better for most people would be to earn money online for instance.

Tim Ferriss describes creating a ‘muse’ in his book The Four Hour Workweek, which is a small online business that generates a passive income. This can be as simple as finding an affiliate product (a product that you sell for commission) and making a simple website recommending it, then sending people there with ads. This is very low maintenance but can potentially make a fair amount of money.

You could try matched betting alternatively (a form of betting that ensures you can’t lose – it uses only the free bonus amounts that you get given for signing up) or you could look for a simple online job. How about selling photography online? Working as a writer or a web designer? Or, like a friend of mine, try commentating on sports for websites?

You can also make money from arts and crafts of course and sell some things you make on the side, or you can buy and sell items in bulk on eBay! Then there are the other options that work offline: these include such things as renting out rooms to students, such as mowing the neighbour’s lawn, cutting hair, teaching an instrument etc.

All these options will help you to make an income that will be added to your current income.

Not only does this of course give you a better total, but it will also help to make you more ‘resilient’ so that if anything ever happens with your main job, you’ll of course still have some money coming in. Another tip? The more you make, the more you’ll make. Try to look for investment opportunities, whether that means buying a second house and letting it out to someone else, or whether it means moving to an area that you know is up and coming.

A strange thing to think of here is board games. If you’ve ever played Monopoly, or any other game where you have to amass a kind of resource, then you might have found that it pays to invest wisely early on. To get the card that will pay out just a little bit every round, or that will prevent you from losing a little bit every round.

These seem like small changes in the short term but over the course of the game, they ultimately put you in a position of great power and help you to win decisively! It's the same in real life. Make a few right choices that will build up over time. Know what you want. Be patient. And avoid the temptation to splurge on the short-term gratification. That is how you get into a wealthy mindset!

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mindset and Business: How to Achieve Success in Your Ventures

When we think of success, one of the images that come to mind is often one of a businessman (or woman) decked out in a suit, standing at the top of a high-rise building and looking out over the streets below.

We associate business with success in this way for a number of reasons.

Firstly, success in business often brings money and riches. Secondly, success in business suggests a certain level of skill and ability and tends to yield a higher status and importance as a result. For all these reasons, business and success go hand in hand in our minds and for many, those are the specific heights that we are aiming for.

But is business success really what you want? How can you go about getting it? And what might you unwittingly be doing wrong that could be sabotaging your own success?

In this guide, we’ll take an in-depth look at what it means to be a success in business; and how you should go about getting there.

Be Careful What You Wish For 

The first thing to remember is that you should be careful what you wish for. For many, the idea of success in business is a very romantic and idealistic one. It’s something we might spend a lot of time daydreaming about. But as is very often the case, the reality isn’t always what you might have expected. And it might not even really be the dreams that you’re having.

Let me explain.

Many of us associate success with the business. We’ve already explained this and it seems to make sense on the face of it.

But another of the reasons we hold this association in mind is that we have been trained to think this way. Over many years, we have seen images of successful people almost always wearing suits and wielding power. This is how success is depicted in the movies and in the books.

We think of the film Limitless or maybe Wolf or Wall Street (despite the fact that both these movies were really lessons against seeking too much power, too quickly). Maybe you want to make your parents proud? Maybe you plan to follow in their footsteps?

The image of success that your grandma has is linked to business as well, after all! But this can then lead to your downfall. If it means that you then chase after things that don’t really bring you joy. If it means that you become the head of a big delivery company, or of a corporate legal team. Maybe it means you become a procurement manager.

Whatever the case, you can end up taking a stuffy job and being a ‘suit’ and attempting to get rich that way. You’ll start at the bottom, put in the hard graft and the work and climb the corporate ladder. But is that really what you want? Not only are you now facing years possibly decades of working hard with very little reward, but you’re also going to be working toward something that may not be all that gratifying.

Sure, the pay is good when you’re standing in that high-rise, but do you really want all that responsibility? And do you feel all that passionately about the product or service your company is providing? The price of success is often that you end up staying late until 8pm or 10pm that you have to deal with people shouting at you down the phone and that you are responsible for millions of dollars.

All so that someone can get their boring parcel delivered on time. Or so that a dubious business can avoid a lawsuit.

Is that really your image of ‘success’? And what do you spend the money on? Expensive clothes? A car? Was it really all worth it? In many senses, this is not really a success. And not only that but if you take this route.

If you climb the corporate ladder, put in the work and do your time, then you actually won’t be as successful as you possibly could be. Think of any massively successful businessman. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk.

How many of them started a boring job and then worked their way up? 

No: they started passion projects. They looked for things that no one knew they needed yet. They innovated. Trailblazed. They came up with completely fresh and novel ideas. And because they did that, they were able to have breakthroughs that no one could have imagined: reach heights that were truly unprecedented.

The Strategy

So, here’s the strategy. Learn to separate ‘income’ from ‘wealth’. If you read the guide on the money mindset, you’ll see that the two absolutely do not go hand in hand. Then learn to separate your status at work from your personal sense of pride and accomplishment. You know what? If you write a brilliant novel in your spare time and not one person reads it then that should still be just as rewarding.

So, I want you to take some time out. To find your passion and to follow that path. But do it on the side. And view your day job as what it is: a necessary evil to help you get by in the interim. Over time, you can turn that passion into a way to make money. Then maybe you go part-time. Then maybe you go full time. Then maybe you quit your day job.

Why Passion is Crucial for Success 

When Elon Musk created SpaceX, he was not the massively well-known name that he is today. Musk was a relatively unknown name whose mission was to encourage the private sector to venture into space. No small task. But you know what? Musk did it. And his explanation one of his explanations was that he aimed big. Many of us feel that we need to reign in our dreams and goals.

We have been led to believe that aiming too high will end in disappointment, will make us look foolish. But the reality is that aiming high is actually precisely what you need to do. Because when you aim high, you inspire others. When you have something exciting to say and when you are clearly excited about it yourself then people listen.

It’s so much more inspiring to hear someone tell you they want to go to space than it is to hear someone say they’re a hairdresser (though if that’s your passion, there’s nothing wrong with that!). If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re in the internet marketing industry. Let’s say you are for now. You might have a plan to launch a website, sell an ebook, make some money. There are two ways you go about that.

One is the cynical way. The way where your heart isn’t in it. The way that you see time and time again. This approach involves looking for the hottest new ‘niche’ in the market. Whether or not that’s a niche you’re interested in doesn’t really matter. Then you buy some content, maybe hire someone to write some, maybe pump out a little yourself by just regurgitating what you already can find online.

Then, you lace into that content as much SEO as you possibly can. You do everything you can to make the site sell. You cover it in ads. You call it something like ‘The Best Fitness Site Ever’. And you wait for the cash to roll in. But that will not work. Why? Because there’s no passion. If you have a site about animal welfare and you hire the very best writer in the world to write for it.

If you tell them to write you the latest, most exciting, newest content then you still won’t do well. Why? Because they aren’t you. They can’t speak for you. They don’t know your point of view. And they probably don’t know the topic all that well either. So, they’ll do their research. Learn it thoroughly and try to write something great. But it will be safe. Generic, boring content. People will visit the site and they’ll see that.

The site has no personality. No tone of its own. No ‘mission statement’ or purpose. There is no passion or love behind it and so no community grows behind it. The site dies. That’s why the thousands of low-quality sites never make it big. Think of the sites that do make it.

Those are sites like MOZ blog, Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Blog, and Pat Fynn’s Smart Passive Income. The Verge. The BBC. Forbes.

These are sites that are written by passionate experts. They are sites that have unique, engaging and brilliant content. And unique, brilliant points of view that are unique to the brand. They have high production values, slick design, thriving YouTube channels.

Do you see the difference? 

Think about the sites that you read on a daily basis. I bet they are either:

A) Large teams of enthusiastic professionals

OR

B) Single, passionate individuals

None of them will be spam designed to quickly make money. None of them will be ‘overly SEO. You can’t create amazing quality unless you are passionate about the topic. You have to love doing it. You need to put everything into it. You have to want to spend your free time writing articles, answering fan-mail and tweaking the logo. It mustn’t feel like a job.

If there isn’t a topic for a website you feel that way about, then being an internet marketer isn’t for you. You need to find what you are passionate about. Your calling. That is how you become Elon Musk and not ‘tired, overworked, stressed Dad who works himself to an early grave’. Do you see the difference? You can’t fake it. You have to love it.

Presenting the Image 

But I know what you’re thinking: it’s all good and well having the dream and the vision but you also need the skill and you need that business persona. And it’s true. If you’re going to lead, inspire and get investments then you do need to learn to present yourself and you do need to learn to be taken seriously. And this is a skill that will help you in every other aspect of your life too.

So how do you go about it?

The simple place to start is with the realization that you are a brand. Your name is your own personal brand and just like any business brand, it is your job to protect that brand in a professional manner. You know how it is so important for a website to be correctly spelt, to have great design, to pay attention to even the smallest details?

It’s the same thing with you.

You need to present yourself in a way that inspires confidence and trust. You need to make sure that every interaction that other people have with you is a positive one. You need to present the face of a service that people can trust. You need to gain the confidence that you know what you’re talking about. You do this, to begin with by conducting yourself in a professional manner.

That means that you put effort and hard work into everything you do. Whether it’s that boring 9-5 that you’re just ticking over with, or whether it is a client who is very much ‘small time’ in your eyes. If you don’t give them 100% of your attention, if you rush things or if you make a silly mistake, then that is a black mark against you. If you say you are going to get a piece of work in by a certain deadline, then you make sure you do that.

You never know where amazing opportunities might come from. And you never know what one interaction might lead to. If you deal with someone in a poor manner, or you do a sub-par job, then the word might spread. If you do an excellent job, you just might get offered something. The same goes for any work that you put out with your name on it. Make sure it is of excellent quality.

Next, you need to make sure that your presentation is perfect. That means learning to communicate. Learning to present yourself in a professional manner  I highly recommend getting classes to help you with public speaking and elocution. This will help you to get your point across in a way that other people understand. It will teach you to sell yourself, to thrive in interviews and to win clients and backers.

You also need to think about the small details of your appearance. How are your nails? How is your hair? Do you have a nice suit? Are you in good physical shape? All of this has been shown in countless studies to make a difference. People want to bet on the winning horse and if you look like you can barely keep yourself together, then why would anyone believe that you’re going to be able to run a business?

Sell a product? Provide a great service? 

Again, tiny things make the difference here: things like your shoes, how polished they are, how the laces are tied. Be constantly improving yourself and investing in yourself in order to make a better impression. Meditate. Get enough sleep. Have enough vitamins and minerals. Be ready to take those opportunities when they come.

Springboarding 

And learn to see opportunities where you don’t expect them. Because it won’t always be obvious. Think of Sylvester Stallone who wanted to become a famous actor. He was turned down from all the acting jobs, so he eventually got there by writing a fantastic script for a movie. That movie was Rocky and he would only sell the script if he got the leading role.

The rest is history.

Opportunities might present themselves to you that don’t seem directly related to your goal. But adapt, learn to see the alternate routes. Because success in any area can lead to success in another. It builds confidence, it gives you connections and resources. This is called ‘springboarding’, where you use one ‘win’ to launch you to the next.

If you turn down an opportunity because it doesn’t seem to exactly match your plan, then you can end up missing out on something that could have been huge. Always be looking for that next move. Business is like a massive game of chess. And once again, this is why you always need to put your best foot forward. Making the right impression and protecting the brand opens those opportunities.

Keep your goal in mind, keep winning and keep taking that next step. Don’t let yourself become comfortable. And use the lessons from our other guides to get over your fear of risk and failure to keep taking those chances.

If you do all this, then you never know where your drive and your effort might take you. THAT is how you become a success in business.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).