Don’t Dump Your Boss to Start a Business Without Doing These 3 Things

“Fire your boss. Follow your passion. Own your time.” These statements, inspiring on one hand, are capable of luring many away from working a regular 9-5 job to becoming entrepreneurs. Statistics show that 6 out of 10 employees are fully dissatisfied with their jobs. Reasons vary from having a terrible boss to inadequate compensation to lack of interest. This makes entrepreneurship an attractive alternative instead of working for someone else. However, starting a business is not all rosy.  

Having a Great Idea Doesn’t Qualify You To be a Successful Entrepreneur

Yes, I said it! And not just me. Steve Jobs said “Ideas are worth nothing unless executed; They are just a multiplier, execution is worth millions.” All the great entrepreneurs you hear of today didn’t get there because of the sheer brilliance of their ideas. They had to put in the work. Many people actually get confused at the difference between having an entrepreneurial mindset and being an entrepreneur.

Those are two different things because having an entrepreneurial mindset means you are visionary. You have great ideas and can think outside the box. It also means you are willing to take risks to reach a goal. You tend to go beyond your job description to get things done. You are able to see how actions tie into the business outcome and channel your energies accordingly. 

Being an entrepreneur, and a successful one, is a different ball game entirely. It is being a business owner. One who runs all the moving parts of a business successfully. It requires some very strong attributes which are critical if your business will not just survive but thrive. 

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

Here are the three things you must know/do before starting a business:

1. Conduct A Proper SWOT Analysis

You need to conduct reality checks for both you as an individual and the business you want to start. SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you understand the business field you want to go into as well as what your advantages are. This can help you develop a strong business strategy that places you in the top percentile. 

Your strengths could be your knowledge, background, education, network, skills, or location. A question to ask yourself here is, “what competitive advantage do I have over other players in the industry?” Weaknesses are reflective of the areas where your business is not favorably matched to other competitors. You need to know them so you can have a developmental plan to eliminate these weaknesses. 

Opportunities are external positive factors that offer reasons why your business can/will flourish. Exploring these opportunities can help you stand out even in a crowded marketplace. Threats are negative influences that often are beyond your control but can affect the sustainability of your business. To be forewarned they say, is to be forearmed. Another critical aspect of a reality check is a personal psychometric assessment as an entrepreneur. 

The result of an entrepreneur’s psychometric test will show a summary of the individual’s strength of the characteristics they already have as well as areas where they need improvement. This is so they can have a successful entrepreneurial career. Attributes tested include passion, creativity, ability to take control, industriousness, knowledge/experience and pursuit of achievement. 

There are different tools that aid this kind of assessment. The result is not to discourage anyone from starting a business. Rather it offers insight as to what your personal strengths are and you can then make a decision as to how to proceed with your business goal.

2. A Roadmap for Getting Seen (or Getting Clients!)

Clients are the lifeline of every business. Without clients, you just have an expensive hobby. What is your plan for visibility? That is, apart from hounding family and friends. Some people actually are great at what they do, but suck at convincing others to pay for their expertise. 

Too many newbie entrepreneurs start a business and get stuck because they don’t have any clients and are trying every possible way to get leads both online and offline. This is not the time to run around trying different strategies. You might need to hire a business coach or get into a business mastermind to see what is working for others.

You will find out what works for you, but you need to get out there. The internet has made it a little easier by offering different platforms where you can share your knowledge and grow a community of people who know, like and trust you. 

Another quick method I always share with my clients is for them to explore sharing their message or expertise on other people’s platforms. When you have a solution, you are able to create valuable content for the specific audience you want to serve. You naturally show up as an authority and build your own audience from being featured. 

“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.” – James Cash Penney

3. Low Hanging Fruits – Results! Results! Results!

People are more comfortable trusting a business that others have experienced. It is the belief that if you’ve been able to achieve one result, then it can be replicated. What that means for you as a prospective business owner is that you need to quickly prove your idea and record results as fast as you can.

You cannot begin to think about a fancy website, business funnels and the whole works, when you haven’t tested your idea. It will be folly to think of quitting your job in this case. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you want to start, you can always start small. Get a client, do the work, then get a testimonial. 

This person can get you referrals and then you begin to scale from there. When your income from your business has matched or surpassed your 9-5 job then you can resign. This might be an unpopular opinion but it is valid. Your bills won’t wait because you’re starting a business, and you still need to eat. 

While you think of investing to grow the business on a large scale, do the work to get guaranteed results in the interim. Working your regular job can become an unpleasant chore especially when your heart is lit with the dream of running your own business. Take the time to prepare adequately and you can guarantee that your business will not be among the statistics of businesses that fail in the first 5 years. 

Have you ever thought of being an entrepreneur, or are you already an entrepreneur? Share your stories with us below!

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4 Ways to Find Yourself Again

There are many upsides to this interconnected, technologically driven world we live in today. We’re able to quickly and easily connect with people, literally, across the world. Business has become more globalized, and learning has never been more accessible or easy.

However, there are some downsides to our world as it is today also. There’s one in particular that I think is becoming a bigger and bigger issue by the day, and that is people losing themselves. 

You might be wondering what I mean when I say “losing themselves” so let me explain. Now, more than ever before, people are being influenced by outside forces through things like social media. And because of that, we’ve fallen into a culture of comparison, where everyone is seeking to be like those they look up to.

The problem is, in the process of doing that, people are creating lives they don’t truly enjoy and are void of true happiness and fulfillment. Lives that are out of alignment with their core values. That’s the reason why you see trends like the number of millionaires going up every single day, while the rate of depression rises alongside it. The good news is, it’s possible to find and reconnect with yourself again. 

If you’ve ever dealt with that feeling of being unhappy and disconnected from the life you want to be living, keep reading to learn four strategies to find yourself again:

1. Ask those who know you best

There are very few, if any, resources in this life that are greater than relationships. A life well lived is one filled with deep, meaningful relationships. One of the benefits of having those sorts of relationships is being able to have people to go to with things like finding yourself again.

When we go down this rabbit hole of change and transformation in the wrong direction, it becomes difficult to pull ourselves out on our own. That’s where those key relationships come in handy.

The first strategy for finding yourself again is to ask the people who know you best. These people tend to know the “real” you. They can give you insights into some of the parts of yourself that may have gotten buried under all the junk that got piled on over the years. 

Asking those who know you best questions about your strengths, values, and purpose in life can go a long way in helping you rediscover who you are, what you value, and what you were put on this earth to do.

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” – Muhammad Ali

2. Get off social media

Like I mentioned above, social media is such an amazing tool that has so many wonderful aspects to it. But, it can also be prime real estate for an identity complex and someone really getting disconnected from themselves.

The comparison that comes from constant engagement and use of social media is a breeding ground for insecurities and/or lust of wanting to be like someone else or have their life. So, you can probably guess where I’m going with this, but a great way to reconnect with yourself is to get off of social media.

Think about it like this, if you were an alcoholic, you wouldn’t hang out in bars hoping to kick your addiction. At least not if you had high hopes of being successful. Well, if you’re struggling with feeling disconnected and are frequently on social media, maybe a good detox is in order.

It’s estimated that the average adult spends 150 plus minutes a day on social media. If you had that extra time to do the other strategies on this list, imagine how much good that would do you in finding yourself again.

3. Get into nature

If you’re feeling lost and disconnected, a great way to find yourself is to just slow down, be still, and go inward to reconnect with your thoughts and feelings. The problem is, we live in a hustle and bustle society that glorifies being busy. 

And since most people live that way, finding time to be still, get quiet, and go within for answers seems impossible. For most people, long gone are the days of having a quiet space for themselves to completely disconnect without distractions.

That’s why the next great strategy for finding yourself is getting into nature. Sometimes in life we’ve got to force ourselves to go to great lengths in order to get what we want. Well, if still and quiet in order to reconnect is what you’re seeking, there isn’t a much better place to find it than out in nature.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t recall the last time I was in the middle of nowhere and had great WiFi, cars whizzing by, or social media and tv’s to fill my head with nonsense. So much of creating a desired result in life is about intention. Getting yourself out into nature and away from the distractions of the world shows that you’re serious about creating the space necessary to find yourself again.

“We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.” – Laurie Colwin

4. Attend a personal growth conference or seminar

Okay, this may be the coach coming out in me, but I truly do believe that a great place to reconnect with yourself is at a personal growth conference or seminar. And I’ll tell you why.

If you’ve ever been to one of these events, you know that the primary intention is to help people overcome some sort of obstacle in their lives or get to a new level. There are two great things about these events: 1. Being able to explore your deeper desires, and 2. Being around and connecting with like minded people.

Not only do personal growth events inspire you, but they also present an opportunity for you to do some deep work on yourself and your life. That’s why you hear people talk about walking away from these types of events feeling “transformed.” It’s because they were able to engage in personal growth work that they probably weren’t making time for outside of that sort of setting.

To be clear, these types of events aren’t a “quick fix” type of thing, and shouldn’t be relied upon to fix all your issues. But, they do present a forum for you to detach from your current reality and gain some new perspective on life. 

Plus, personal growth events offer great opportunities for connection. And, even better than that, connection with the right kinds of people. People who are all on a journey of personal growth and discovery. Relationships with the right people can be so catalytic in you finding yourself again, and you’ll be able to find those sorts of connections at personal growth events.

Putting it all together

Let’s be honest, having that feeling of disconnection from yourself sucks. It’s not a fun place to be. But, the good news is that there are steps that you can take when you’re feeling that way, to find yourself again.

If you do the four things I mentioned above, asking those closest to you, getting off of social media, getting into nature, and attending personal growth events, you’ll find it much easier to reconnect with who you are and get yourself back on track in life.

What advice do you have for people who are struggling to reconnect with who they truly are and getting back on track in life? Share your advice below!

from
https://addicted2success.com/life/4-ways-to-find-yourself-again/

3 Principles to Help You Transform Your Relationship With Money

Money is a cultural obsession. Whether we accept it openly or just silently nod, money is central to our life. Not in a binary sort of way, where when someone likes money, they don’t care about other virtues in life or if they never talk about money, it must make them a saint. But money as means to an end; A channel that takes you to a better place than where you were 12 months ago. As an input to your growth and a resource for creating an enriched life.

I grew up with a scarcity mentality believing that I had to relentlessly work until retirement and save enough money. This thinking underscored pretty much all the decisions I made in life. Decision fatigue before deciding how much to spend and what to spend it on – Expensive trainers to Peloton – and immense guilt for not using the purchase enough. This spin cycle calcified my growth for years.

Over the years I transformed my relationship with money. I am sharing 3 timeless principles that can help you re-evaluate your relationship with money.

1. Trade money to buy time

Our lives are busy and despite the pandemic, our to-lists are still as long. This makes time a premium commodity. Pick anything you are working on – a project report, a side hustle, designing a house, producing a song – often, it always takes up more time than we budgeted.

Can we buy back time? The goal here is to buy time back so you can use that time to nurture your priorities, creative pursuits or micro-goals for the day. I like to keep things in the realm of a day as that keeps things bite-sized and more relatable.

A 16-hour day can soon get chipped away with various things that come our way. Some of these things are on our to-do list and we know will need our attention but then there are a whole lot of unexpected things that pop up and hog our time like unexpected calls, emails, social media. All these things slowly add up & before you realize, an hour is gone.

So, if you start with the assumption that some unknown things will surely come up and allocate time for them, that makes a great starting point. You could look at the last week and assess how much time those things consumed. That helps you get into a pro-active mode. Start with the weekly unexpected ratio and your accuracy at predicting it will get sharper by the week.

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale

2. Find the source for the way you think

The relationship we have towards money is based on the behaviours we saw when we were growing up. How our parents, our role models and that favourite loopy uncle engaged with the topic of money. Was money discussed at all over dinner, whether it was scarce or in surplus? Or whether money often had to be borrowed or was lent to a friend or relatives? Was the lent money ever asked to be returned? These are just a few shades of how we sub-consciously end up absorbing money-conversations. Not just that we also absorb the emotions, the reactions & the statements that got spoken and lo & behold, they become our rules of engagement with money.

But not all viewpoints may fit into the architecture of our thinking process and ultimately our life. So, it becomes very important to pause & check about who you are taking money advice from.

Money is not an isolated topic but underscores the type of life we live, the books we read, the adventures we make and whether the tip we leave in a café is accompanied with a smile or a friendly wave.

If you don’t like the way money undergirds your life decisions, then ask yourself the question – how did you come to think this way? This question often takes you closer to the source of where the thinking took shape and that gives you the choice on whether you want to change your relationship with money or not.

“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.” – James W. Frick

3. Cost versus value

Over the years I started asking the question, “what value do I get from spending a certain amount?” Value = which problem of mine will get resolved. Cost = the actual dollars I dish out.

All this while I looked at things from a perspective of the dollar amount, I was paying. And the size of that figure was usually the deciding factor if it was a go or no-go.

You could argue that ‘value’ is the degree of improvement you get in your life. Would I pay almost 60% more for a pair of earphones, (not a fan of the cordless ones) because they don’t tangle up each time & travel well? Would I bother saving $100 on the best phone or laptop, something that I will use every day for a few years at least? Will I think twice about helping a friend’s fund-raiser? Not a chance.

Value is something that solves my problem and improves my life. I see it as removing irritants so I can stop jacking around and get on to things like working towards my goals or increasing my downtime.

Our relationship with money is lifelong. Re-hash it on your terms.

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/3-principles-to-help-you-transform-your-relationship-with-money/

How to Build Better Habits With 3 Practical Steps

While it’s in our nature to want to improve and achieve our goals, what often stops us from getting there, is a lack of understanding of how we operate as individuals. Luckily for us, thanks to the latest discoveries in neuroscience (the science that studies the brain), we can learn how to train our brain more effectively to live healthier, more productive, and inspired lives.

Part of that training resides in the creation of better habits which is nothing more than a systematic repetition of desired actions. The problem with picking up good habits is that we often experience a gap between our desired intentions and actual outcomes and this is mainly due to a lack of alignment in our brain. Our brain is divided into 3 main parts (the rational, emotional, and instinctive) and while they all serve their function, they often disagree with each other creating an internal tension that leads us to poor results. 

The good news is we can learn how habits are formed and with the right mindset, knowledge, and patience, we can let go of bad ones and build good ones.

According to behavioral expert BJ Fogg, habits are formed around three elements: cue, routine, and reward, the so-called “habit loop”.

Cue – This refers to the initial trigger motivating our desired behavior, and it can either come from our external environment (ex. phone notification) or from our internal environment (ex the desire to plan our day). 

Routine – This refers to the action required to perform our desired habit, whether that is deciding to read more or stop mindlessly scrolling on social media.

Reward – This is the most enjoyable part and is what motivates our brain to perform the behavior. As human beings, we are hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid pain and so when we align our desired behavior with a great reward, we are much more likely to pursue it. Rewards can be tangible (receiving money), or intangible (getting recognized by a friend) but what matters most, is to choose ones aligned to our wellbeing and personal growth. Rewarding yourself with 2 slices of cheesecake every time you succeed in going to the gym, is a clear step in the wrong direction.

The key to building healthier habits is in playing around with the routine and reward to find the combination that works best. There are several studies trying to demonstrate how long it takes to build a habit, and while there is no exact number, the one thing needed is a continuous repetition of effort.

“Habits are not a finish line to be crossed, they are a lifestyle to be lived.” – James Clear

Putting the habit loop into practice

Let’s say you want to read Addicted 2 Success 5 times a week. Now that you are clear on the outcome, it’s time to understand the nature of the reward. To make the most of this step, you must dig deep to explore the WHY of you wanting to read Addicted 2 Success. Other than a desire to be well informed, you could be driven by a fear of missing out or by the aspiration of starting a blog. While there is no right answer, the more reasons you can come up with, the more your brain will put a value on this activity and identify it as a motivating experience. 

Willpower is undoubtedly important, but so is setting up your environment for success. If you are planning on reading from a browser, closing all other tabs or putting your phone away are simple techniques to resist any form of temptation and distraction.

Next, identify the cue. What could be the trigger driving you to consider this new habit? Maybe it’s whenever you are having a low moment, but if you want to “win easily”, try directly time-boxing it in your calendar. As you can imagine, the second approach which is more proactive, will significantly increase your chances of completion.

And if you want to take it to the next level, focus on practicing the so-called “if-then technique”.

In this case, you could say “if it’s 7 pm on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday then I will read Addicted 2 Success”. By taking this approach, not only are you avoiding tapping into your precious willpower but also creating a stronger connection between the situation(if) and the action I want to take (then). 

Want to know how this simple trick can increase your chances of success? In one study, 91% of people who used an if-then plan stuck to an exercise program versus 39% of non-planners!

“Practice isn’t the thing that you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” – Malcolm Gladwell

Now it’s time to play around with the reward. My suggestion is to focus on intrinsic rewards such as tracking the number of articles or time you spent reading as when we rely solely on extrinsic rewards that bring us immediate gratification (ex. validation, unhealthy food),we might succeed in forming the habit but not in growing as people.

As with all great things in life, growth only happens at the end of our comfort zone, but with the right knowledge, you can accelerate that process.

from
https://addicted2success.com/life/how-to-build-better-habits-with-3-practical-steps/

The 5 Best Business Audiobooks Every Entrepreneur Should Listen to

As an entrepreneur, you might not be able to find time to read books with your busy lifestyle. In such cases, audiobooks can be a wonderful replacement. You can get the knowledge from a book without spending as much time reading it. 

All you need to do to listen to an audiobook is just find a peaceful place, plug in your earphones, and get ready for eternal knowledge. In this busy lifestyle, you might not be able to carry a book everywhere you go but when you listen to audiobooks, there are a lot more books in your reach.

If you are an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, reading books can give you a lot of knowledge about entrepreneurship. If you want to design a life you imagine to live, the below mentioned books will lead you there. In case you are already an entrepreneur, these books will allow you to know the thoughts and ideas of some of the best entrepreneurs of all time. You can learn a lot more from their experience than you can ever learn by any other source. 

1. The $100 startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future By Chris Guillebeau

The $100 startup can be a very useful book if you are just starting a new business or website. This book focuses on starting a side hustle or either a full-time job or business on the basis of your skill.

It has many inspiring examples of people that made brilliant companies out of their passion. In case you know all the information about how much money a side hustle can make, but don’t have a thought on which way to go to make your dreams come to life, then this book will be the best for you.

2. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon By Brad Stone

Amazon is one beast of a company. It is reshaping ecommerce around the globe. The other big companies are outshining amazon when it comes to press and attention, but amazon is just going through the crowd like a silent killer. 

This book will make you understand how much hard work and determination goes into experiencing such immense wealth in the end. Listening to this will get you familiar with the inner work as well as founding stories and the problems the company and its founder faced.

Listening to this book will definitely motivate you to keep going especially if you are going through a tough time in your business. The struggles that amazon went through to reach this point will definitely spark hope in you as well to keep going. 

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos

3. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses By Eric Ries

You can just take this book to be your startup bible. It provides all sorts of information about the intelligent and amazing processes of operating your side hustle or business. It takes you through how to find product-market fit fast and also gives you the key tips to be successful in your business or company. 

Spoiler alert: one of the first things the book focuses on is the user and how to make a product that meets the customers’ requirements and expectations.  

4. Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street By John Brooks

If a book is Bill Gates favourite business book, there is nothing wrong in trying it out and learning as much as possible from it. 

This book is a work of magic that has 12 amazing stories of entrepreneurs which will give you countless lessons to learn in each and every aspect of business. The stories discussed in the book will teach you about problems you’ll likely face in a business, such as product inceptions, tax loopholes and a ton of different things you can get into, when you set up a business.

5. How to Win friends and Influence People By Dale Carnegie

This is one legend of a book if you ask me. The release of this masterpiece dates back to 1937. The situations faced in business have changed but we humans haven’t. A single person cannot do everything, and having a good team will make a huge difference. This book will teach you how to influence people and expand your team. 

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” – Dale Carnegie

Conclusion: 

If you are an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, listening to these books can drastically change the way you think about everything. Just keep working hard and you will get there one day, but remember to never ever give up. 

What’s the best book you’ve read this year and why? Share the book in the comments!

from
https://addicted2success.com/entrepreneur-profile/the-5-best-business-audiobooks-every-entrepreneur-should-listen-to/

5 Simple Ways You Can Raise Your Vibration For Success

If you’ve ever heard about the Law Of Attraction, then you know that the universe responds to the energy or the frequency at which we vibrate. Like attracts like and positive thoughts result in positive results. So, when we aim to succeed in life or try to attract happiness, love, or abundance, we need to make sure we are vibrating and matching our frequency with that of the universe to be in its alignment. In short, our thoughts can only become our reality when we allow them to be, which is, by raising our vibration. 

So what does it mean to be vibing high? High vibe individuals are people who choose to be content if not overly happy, then at least positive, and overall pleasant. You will feel their vibe when you come into contact with them and get emphatically impacted by their contagious positive energy, which is known as energy transfer. 

Quite contrary to which, a low vibe individual would mostly be sluggish, critical of themselves, and others, self-doubting, and would always believe in why something cannot work instead of how it can. We carry both sides within ourselves, and it often depends upon our situation, lifestyle, or life events as to which vibe we are tapping into. Nonetheless, the good news is, it is achievable even when you feel jaded by life.

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” – Albert Einstein

So, here are the five simple ways which if incorporated into our lifestyle, can help us elevate our energy and raise our vibration:

1. Connect With Yourself

Pick a time of the day to say hello to yourself. The best way to do that is through meditation, but it can also be achieved in the form of silent prayers or affirmations. We cannot pour from an empty cup, and that is why to reciprocate better, it is essential to get in touch with ourselves, and to feel whole within first. Therefore, taking at least 10-15 minutes to sit quietly can provide an impetus to your energy.

2. Healthy Habits

It is believed that the more active you are and the more you take care of your body the more energy flows through you and to you. A good way to get an instant energy boost is to exercise, drink plenty of water, have healthy eating habits, and get a good night’s sleep.  

3. Dance, Music, and Your Hobby

Dance when you must to get your blood pumping. Similarly, listening to your favorite tunes can instantly raise your vibration too. Cultivating a hobby can make you a lot happier and help you live your life to the fullest. So make sure that you get in touch with your creative side from time to time.

4. Focus On Fun

Focus on being happy and tap into the sources which provide instant gratification like socializing and meeting friends. Fun helps us to live inflow, and being inflow means being present, not overthinking things.

“My philosophy is: If you can’t have fun, there’s no sense in doing it.” – Paul Walker

5. Dress To Feel Good

Self-care, grooming and dressing-up does not just shed negative energy but instantly changes our vibe. It doesn’t just detox negative energy but also makes us feel empowered. 

With that being said, there can be days when our world may seem to have tossed over, and we may feel depleted with no energy left to even stick to a routine. It is then okay to let yourself sit in that energy for a while to feel it, but choose not to respond to it. Make sure you do not dwell in that negative space for too long. Instead, slowly try to pick yourself up and get into the momentum of life by allowing yourself to eat, pray, and love!

How do you make sure the vibe you’re putting out into the world is a good one? Share your thoughts with us below!

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/5-simple-ways-you-can-raise-your-vibration-for-success/

The Top Habits That Are Stopping You From Becoming Rich and Wealthy

Did you know, if you put $5 into a savings account every single morning when you woke up for the next ten years, you would have a savings account at the end totalling $18,250? When it comes to being rich, we all love the idea of having millions in the bank, but what most people don’t realise is that it’s not earning a ton of money that makes people rich, it’s the mindset and habits that go with their lifestyle.

This is why when most average Joe’s win millions in the lottery, many end up back where they started within several years. It’s all about your spending habits that make you get rich and stay rich. 

Below we’re going to explore the common habits you’re going to want to think about:

1. Failing to Stick to a Budget

Everybody who has money has a budget. You’ve probably sat down yourself at some point in your life and thought to yourself, ‘okay, I need a budget, and I’m going to stick with it.’ You look over your accounts, work out how much you’re spending on bills, like food and rent, and then you figure out how much you can save and how much you can spend to stay comfortable and secure.

Being able to stick to a budget and then keeping it like that is a great way to create wealth. Even if your income goes up or you’ve managed to save a few thousand dollars in a savings account, being able to stay within your budget means you won’t end up losing it all.

“The thing I have discovered about working with personal finance is that the good news is that it is not rocket science. Personal finance is about 80 percent behavior. It is only about 20 percent head knowledge.” – Dave Ramsey

2. Only Having a Single Income Stream

You’ve probably heard this point over and over again, and I’ll talk about it a little bit more below, but if you’re only earning income from one place, you’re never going to get rich or wealthy. It’s as simple as that. Let’s say you own an eCommerce store and that’s how you make your money.

Having a second source of income is a way to negate these issues so you can still earn money, even if one stream is subject to issues. One study found that most millionaires have around two or three main sources of income, plus investments on the side, meaning they can make money, and stay secure in the future.

3. Not Investing Enough

If you want to make money and become wealthy, you need to invest. I’m not saying you need to gamble thousands of dollars away on the stock market and potentially not get anything back. That’s a high-risk investment, but if you do want to go that route, then you’re more than welcome to try it.

However, there are much safer investment options, such as bank and government-funded schemes, ISAs, bonds, and investment projects. Investing in these means you’re not only keeping the money safe for a few years so you can’t spend it, but you’re also making a percentage of the money back.

Now, some investment options will allow you to invest as little as $1, but a good habit is to invest a lot in this way. By investing a lot of money, you’re saving more money, which means you’re not spending it on little things, nor tempted to break your budget, but you’re also making more money because you’re investing more.

4. Settling in Your Professional Life

When was the last time you thought about your professional career and where it was heading? As we get older and go up the career ladder, at some point, we end up settling for where we are, and we grow complacent. We don’t seek to get better, get a promotion, or climb higher. We just get comfortable where we are, and this is a bad thing to do.

Naturally, humans seek comfort zones because it means there’s less to worry about, but if you want to become financially secure and grow wealth, you need to keep climbing higher and higher; about as far as you can go. Fortunately, you live in the modern world, so there are plenty of ways to do this.

5. Not Reading for Growth, or Reading at All

If you want to grow as an individual, whether that’s being able to manage your money better or practically improving or educating yourself in any area of life, you need to make sure you’re reading. As of a Corley study, around 92% of people who had ‘minimal assets’ did not read to grow.

On the other hand, pretty much every single millionaire in the world has the habit of reading with the intention to learn and grow. Coincidence? I think not. Of course, reading is fun for entertainment purposes, but you need to diversify your reading choices and get some books on subjects you want to know about, whether that’s investing, starting your own business, or learning a new skill.

”It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” – Robert Kiyosaki

6. Procrastinating Your Life Away

A bad habit that needs no introducing. All the points above rely on this one solid foundation that if you procrastinate your life away, nothing is going to happen. Before I go any further, it’s really important for me to say that this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any downtime whatsoever.

You cannot work 24/7 all the time and expect yourself not to burn out. However, if you have things to make your list and you end just playing games or shopping or watching TV or movies, this is procrastinating. These activities do not grow you or have a final outcome apart from that time you’ve just spent doing those things is now gone forever.

This is time you could have spent reading, exercising, educating yourself, investing, creating your budget, working on your business, or any of the amazing other things that can help you create the life you want to live. Be bold and brave. It takes courage to live the life you want to live, but anyone can do it if they just put the effort in.

What piece of money advice from the article resonated with you the most? Share your thoughts below!

from
https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/the-top-habits-that-are-stopping-you-from-becoming-rich-and-wealthy/