Issue# 2691
- WEALTHY: What’s distracting you from achieving your dreams? (Julie Broad)
- HEALTHY: Another reason to avoid MSG (James B. LaValle)
- WISE: Inspiration from a Broadway musical
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- The last of the human freedoms (Robert Ringer)
- Are your customers ready, willing, and able to buy? (Howie Jacobson)
- It’s Good to Know… about hot recession sellers
- Add “juju” to your vocabulary
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Is Shiny Penny Syndrome Preventing You From Being Rich?
By Julie Broad
Have you ever been walking down the street – focused on getting somewhere in record time – only to stop dead in your tracks when you spot a penny and are tempted to stoop down to pick it up?
That’s not the only way we allow low-value objects, goals, or priorities to distract us from more important things. We interrupt conversations with family members to comment on silly commercials on television. We check our Blackberry in the middle of a workout. And we allow e-mail to interrupt higher priority activities on the job.
I call it shiny penny syndrome.
Early in our real estate investing days, shiny penny syndrome nearly cost me and my husband our investments. We’d been working on buying good quality cash flowing properties in good neighborhoods and were doing just fine, but we suddenly stopped and started moving toward different options. We saw all those shiny pennies and thought we could turn them to gold nuggets.
In “The Problem With Fire,” I described how we started chasing no-money-down deals, flips, and property assignments. It turned out badly. Meanwhile, we lost our focus on what had been working for us.
It’s a good thing to consider your options, but don’t let them distract you from what’s been working for you and helping you achieve your goals.
If you have an investing strategy that is working for you – stick to it. Master it.
Though there are plenty of ways to make money in real estate, the optimal route is to find a strategy you like and get really good at it. Stay focused and become a specialist in your investing niche and you, too, will find your wealth grow very quickly.
[Ed. Note: For more insider strategies for getting started as a real estate investor, sign up for real estate expert Julie Broad's free monthly newsletter. Get your free report for making money with real estate here.
Losing focus in your personal, social, or business goals? Achieve all you want in life with ETR's Total Success Achievement program. Learn more here.]
“And the world will be better for this /
That one man, scorned and covered with scars /
Still strove with his last ounce of courage /
To reach the unreachable star.”
- (lyrics from The Man of La Mancha)
The Impossible Dream
A reader recently sent me an e-mail in which he griped about his “impossible situation.” I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder, because to me it appeared that his was an impossible situation with a lot of possibilities.
So what, exactly, is an “impossible situation”? More specifically, what does “impossible” really mean? Is it impossible to make a mountain move simply by having faith? That’s quite a challenge. If anyone could do it, it would probably be that Star Wars guy, Yoda. But I don’t know of any real person who’s mastered such extraordinary mind power.
Is it impossible to get the man or woman of your dreams to love you if he/she is already in love with – and maybe married to – someone else? (Shades of Dudley Moore in the classic 1979 movie 10.) Not quite like moving a mountain, but perhaps a close second.
Terminal cancer? The subject of miraculous healing is a surefire invitation to a heated debate. Many of us have known people who were told they had terminal cancer, yet survived and lived to enjoy many more healthy years. Have all of those cases been flukes?
All of which raises the question: When the seemingly impossible happens, is it God, luck, coincidence, or something else that is responsible?
God can presumably do anything, but God also helps those who “help themselves” – meaning those who take action.
As for luck – well, that’s pretty much random.
Sometimes we witness the impossible and refer to it as a coincidence. But I’m not sure there is such a thing as coincidence. Most of the coincidences I’ve experienced have been a result of actions previously taken.
Which leads me to the “something else” – that great metaphysical abstraction we refer to as human will.
The will to accomplish something – be it winning a sporting event or moving a mountain – manifests itself in something we call attitude.
Viktor Frankl was perhaps the most famous of all Holocaust survivors. He lost his mother, father, brother, and wife in Nazi concentration camps. Years later, he wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Okay, so Frankl had an amazing attitude under seemingly impossible circumstances. But wasn’t he lucky as well? Absolutely. I’m sure Frankl would have been the first to admit that he was a very lucky man, but he also was convinced that he could not have survived Auschwitz and Dachau had he not chosen to find positive meaning in his life.
Let’s consider the three possibilities you would have had if, like Viktor Frankl in the 1940s, you found yourself in a Nazi concentration camp.
Possibility No. 1: If you had a great attitude concerning the dire straits you were in, you still may not have survived without a good deal of luck.
Possibility No. 2: If you harbored an attitude of total despair, you surely would have been doomed, even if you had been fairly lucky.
Possibility No. 3: But if you had a positive attitude coupled with good luck, you would have had a shot at surviving. This, I believe, is what Frankl was getting at when he said that choosing one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances is the last of the human freedoms.
In all likelihood, then, the impossible dream is not impossible at all, at least theoretically. In my lifetime, I have been in far too many impossible situations that mysteriously became possible.
Meeting my wife was impossible. (Too long of a story to go into here.) My son coming into this world rather than dying at birth, as he almost certainly should have, was impossible.
For that matter, when I get up every morning and behold my little speck of the universe, it occurs to me that both the universe and my consciousness are complete impossibilities. Surely I am the most improbable collection of atoms in existence.
Whatever it is that arranged my atoms in such a way that I can reflect on my own existence, does it not seem reasonable that the same Whatever can make a brain tumor disappear? Or bring the perfect spouse into the loneliest of lives? Or cure a person with financial leprosy and guide him to great wealth?
I believe the answer is yes. And for me, that Whatever is the Eternal Energy of the universe.
Luck and coincidence are interesting abstractions, but a more meaningful abstraction is human will – the will to have power, the will to have money, the will to live. When you exercise your freedom to tap into the Eternal Energy of the universe, your life is not at the mercy of luck or coincidences. And though we may not understand it, it is that connection that allows us to go beyond dreaming the impossible dream – and actually live it.
[Ed. Note: To learn how to survive and prosper during the turbulent years ahead, check out Robert Ringer's powerful audio series Succeeding in a World of Chaos. And be sure to sign up for a FREE subscription to his one-of-a-kind e-letter A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World.]
The Shocking Truth About Walt Disney’s True Identity
Walt Disney is a household name, much beloved by children and parents everywhere.
That’s why what I’m about to reveal may shock you:
He may not have been one in the parrot-toting eye-patch-wearing, ship-terrorizing sense…
But Walt Disney was a “pirate.”
He discovered buried treasure in a book of fairy tales and turned it into a raging river of cash that hasn’t dried up since. These days, his company is raking in 37 billion a year.
What Walt did is completely legal. And you can do it too.
You can use the Internet to dig up “treasure chests” that are yours for the taking…
…and turn them into steady profit streams that pour thousands of dollars into your bank account each month.
Advanced Internet Marketing Tactic: Test to Remove Obstacles to Conversion
Your website visitors will convert – to buyers or subscribers – when they’re ready, willing, and able. And the usability testing and feedback gathering you do should give you an idea of which of those three factors will make the biggest difference.
Ready: Are your visitors ready to take the action you want them to take? Do they have enough information? Enough trust in you? If not, what do you need to add to your site flow to make offers congruent with your visitors’ current state of readiness?
Willing: Do they want to take the action you want them to take? Have you explained the benefits? Have you done the cost-benefit analysis for them? Have you made it clear how you’re different and better than their other options?
Able: Can they take that action on your site? Can they find the right links and buttons? Does everything work? Do pages load quickly enough to keep their attention? Is it easy to navigate your site, or do you need to offer a training course to users?
Then Test: Start with simple curiosity. For example, ask yourself “Where should the BUY button go, here or there?” Then create two versions of the page. Use Google’s website optimizer to run the test. (It’s free – and really easy.)
Send some traffic to each version, and you’ll discover one of two things:
1. One version is clearly superior to the other.
2. There’s not much difference – which means that the element you were testing doesn’t matter very much, or that the differences were too small to affect visitor behavior.
Either way, you’ve learned something. Wash, rinse, and repeat, and soon you’ll have a landing page that contributes mightily to your bottom line.
[Ed. Note: Find out how Internet marketing expert and pay-per-click specialist Howie Jacobson (www.askhowie.com) increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]
MSG and Weight Gain
Many people avoid monosodium glutamate (MSG) – the so-called “safe” flavor enhancer – because they get a headache or upset stomach after eating it. But here’s another reason to avoid MSG: It might be causing you to gain weight.
MSG has been used for some time to “fatten up” lab rats for experimental purposes – but no one knew for sure if it had the same effect on people. So researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in China set out to study just that.
The researchers compared the MSG consumption of more than 750 Chinese men and women aged 40 to 59. (In China, MSG is commonly used in home cooking, as well as in restaurants and packaged foods. And, in fact, the study found that approximately 82 percent of the subjects used MSG when they prepared food at home.) Those who consumed the most MSG were almost three times as likely to be overweight as compared to those who did not use MSG, even when adjustments were made for physical activity, caloric intake, and other variables that could be related to weight gain.
The researchers are now trying to determine why MSG causes weight gain. One theory is based on the observation that when lab rats are given MSG, they eat more, indicating that MSG somehow influences appetite signals from the brain.
Another concern is the way MSG affects blood sugar. In a 2000 study published in the journal Physiological Research, normal rats were turned into insulin resistant rats by feeding them MSG. The MSG-treated rats also stored glucose as fat more readily than normal rats.
Whatever the reason, it appears that one way to help control your weight is to reduce your intake of MSG.
In the U.S., most people do not use MSG in home cooking, though it is an ingredient in the flavor enhancer Accent. You are more likely to get MSG in restaurant food. You can’t control the way food is prepared when you eat out, but you can at least make sure you read the labels when you shop at the grocery store. Foods to watch out for include soups (especially Asian-noodle type soups) and salad dressings. Many flavor-coated foods – like ranch or barbeque flavored chips and nuts – also contain a significant amount of MSG.
[Ed. Note: It truly is possible to improve your health just by making wise choices when it comes to diet and lifestyle. James B. LaValle, RPh, ND, CCN - founder of the LaValle Metabolic Institute and a nationally recognized expert on natural therapies - can give you easy-to-understand directions for living the healthy life you've always wanted. Learn more here.
For expert advice on staying lean, fit, and healthy, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter.]
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Your Personal Wall Street Protection Plan
Thugs.
It’s a strong word. But how else would you describe a group that has stolen from you, your family, and friends without any trace of regret.
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It’s Good to Know: Hot Recession Sellers
So… Louis Vuitton handbags haven’t been flying off the shelves lately. Vacations are being cancelled. And many people are opting to get their cars fixed instead of buying new ones.
What IS selling? It’s not all Spam and dollar-store deals. Consumer-spending watchers say the trend is toward “smaller-scale” luxuries. People still want to indulge… but on a budget. Here are some of the products that have gotten a boost in recent months:
- Chocolate
- Wine (more recent vintages)
- Running shoes
- Cosmetics
- Fishing equipment
- Gardening seeds
- Tanning products
- Condoms
- Memberships to dating websites
(Source: USA Today)
Word to the Wise: Juju
“Juju” (JOO-joo) – a word of West African origin – is (1) an evil spirit or (2) an object superstitiously believed to embody magical powers.
Example (as used in The New York Times): “On any terminal she is using, a co-worker puts up a sign proclaiming, ‘Bad karma go away, come again another day.’ When she was pregnant, she said, she crashed her computer twice as often – she attributes that to a double whammy of woo-woo juju.”
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I believe all that too, I guess it just likes to see my struggle an self torcher, probably very entertaining for whatever it is. I don’t think death will be much different myself, I think I believe none of it matters much cause we are making it all up, and when you realise this you will also realise why we don’t remember anything b4 birth. I would say that the pree requsit is forgetting completely and enguaging an entertaining the idea of a new adventure.
I can already here myself saying O comon there’s nothing happing here, lets create a new dream, heck who knows maybe it will even work out to be fun this time.
I just hope I can remember that it’s just not worth the bother, and or stop b4 I have to go through this ever again.