Issue #2562
- WEALTHY: Is being rich just a state of mind? (Brian Tracy)
- HEALTHY: How to break your holiday junk-food habit (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Winston Churchill on attitude
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Not every headline looks like a headline (Seth Godin)
- Don’t leave your reader wondering what you meant (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… disgusting beauty secrets of the ancient world
- Add “chichi” to your vocabulary
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“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
Winston Churchill
The Parable of the Talents
By Brian Tracy
Why do some people retire rich and most people retire poor? This question has fascinated philosophers, mystics, and teachers throughout the ages. There have been so many men and women – hundreds or thousands, maybe even millions – who started with nothing and became financially independent that people are naturally curious to know why it happened and if there are common rules or principles that others can apply to become wealthy as well.
The Parable of the Talents is one of the stories told by Jesus to illustrate a moral lesson. The message in this case (from the Gospel of Matthew): “To him that hath, shall more be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.”
What does it mean?
In the modern world, we say it this way: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The fact is that people who accumulate money tend to accumulate more and more. People who don’t accumulate money seem to lose even that little bit that they have.
Why should this happen?
The great success principle, the single idea that explains human destiny is simple: “You become what you think about most of the time.”
Control Your Thoughts
Whatever you dwell upon grows in your reality. You create your entire world by the things you choose to think about and how you choose to think about them.
It just so happens that wealthy, successful people fill their minds – most of the time – with thoughts, words, pictures, and images of wealth, affluence, success, productivity, and solutions to problems in the marketplace. These thoughts trigger the reticular activating cortex, the part of the brain that makes you more alert and sensitive to things that you have decided are important to you.
For example, if you decide to invest in a mutual fund, you will start to see news and information about mutual funds everywhere. Mentions in newspapers and magazines will jump out at you. These things have always been there, but now you have sensitized your brain to pick them up and draw them to your attention with far greater frequency and vividness. This is the function and power of your reticular cortex.
Think Like Wealthy People Think
Wealthy people, from an early age, think about how much they have, how much they want, and all the different things they can do to acquire and earn the money and things they desire.
On the other hand, what do poor people think about most of the time? Unfortunately, they fill their minds with thoughts of scarcity, lack, poverty, being unable to afford things. They are always thinking and talking about how little money they have, how much things cost, and how they wish they could be better off financially. What they think about most of the time is how little money they have.
Find Out How Rich People Think
Here’s a rule for you. If you want to become successful, find out what failures do and don’t do it. If you want to be wealthy, find out what poor people think about, and avoid thinking that way. Instead, find out how wealthy people think. Find out what they read. Find out how they spend their time. Study their lives, read their stories and autobiographies, and listen to their words when they are interviewed and on tape. The more you find out about what financially successful people think and talk about most of the time – and do the same things – the more rapidly you will enjoy the same rewards that they do.
Here are two things you can do to put The Parable of the Talents into action:
First, make a decision that, starting today, you will think and talk only about the financial success you desire. At the same time, you will refuse to talk about or dwell upon your financial problems.
Second, instead of saying “I can’t afford it,” you will ask the question “How can I afford it?” When you think of something that you want or need that you don’t have the money for at the time, the only question to ask is “How?” How can you get it? What can you do to achieve it? What are your options? How can you get from where you are to where you want to be?
It will change your life.
[Ed. Note: Today, make the decision that you'll end "poverty thinking." Instead, find out what the wealthy do and copy it. One "Mentor to Billionaires" can give you dozens of simple strategies that his billionaire colleagues used to transform themselves into master moneymakers. Learn more here.
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Worth Quoting: Seth Godin on the Importance of Headlines
“Headlines matter now more than they ever did.
“Headlines provoke and introduce. They cajole and they position.
“No headline, no communication.
“This spreadsheet you just sent me… what does it say? What does it mean? It has no headline. Trashed.
“That person you met at a conference: What’s his headline? Are you actually going to spend 10 minutes with him before you determine whether or not he’s interesting enough to talk with? Of course not. No headline, no communication. …
“[If] you want to communicate (your resume, your trustworthiness, your graciousness), you need to be sure your headline is compelling, accurate, and a viable foundation to the message you’re ultimately trying to send. (That last one is very important. Just because it gets you newsstand sales doesn’t mean it’s a headline you want to live with.)
“Headlines don’t always look like headlines, of course. That outfit you wore to work today is quite a headline, bub. Headlines may not look like they belong in a newspaper, but they always work that way.”
(Source: Seth Godin’s blog)
A Harsh Truth About Nutrition
Over the holidays, I re-learned a harsh truth about nutrition that can even bring down a fitness expert: “If it’s in your house, you’re going to eat it.”
Fortunately, this one gets me only around the holidays. The rest of the time, we keep chocolate and other “bad stuff” out of the house. But for many folks, this is a problem all year long.
For one reason (kids) or another (spouse), they have junk food in the house, tempting them every day. And, in fact, snacking on that junk food – often between the end of work and dinnertime – is what prevents many people from losing weight. It can even cause them to gain more weight.
So here is one solution: Get rid of the junk. Do you really, really need to have it there in the first place? Don’t be afraid to trash it. The trash is where junk food belongs.
If tossing the junk isn’t practical (i.e., if it isn’t yours to throw away), what else can you do? Create rituals for yourself that will help you avoid mindless snacking.
First, prepare raw, crunchy fruits and vegetables to snack on instead of junk food. You don’t have to quit cold turkey. But try to be a little bit better every day than you were the day before. Eventually, snacking on raw fruits and vegetables will become a habit. (This one tip should help you lose more than three pounds in a month.)
Second, brush your teeth. There’s nothing like freshly brushed teeth to keep you away from sugary snacks.
Third, keep the treats out of sight to keep them out of mind. Stash them at the back of the top cupboard where you can’t just grab and go.
These three suggestions will help you leave the holiday eating behind and get yourself back on track.
[Ed. Note: If you have a hard time reaching the goals you set for yourself, you're not alone. But ETR is here to help. Success mentor Bob Cox can help you make your dreams come true in 2009 and beyond. He'll give you weekly motivation, easy-to-follow success strategies, and - if you need it - a kick in the pants. Learn the details here.
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The Language Perfectionist: Misplaced Modifiers
By Don Hauptman
Consider these passages, which I found in prominent newspapers:
• “Only the pursuit of ‘diversity’ by higher education meets the strict constitutional test for race preferences. As a lawyer, I am sure that Mr. Obama must know this.”
Is the lawyer the writer – or the president-elect?
• “[Jeremy] Piven, who grew up in a Chicago theater family, knew [David] Mamet as a child… .”
Which one was the child?
• “It took three phone calls to find this Dior dress in Elle.”
Were the calls to determine which page of the magazine the garment was on – or to locate the store that carried it?
The above excerpts are examples of the problems caused by misplaced modifiers. They are ambiguous and confusing, which confirms the rule that sloppy writing makes for poor communication.
In The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein offers good advice: “There is no rule about the placement of modifying phrases excerpt perhaps the very general one that they should be as close as possible to the things they modify.” Applying this simple guideline often solves the problem. To convey what the writer probably meant, the first example could be reworded this way: “I am sure that Mr. Obama, a lawyer, must know this.”
I’m a lifelong blooper collector, so I especially relish misplaced modifiers that produce unintentionally amusing results. A classic example from a commercial in a live radio broadcast years ago: “Ladies, now you can buy a bathing suit for a ridiculous figure.”
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
It’s Fun to Know: Disgusting Beauty Secrets of the Ancient World
Plastic surgery, liposuction, Botox injections, hair transplants… you might think that modern medicine has given the world the ultimate in extreme beauty treatments. Not so. Women (and men) have always gone to great lengths to enhance their looks.
• The Romans believed that bathing in a mixture of crocodile dung and mud would keep their skin smooth and wrinkle-free.
• Japanese geishas used makeup made from bird droppings and rice flour.
• Iranian women died their hair red with a mixture of henna, tadpoles, and cow blood.
• Men and women in ancient Egypt used dark eye makeup made from lead. So what if it could cause heavy-metal poisoning… it also repelled insects!
• Women throughout medieval Europe used poisonous arsenic powder to lighten their skin.
(Source: Mental Floss)
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Word to the Wise: Chichi
The word “chichi” (SHEE-shee) – literally French for “curl of false hair” – is used figuratively to describe something that’s affectedly trendy.
Example (as used in the Daily Telegraph): “The sort of real delicious Italian country cooking that is a revelation after so much chichi Italian food dished up in London.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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I truly enjoy every issue of your newsletter as it is informative but on this one I was attracted to the article “Parable of talents”, I truly would like to become and retire rich. At present things are not going according to my plans and I sometimes feel despondent but the article has uplifted my morale and spirit and I have made a promise to myself that I am going to make it big this year.
Regards