You Are What You Eat
“The first wealth is health” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What are you eating?
When it comes to health, what you put into your body has more to do with your overall health more than any other factor. So I am going to ask you a question. What have you had to eat in the last 48-hours? What are all of the things you have put into your body in the way of food, beverages, pills, etc. I recommend that for one week you keep a journal of all of the things you put into your body. Some of you will be happy and proud of how you treat your body and others will be amazed at the absolute volume of food and beverages you consume in a day. After you have done this for a week, check what you have eaten on a web site and total up the calories you have consumed. If you are an average sized male that exercises daily you should be consuming about 2200 calories per day to maintain your current weight. Here are some secrets inside secret #3:
Foods to avoid
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is a sugar substitute that began its use by food companies because it is cheaper than regular sugar. You will find this in almost all packaged and processed snack foods and beverages. This stuff is in drinks, cookies, cakes, (all the stuff we should not eat anyway), and you will also find it in crackers and certain breads. Completely avoid any foods or beverages that contain this product.
Partially Hydrogenated Oil. This is made of plant and animal oils that are infused with hydrogen to increase their stability and shelf life. Think margarine and Crisco. These oils are in most processed food that you eat. Any packed snack, cakes, crackers, “nutrition bars” (I use that term loosely). Some fruit products are also laden with (PHO). These, like high fructose corn syrup, are terrible for your health and can cause obesity and abnormal cholesterol levels. Read all packages and stay away from these products whenever you can. Here are two articles that provide additional information. Please check the following links for additional information:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-fructose-corn-syrup/AN01588
http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/N185.html
Other than the two products I have mentioned above, consuming good foods really comes down to common sense and education. Here are three rules to live by.
- If it grows in the ground, you can find it in the produce section, or at a local farmer’s market, you can eat it in quantity and it will be good for you. Think color. The more colorful the better — dark green, blue, red, orange and yellow. Eat raw vegetables and fruit whenever you can.
- If it is in a fast food restaurant, fried, filled with dairy (processed cheese), or wrapped in cellophane, avoid it.
- If it has a face, eat it in limited quantities, no more than once a day and try to limit it to 3-4 times per week. For fish, go with salmon, and have it 2-3 times per week.
Think about and answer the following questions:
- What do you eat every day?
- Are you overweight?
- Do you have the energy you want and need to accomplish your goals?
- What would it take to change your eating habits?
In Chapter 2, Your Health and Longevity, I present what I call the Power Foods™. These are made up of the foods that provide you with the most nutritional benefit, you can eat them in quantity, and they taste great. (Page 34-35) I also share with you the natural remedies and enhancers I used along with exercise to lower my cholesterol from 277 to 217. (Pages 37-38) I am a firm believer that constantly looking for ways to improve your diet, exercise program and health are the best ways to insure your success in any endeavor.
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Your Inner Communication
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future
by merely changing his attitude”
– Oprah Winfrey
What do you say to yourself?
Do you ever talk to yourself out loud? In secret #1 I explained that you are where you are in your life because of your thinking. So, if you become what you think about then you have to ask yourself this question again. What do you say to yourself? When it is just you talking to you, is it positive? “Hey way to go on that presentation, or wow my husband really loves it when I tell him he looks great, or I am so proud of my children, I am doing a great job of showing them the right way to act and treat others.” These inner conversations can make the difference between a long marriage and a divorce, a successful business meeting and a failed one. You have to make sure that your-self talk is positive and engaging and conducted in a way that makes you feel good, confident and proud.
What is your inner dialogue?
We all have an inner dialogue every day. From the minute you wake up you are consciously and subconsciously saying things to yourself. This is true even when you are asleep. You have to be very careful what you say. I again can use examples from my own life to illustrate my point. When you wake in the morning and its 40 degrees and raining, and it’s a Monday morning, some people would automatically groan and roll back over and start the dialogue in their head about how bad this day is going to be. While others will get up and smile and say, “OK, mother-nature you are not going to control my mood today, I will take all of the liquid sunshine I can get.” These people will go about their day and not let the weather affect them one bit. Another example is sitting in traffic. You have no control over this, yet we spend all kinds of energy getting upset about it. I used to do this but not anymore. I immediately call the people I am supposed to meet letting them know I may be late and then I get productive, who can I call and catch up with while I sit here? What customer can I reconnect with? What audio book or radio program can I listen to and learn something? I always try to find a way to be productive. All of these are examples of your inner dialogue and examples of how we cannot let outside forces like weather or traffic control how we think or control how our day is going to go.
Each day we will build on each new secret, so remember we become what we think about and we have to control our inner dialogue to ensure that it is pumping us up and producing good results at all times.
Think about and answer the following questions:
- How do you talk to yourself every day?
- Does your self talk make you feel good or bad?
- How can you apply this information to your life, family, career, business?
- What would it take to change your inner dialogue?
In The Practical Guide to Exceptional Living we discuss in almost every chapter how your thoughts and inner dialogue can affect your outcomes and where you end up in life. In chapter 2, Your Health and Longevity, I present a series of questions to get you thinking about how long you want to live and the reasons why. (Page 27) In chapter 5, The Money Dance, I share with you two concepts I developed, The Money Myths™ and Your Money Relationship™. Both of these concepts deal with the inner dialogue and perception you may have about money and wealth. (Pages 78-80) By changing your inner dialogue and old beliefs you will unlock your mind to think in new ways that lead you to success.
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Everything Starts With Our Thoughts
“Anything the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve”
Napoleon Hill
How have you been taught to think?
This question should get you thinking in itself. How you think about yourself, the world, your life and your health in general, will determine where you are in life. You are where you are because of your thoughts. It is that simple. It all started when we were kids, and for most of us, how we think today is due mainly to how we were taught or what we observed from our parents.
For me, I learned that as a man, you worked a job from 9-5 and provided for the family. You did not do chores or help much around the house or with the kids. You worked for “The Company” and came home. During your working life you took off two weeks and vacationed at the beach. You did this until you were 60 or 70 and then you retired and shortly after that you died.
If you were the mom, you cleaned and cooked and took care of the kids. As a family you lived a little beyond your means and there was never a thought of breaking out of this mold. Only people that worked a ton of hours and sacrificed time from their families made real money. You were taught on some level that your family was middle class and normal. There is some variation of this for all of us.
To me this did not sound like a ton of fun so I changed my thinking.
How do you think about life?
If you are thinking that life is tough and you must claw and scratch your way to having a great life, then believe me that is what you will get. If you think life is a series of lessons and experiences that guide you to the life you desire then that will be true as well. Both thoughts may get you to the same place but I would always choose the path of least resistance. If you have a true self evaluation, you will realize that where you are, probably in some way, is where you have been thinking you deserve to be. In my book “The Practical Guide to Exceptional Living” I have dedicated an entire chapter on how to think and set goals. This process has changed my life and how I think.
How do you think about your health?
Did you know that how you think applies to your health as well? If, while growing up, your family was health conscious, watched what they ate and enjoyed home cooked meals with fresh meats and vegetables, chances are you have probably carried those traditions along with you. However, if meat and potatoes were a staple in your home, with little variety, you probably do the same today.
Think about your family, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles etc. Do you see vibrant health and longevity or do you see obesity and disease? Whatever you see started in thought and can be changed there as well. I will show you how to completely change your thinking about health and will tell you a great story about Norman Cousins who controlled heart disease in his body with his thoughts.
Always be careful about what you say and think about your health. Our minds can create and destroy disease in our bodies.
How do you picture yourself?
When you close your eyes and think of yourself, do you see the person you want to be? What do you see as it relates to your body, relationship, how you treat others and your career? Is it what you desire? If you do not see the person you want to be, then you need to ask yourself what you would change.
Think about and answer the following questions:
- How would you like your life to be?
- What have you learned from this secret?
- How can you apply this information to your life, family, career, business?
- What would it take to begin thinking about only the good things in your life?
In The Practical Guide to Exceptional Living we discuss in chapter 4, Attitude and the Law of Attraction, how your thoughts, negative or positive can affect your outcomes. I share with you some specific thoughts I had about my business and how those thoughts directly affected the results I got both good and bad. By changing the thoughts I had every day I literally took my business form failure to success in a very short period of time, all by changing my thoughts and my attitude. (Pages 67-69)
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Do you give?
Give
“Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege”
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Giving can be one of the most rewarding things you can do in life. To give your love, money, thanks, praise, or hope to your fellow man, woman and to children is a gift. My wife and I are constantly giving to others, to charity and to our children’s schools and our church. We give our time, our thoughts and our money. It is not always easy or convenient but it is always the right thing to do. It is especially important to give during the Christmas season. There are so many out there that are less fortunate than you and there is always someone who needs what you have more than you do. Here are a few financial giving rules.
- Always give to your church and when you have come up with the right amount to give, double it!
- Never walk by a lemonade stand or kids selling cookies on the street without stopping to buy something, let them keep the change.
- Always buy from the neighborhood kids when they are selling for their team, their band, their troop or their school.
- Always give to the Salvation Army when they ring their bell.
- Find an organization you believe in and give to it every year.
- Give to the military that protect us and grant us the freedom we have every day. If I am in a Starbucks, or Chipotle, or any other public eatery or airport and I see people in military uniform I buy their meal or coffee.
Here is how I do it. “Sir/mam, I appreciate your service to this great country. I never served in the military but it is people like you that allow me to grow my business and enjoy the freedom that I have today. I would like to buy you your coffee/meal today. Please do not argue with me because I will win. Thank you for all that you do, have a great day
I have not been turned down yet!
Remember money flows, the more your give the more that will flow back to you. This is a self fulfilling prophecy that will always allow you to continue to give more as time goes on. The more you make the more you give and the more you give the more you will make.
Now go out and give!!
Secret # 20: The Money Myths™
What I call the “money myths” are beliefs that exist in the minds of many people in society today about money and finances and they are as follows:
· Only educated people who attend Ivy League schools or come from wealthy families can become wealthy (millionaires).
I know three people, none of whom has a college education (one of them never graduated from high school) who all started their businesses from scratch and are now multi-multi millionaires. They all came from lower-to middle class families.
· It takes money to make money.
When I started my business, I had no financial help and about $100 in my checking account. As I mentioned earlier, my company today generates close to $4,000,000 in annual revenue. There are endless stories of people who started with nothing, or even greatly in debt and were able to create wealth.
· If you become rich, you will become too good for others. Rich people are greedy, rich people are snobs, rich people are selfish.
If you are a wonderful, loving and generous person and you become rich, you will become even more wonderful, loving and generous; however, if you are a sarcastic jackass and you become rich, chances are you will become a bigger sarcastic jackass. It is not the money that creates the person, the person already is who they are before and after the money.
Banish the Money Myths™ from your life and begin to realize that anyone can become wealthy and financially independent in this great country.
Secret # 19: Visualization
The next step in the Law of Attraction is learning to visualize. Have you ever thought about a person and closed your eyes so you could picture them as if they were there? Then two days later you run into them or they call. This is not by chance. This is the Law of Attraction at work. You thought about this person, then you visualized them, and then they appeared in your life.
You must set the goal of what you truly want in your life–whether it’s a better job, new career, more money, the perfect mate, better friends, a better city to live in, a bigger house, more peace of mind–whatever it is you want. Think about what you want, write it down, visualize it, commit it to memory and The Law of Attraction will go to work immediately. You have to believe it with passion. You have to think about it and read about it. You must picture what your life would be like if you achieved these different things. You have to believe it with all your heart.
The Visualization Experience™
· Think about what it is that you truly want
· Write it down in detail with a date for completion
· Write down why you want to achieve this goal
· Write down the emotions you will feel having achieved the goal
· Close your eyes and picture how you will feel and look if you achieve this goal
· Cut out pictures describing this goal or your feeling and put them in a notebook
· Look at this daily
These actions will immediately begin to set the Law of Attraction into motion and you will be on your way to achieving this goal.
Secret # 18: The Law of Attraction
Have you ever heard of the Law of Attraction? It is a universal law, similar to the law of gravity or the law of night and day. What goes up must come down, day follows night and night follows day. These are universal laws that cannot be changed. The Law of Attraction works exactly the same way.
Every human abides by the Law of Attraction:
• Like attracts like
• Positive thoughts and feelings attract positive outcomes into your life
• Negative thoughts and feelings attract negative things into your life
• As you think, you shall become
• What you think you deserve, good or bad, you will receive
If you think that the world is a hard, difficult and cruel place, then as a result of this thinking, that is what your life will become. Conversely, if you view the world as being full of opportunity, abundance and joy, then, as a result of that thinking, that is what your life will become.
How you think every day will control your actions
and what you do every day.
This, in turn will produce results, good, bad, or indifferent.
Where you are in your life right now is where your thoughts and feelings have brought you, period. You must accept 100% responsibility for where you are right now in your journey. When I first heard this, I refused to believe it. How could my thoughts control my destiny? Look at the statement in bold above and you will find your answer. This is the key. How you think controls how you act, which determines where you end up in life. The Law of Attraction will bring to you whatever it is you think about yourself and your life each day.
Understanding and mastering the Law of Attraction have changed my life forever.
Learn more about The Law of Attraction and other concepts in my book
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