I know I’m taking a bit of a risk making a post with a headline like this - but I’m a lot less concerned with who might be turned off and a whole lot more concerned with the people who are going to sit up, pay attention, and take control of where their life is going financially.

Last night, between dinner and midnight, I generated about $1,270 in affiliate earnings promoting Naomi Dunford’s Online Business School (as well as pre-sales for an additional product Naomi and I are working on together for release in December).  And while I’ve been active in affiliate marketing for a few years now, I’ve never had a payout like that before.  Last month was a close second, with about $550 generated over a period of several days (thanks Havi!), but this was a huge step forward for me.

The thing of it is, this increase wasn’t an accident - it happened for a reason.

Amazing Things Happen When You Take Really, Really Detailed Notes

As I’ve mentioned before, I purchased Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula last year before my launch of my 30 Hours a Day time management program.  It was pricey ($997), but had a 60 day guarantee so I felt comfortable giving it a try - if it was all hype, I could return it in a heartbeat.  I studied the material, launched the program, and made back what I spent (and a bit more) in 5 days of an initial launch.  It ended up being a sort of free education that has radically increased my ability to market effectively both online and in my day job.

A few months ago, I broke open the CD case for the program and went through it again, taking incredibly detailed notes about everything Jeff was covering.  I read through his bonuses like case studies, interviews and sample launch material, and took even more notes.  But I took notes with a special attitude, and that’s what I want to share with you.

When I took notes, I mentally imagined that I would never get a chance to go through this material again, and that this was my only opportunity to learn from it. Once I did that, the level of “click” I experienced as I took notes went through the roof, and I absorbed ideas that I had missed before.  Ideas that I used to do a series of promotions that gave me greater returns with each one I ran.

Here’s What You Need To Do With All This Information You Take In

Since information is so easy to come by on the web, we tend to listen passively and not take more than the most cursory of mental notes.   This means we’re taking in a lot bt not “keeping” very much of it at all.  My hope is that this blog post will help change that.

When you’re serious about changing something in your life - whether it’s losing weight, controlling your temper, making more money or building better relationships - take effective notes with the attitude I just described.  Act like this is your one shot to absorb information, and then act on the notes that you take.

There is no substitute for careful thorough study.  “Ready, Fire Aim” will definitely get you started, but when you want to take it to the next level you need to spend a lot more time on the Ready and Aim.

It was careful study which allowed me to make October and November my best affiliate earning months ever.  December will be even better, because I’ve been taking even more notes over the last few days.

Now I invite you to do the same.

Watch These Videos And Take Careful Notes If You Want To Make More Money

Yesterday I told a lot of people to buy Online Business School, mainly because it’s a solid product with an affordable price point (and I was throwing in my $147 bonus as well). Even if you don’t buy it, you should still listen to the interview I did with Naomi, click the link and listen to the free audio and video resources on her page.  But don’t just listen - set aside some time and take detailed notes.  There is simply no way you can’t boost your business on the strength of the free content alone.

And if you want to really take things to the next level, you need to do the same for Jeff Walker’s free Product Launch Formula videos - and you should do it first, because this launch is only going to happen for 24 hours, starting at 2pm EST tomorrow.  Jeff has a huge following and is only selling 500 copies on this re-launch, and I guarantee that he will sell out well before those 24 hours are up.

Now I’m not telling you to buy Product Launch Formula - it’s $2000 now, so it’s well out of the price range of most people - but the videos you’ll get access to are a goldmine of note-taking goodness.  If all you did was watch the free videos at lunch tomorrow, you’ll learn valuable information you can use to increase the amount of money your business brings in, month after month.

One More Thing - I’d Like To Personally Coach You - For Free - If You’re Willing To Take The Plunge

(I’m sorry - Product Launch Formula is off the market, so this offer is off the table as well)

Now if you do happen to pick up Product Launch Formula tomorrow before it sells out, and you purchase it through this link right here, I’m going to help you put it into practice.  I’ll give you four one-hour coaching sessions - something I normally charge $1000 for - all focused on helping you run a successful launch.  And I’ll also give you a copy of all my products as well - 30 Hours a Day, Becoming an Early Riser, and more.

Please Note: You must clear your browser cookies first before you order, as it is the only way I will be credited with the sale and can give you the coaching bonus.

If I’m not credited, there’s nothing I can do - so please be sure to clear your browser cookies, click the link above, then order.

So if you want that coaching, clear your cookies, click here and get Product Launch Formula.  If you just want some free education, click here as well and take some great notes.

As for me, it’s time for bed.  I’ll see you on the other side.

All the best,

Dave

PS - I can only offer the free coaching and products to those who clear their cookies and buy via my affiliate link.  If you buy from someone else’s link, I can’t extend the offer.  Thanks for understanding.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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When I look back at any successful habit change I’ve worked through in my life, I can see a pattern in them - more often than not, they were based around events I wanted to experience rather than willpower, deadlines, or paper goals.  In other words, what kept me focused and motivated on following through wasn’t what I wanted in an analytical sense, but instead more of a desire to feel a certain way at a certain time.

Events that carry powerful emotion tend to move us to action much more strongly than when we try to act through logic or willpower, though usually it’s in a negative direction (the fear and uncertainty that cause us to procrastinate or stress out).  But when it’s in a positive direction, our desire to feel a certain way (or to be part of something) is absolutely primal in how it drives us.

We see it all the time:

• In the person who has no willpower when it comes to eating, yet suddenly takes total control so she can fit into that bridesmaid’s dress for her best friend’s wedding.

• In the person who procrastinates forever on a major life goal, yet hops on board with a freakish intensity to beat the deadline of the big 4-0.

• In the person who finds the drive to work extra hours or start her own business so she can take the kids to Disney World this summer or make this the best holiday ever.

It’s Not About A Goal - It’s About A Feeling

What all these examples have in common is that they center around an event - some specific feeling at some specific time - which you want with an intensity you can feel down to your bone.  You believe that being in a certain state of mind/body/finances at that time and date will give you a rush which will be so worth it that it’s easy to take action no matter how hard it might seem to be.

In fact, the difficulty is an afterthought - because you’re not going to let anything get in the way of you experiencing the rush of that event.

• How good you’ll feel zipping up those clothes you couldn’t fit in 6 months ago.

• How satisfied you’ll feel closing the cover of that book you’ve been meaning to write for a decade.

• How powerful you’ll feel picking up gifts for the kids, and not even being concerned at what number rings up on the register.

We want experiences.  We want feelings.  We want to live in the rush of that moment.  And that drives us more than a carefully worded goal ever would.

How To Apply This Right Now To Change Your Life

Think of some change you’re making in your life.  Now tack an experience onto it. You want to lose weight?  Pick a certain pair of pants you want to fit in by Christmas.  Focus on how good that’s going to feel, immerse yourself in the feeling, and see yourself enjoying that moment so much that you’ll be damned if anything gets in your way.

This may sound simplistic, but it drives your decisions every day of your life. Every time you “just can’t wait” for something. Every time you enjoy goofing off rather than working.  Every time you choose the chocolate instead of the carrots (note to self: you bought the carrots, now eat them before they go bad again).  You do this all the time in negative ways, when we give in to the desire to experience an event that give us momentary pleasure or relief from conflict.

But you want more out of your life, or you wouldn’t have been reading this far.

Take control of the events you focus on rather than letting your focus fall to your mind’s self-defense mechanisms (the ones that keep you trapped in weak behavior that doesn’t serve you).  Pick one thing - just one thing - and focus on it for a week. Think of where you want to be one week from now, some event that will feel good - whether it’s stepping on a scale, depositing a check, or seeing someone special smile - and focus on experiencing that.

When you’re not willing to sacrifice the big experience you want, you’ll be much more inclined to make the small sacrifices that will get you there.

Three Other Events That Can Help You Change Where You Are In Life

Ok, this is a straight shift into “business mode” - if you don’t run your own business (or you’re not considering making extra money), you can skip to the comments or Stumble this page or whatever. :-)  But if you’re entrepreneurially inclined, there are three things you need to pay attention to today.

• #1, Naomi Dunford (my personal business coach) is releasing the premium version of Online Business School at 3pm Eastern today.  There’s some free stuff here that you can enjoy in the meantime.

• #2, If you have any inclination to pick up the premium version of Online Business School, you will want to return to this blog 1/2 hour before launch because I’ve got a special pre-launch question-and-answer session with her and I’ll be giving away my $147 time management program 30 Hours A Day for free to anyone who buys via the link on that page.  1:30 EST. (It’s been delayed … subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when it’s live) Drop back by, and look in the sidebar for the big honking link.

• #3, If you didn’t catch it via my email list, you need to check out Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula videos (all free) because the stuff in there will help you get a hell of a lot more out of Online Business School (whether you listen to the free or premium version of OBS).  Product Launch Formula is pretty pricey, so I don’t expect you to buy the full version - but just watching the videos can help you make more money, period. Start watching them here.

So that’s it.  Check out Online Business School now, come back here at 1:30pm EST (in a bit) and check out Jeff Walker’s videos as well.  Do all that and you’ll be setting yourself up for an exciting event in the future - one where you have more control over what you do with your life than ever.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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Don’t Skim This Post: As we move into the “stop settling for less, start changing your life” theme of this blog, I’m going to talk about finance for a while, because it’s really, really hard to focus on improving your life when you’re stressed about the bills. Let’s talk about how to start reducing that stress today.

Longtime readers will know that even though the bulk of my blogger friends are full-time freelancers, I’m not one of them. In fact, “firing my boss” isn’t on my real list of priorities at all. And since I know that a huge portion of my readers are freelancers, that’s probably going to come off as heresy - “What? Office life is hell!” I hear … “No, no, no … working for “the man” is for suckers!”

Frankly, I’m a little bit tired of people getting on a high horse about “Corporate America” and how soulless it is, and how being your own boss is the One True Path to salvation. Like most extremes, it’s flawed because it assumes that everyone in the world has the same goals, the same opportunities, the same circumstances. But don’t tell that to some people. They’ll burn you at the stake (but I’m not naming names).

Wake up, people. There’s nothing wrong with working for “the man.” I’ve worked for the biggest of the big as well as small startups for over a decade, and it’s given me opportunities to do things that most people will never do (and play with cutting-edge gadgets so expensive I’d have to change my identity and run away if I broke them). I like my day job in the tech sector. It’s got a lot to offer.

But what it doesn’t offer is merit-based raises that I can live with - and that’s stressful.

Why Letting Other People Choose Your Salary Enslaves You

You know what really sucks? To work your ass off all year and then hear “Sorry, money is tight. There’s no raises for anyone this year.” Or to have a boss downplay your achievements and award you a weak raise on a whim. Or to have inflation drive prices up … and have your salary stay flat. It’s frustrating sucks, and feels completely unfair. Why should your salary be some crap shoot?

This is probably the number one reason people jump ship from the corporate world - but that doesn’t make freelancers immune to it, either. I’ve heard more stories about bad clients who won’t pay someone what they’re worth, or how the economy or some other factor is pushing rates down than I ever wanted to hear. But whether your corporate salary or your freelance rates are flat, it all comes down to one thing - you’re letting somebody else control how much income is streaming into your life.

And that’s dangerous.

To let other people control how much you’re worth is one of the most sinister forms of slavery. Earlier this year I decided I’d had enough, I broke my chains, and I’m never looking back - and I did it with no risk to myself, my day job, or my mortgage at all. And if you’re not getting paid what you’re worth, I’ll show you how to do it, too.

How Tiny Multiple Streams Of Income Saved My Bacon

Most people don’t start their own business because they worry about how tough it will be, or think they’ll have to quit their day job to find the time.  But I didn’t believe it had to be that way.  I took what I had, at the place where I was in life, and focused on generating small, manageable streams by waking up early, or sitting in my car on my lunch hour, working on my own stuff.

I did a little eBay (and my wife did, too). I did some phone and email coaching. I made an ebook and tried to sell it (with mixed success, though I got much better at it this year). I was making $50, $100, $200 a month, and it was sporadic, but it was something. And something is damned important when you have 3 kids, a mortgage, and a job in an industry that’s feeling the crunch more than many others (tech companies close down at the drop of a hat).

I’m like a lot of you - I spent far too long living paycheck to paycheck, worrying like hell what would happen if another one of my employers closed down, or if the hot water heater needed replacing, or market demand for my job went away. It’s unbelievably stressful, and I think you probably know how that feels. It’s slavery again - having your fate be at the whim of circumstances that you have no direct control over.

In a lot of ways, that $50 or $100 a month saved me from financial disaster. When my clutch went out, ($640) or when an unexpected tax bill came in ($150), those little chunks of income saved me (since most of my credit cards were maxed out). Since I was working multiple angles at the same time - eBay, the coaching, the ebook - if I had a bad month with one, the other streams picked up the slack.

And every so often, we’d come up ahead and could actually do something nice, like go to the beach with the kids for a weekend (though admittedly my wife’s eBay earnings were more responsible for the fun stuff). There’s just no way to describe just how much stress melts away when you can give yourself a raise - even as little as 5% a month. 5% is huge when you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck.

How I Grew Those Tiny Multiple Streams Of Income Into Bigger Ones

At the end of last year, I realized that I was hitting a wall with my side businesses. I wasn’t sure how to grow them past the few-hundred-dollars-a-month level, and I really, really wanted to cut back the hours and spend more time with my family. So I started looking around for freelancers who were really good at business-building, who could advise me on how to streamline what I was doing.

I started taking advice from people like James and Harry at Men with Pens, Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz, Michael Martine of Remarkablogger, Christine O’Kelly of Self Made Chick, and Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication. I asked them what to do to so that I could work fewer hours on my side business, make more money, and protect myself from a fickle economy.

They showed me. They helped me find opportunities. They taught me how to take the streams of income I already had and build them into bigger ones - without killing myself with crazy hours. And at this point, I’m averaging around the four-figures-a-month mark, and it was all because of hanging around people who could tell me better ways of doing things. Credit cards are being paid off. Vacations are being taken. I’m able to take my family out to Olive Garden and not worry that my kids will choose something that costs more than $3.99.

I’m not rich - not even close. But I’m not stressed about money anymore. That’s huge. If my company closed today, I now know how to pay the mortgage and the power bill while I find a new job. That’s a gift I’m unbelievably grateful for.

What You Need To Do Right Now If You Want To Give Yourself A Raise

If you want to take the stress out of your life and give yourself the a raise you deserve, you need to spend more time listening to people who will teach you how to take control of your circumstances. People who are experts at teaching someone how to go from $50 a month to $500, $1000 or more. Not the scammy, hype-ridden, get-rich quick internet marketing crowd, but the real people who have started from scratch and built their business up month after month without doing anything shady to make it happen. :

The best thing you can do right now is listen to Naomi Dunford’s short video on how to give yourself a raise using 6 web-based income streams that you can start making money on this month. I’ve used 5 of these streams this year, and Naomi’s personally coaching me on the 6th. Good times.

So forgive the big link below, but I know some people will scan right down to the end of this post and skip everything I spent the last hour typing. Here goes:

Hey Skimmers:  Click Here If You Want Naomi
To Tell You 6 Ways To Give Yourself A Raise
Without Selling Out Or Working Yourself To Death.

Yay. Big link out of the way. I hope you clicked it.

More soon on how I’m using what Naomi taught me to - gasp! - actually start putting money in my savings account for once.  Enjoy the video.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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The reason for this is simple - if you can put off a habit change / life change until a new year rolls around, that’s a sign that you just don’t have much motivation to make it happen.  You may wish it would happen, but you don’t really want to do the work to get it (and that’s why you’ve been putting it off).  You may have a whole new year ahead of you, but you’ve still got all the old desires that will keep you trapped in the place you’re at now.

Wake-up calls, however, are a different matter.

Hitting You Where It Hurts:  The Powerful Punch Of A Wake-Up Call

What drives change in a person?  Someone once said the two driving forces are inspiration - or desperation.  Guess which one is more powerful?  Desperation.  It’s what drives you to bad habits, to escape activities, to addictions.  You’re desperate to avoid fear, or hard work, or conflict, so you drive yourself away from those things (and miss out on a lot of growth in the process).

But desperation can also push you forward.  When you realize that your kids are almost grown up and you’ve never told them how much you love them, or that your job is about to disappear and you have no fallback plan, or that you only have a year to live - that’s a wake-up call.  Something happens, or something clicks, and suddenly you’re aware of how much you’re about to lose … and you get a massive burst of motivation to make radical changes in your life.

When a true-wake up call hits, you seem to have access to levels of willpower, tenacity, and full-out energy that you never knew you had in you.  You change your life faster than you ever thought possible, and it doesn’t seem as hard as you thought it would be because you’re fully committed - desperate not to lose out on the little time you have left.

Chasing The Wake-Up Call:  Your Fastest Path To Power

As I said last week, this blog is changing direction - or maybe just changing intensity - and the focus will be on living a life that matters.  Living a life where you have no more regrets, where you push past your fears and the lies you tell to yourself and you finally stop settling for less, and start changing your life. I’m going to be laying wake-up call after wake-up call on you until you feel all the drive you need welling up inside so you can finally take massive action to design the life you want.

I don’t want you to wait until some random wake-up call years down the road inspires you to do the things you’ve wished you would.  I want you to get hit with it as soon as possible.

And while I work on that, I’m going to toss this wake-up call at you, direct from one of my closest blogging friends Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz.  She’s repeatedly kicked my ass so that I could past some of my personal roadblocks and get the most out of 2008 and I think her latest message will do the same for you.  You can read Why We’re Broke (And How To Fix It) right here.  If this unstable economy worries you in the least, her wake-up call is sure to help you find the motivation to start turning things around before things get too painful.

I’m going to read it again right now - why don’t you join me?

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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You guys and gals helped raise $150 over 3 days for Heifer, and I just wanted to let you know about the Cuomei Tibetan Community Development Project that was funded as a result.

This project will help impoverished Tibetan households in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) to improve economic self-sufficiency and preserve their culture through Heifer’s values-based community development activities. Seventy yellow cattle, 210 female yaks and related training and services will be provided to 140 impoverished Tibetan families to improve their living standard. A Tibetan Veterinary Technologic Book will be published for indigenous cultural preservation. A solar power system will be provided to the 140 families to support environmental protection. Capacity building for targeted communities and passing on the gift will lead to long-term sustainable development.

What You Do Today Echoes For Eternity

$150 won’t change the world overnight, but it will put a dent in part of the problem for a few people … and all the people who come after them … and all the people who come after them.  Anything you do to get the Poverty Snowball rolling today will have larger and larger long-term effects for real people as time goes by, and that’s as good a reason you can get for not putting off helping people today.  That’s why I’ve decided that moving forward, a percentage of all product sales from this blog will be going straight to Heifer every month.

I recommend you do the same in some fashion or another.  Pick a way to make a difference to someone who’s living a life on the opposite end of the financial spectrum as you are, and do it on a monthly basis.  It changes the way you look at your own life, your own choices, your own everything.  It takes your eyes off of your own day-to-day issues and gets you looking at the big picture - the really, really big picture - and how you can be a big part of how that picture ultimately turns out.

My One Big Thing, And The Coming Direction Of This Blog

This month a big truth hit me - there are things in my life I’ve been settling for - attitudes, circumstances and bogus “limitations” I’ve been imagining have Great and Unchangeable Power over my life.  I’ve been so caught up in The American Dream and all of those Otherwise Capitaliz-able Profound Things that I’ve missed the point - that life (in my beliefs) isn’t about having things or doing cool things as much as it is about making those “echoes in eternity” - in other words, in making a lasting difference in the lives of people you love as well as people who will never, ever know you.

One thing I’ve been striving to do with Rock Your Day is to not make it another one of those overrated, mindless productivity blogs that saturate too many people’s feed readers.  I’ve unsubscribed from them all, and I’m sure a lot of my readers will, too.  Because we’re not looking to live a life where we do more.

We’re looking to live lives that matter more.

We’re looking to live a life on our own terms, not one where we just take what’s put in front of us.

We’re looking to never again feel like we’ve sacrificed time with the people we love for stuff, or glory, or some future where we’ll finally be able to live “the good life.”

Screw the future “good life.”  We’re ready for that stuff now. And we don’t need to be rich to do it.

Get Ready To Learn How To Rock The Hell Out Of Your Days

This blog is going to get a lot more aggressive, starting now.  I’m going to be asking tougher questions that make you take harder looks at your life.  I’m going to be poking and prodding you to see where you’re settling for things, where you’re selling yourself short, and where you’re setting yourself up for regret (but you’re just avoiding acknowledging it).

This blog is going to get tougher, grittier, and totally unapologetic about dealing with the important stuff head on.

Because your life is going to end some day - poof! - and you’re going to be left with one of two things:

Many, many regrets … or many, many snowballs.

The choice is yours.  I know what mine is.  I’m 32.  That’s one-quarter of my life already accounted for (hey, I think optimistically when it comes to advances in health technology).  I’ve had good times and bad times in those three decades, but some of it has been hit-or-miss.  I haven’t taken full advantage of my potential, and I haven’t honored the people I care about with the full measure of their worth.  I’ve missed out on some things that I wish I hadn’t.

Never again.  Screw that.

Perhaps you can relate.

If so, then subscribe to this blog and to the newsletter (in November I’m going to make a radical change to my mailing list that I think you’ll really appreciate).

The time for settling is over.  The time for taking total control of your life - and the echoes you make in eternity - is here.  The time for living a life that matters more is at hand.

Thanks for all your support so far.  I look forward to returning the favor.

Make it matter -

Dave

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

Thanks for subscribing to the RSS feed. Click here to download the first chapter of What's Holding You Back? ... or, if you've already downloaded it, click here to get the entire book right now!

I have a library of yoga videos/DVDs, most of which suck outright (with the exception of two which are tolerable but either require me to have really high energy, which ain’t always the case).  When I first started trying to do yoga, made my eyes bleed and my heart become filled with rage towards those who couldn’t make a video that wouldn’t either put me to sleep (Rodney Yee, I’m talking to you and your A.M. Yoga) or scare me outright (I won’t mention names).  Until I found my secret weapon (more below), I never liked yoga.

Today my good friend and fellow Jedi Havi Brooks is a running a promotion on the last 54 copies of what she calls “a yoga DVD that doesn’t suck.“  And I tend to trust Havi, because I love her programs (yes, I’m saying I love a competitor’s programs but too bad, free market capitalism, I have to call them as I see them).  Like a good Jedi Master, she always gets my hearty thumbs-up not because she can do Jedi mind tricks, but because she has a knack for taking all the suck out of habit change.  And that’s something that goes a long way.  So if she loves this DVD, then it must be a suck-destroying DVD, and I’m all for that.

So if you’re interested in yoga at all - or in pushing past the things that make you dread doing it - check out Havi’s offer today before all 54 copies disappear into the Havisphere (her offers tend to sell out fast).  But alas, Havi, I won’t be taking you up on this offer, because I have a secret weapon of my own in the fight against sucky yoga DVDs:  A first rate yoga instructor in my own family.

So count me out, Havi, but only because I have a kick-ass sister who teaches yoga, sings lead, can perform emergency heart defibrillation (what, hasn’t everybody driven an ambulance?), and inspires me to get all yoga-ish even when I don’t feel like it.  And she can fly.  I have proof.  Just ignore that cliff she’s on, it’s in the background.

If you’ve got one of those, then you don’t need this DVD.  But if you’re short one yoga-teaching sister, then head on over to Havi-ville and see how you can take the suck out of yoga.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

Thanks for subscribing to the RSS feed. Click here to download the first chapter of What's Holding You Back? ... or, if you've already downloaded it, click here to get the entire book right now!

You see, you’re here for a while, and then you’re gone.  Regardless of your belief system, the person you are right at this moment is going to quit breathing eventually, and all we’ll be left with is the memory of who you were and what you’ve done.  And there’s something so incredibly cool about that, because memories are powerful. They change the lives of the people who are still breathing, and the people who have yet to draw their first breath. And when your deeds and your character are remembered, will they add value to the world or  take value away?

(And in case you’re wondering, there is no neutral.  The idea that a single person doesn’t matter diminishes us all.)

Like It Or Not, You Matter.  A Lot.  So What Are You Going To Do With That?

In the movie Gladiator, the character of General Maximus says that “What we do today echoes in eternity.”  No doubt.  Whatever you do, every day, makes a ripple effect in the lives of the people around you.  When you do something nice for someone, chances are it will encourage them to do the same to someone else, and the ripple continues.

Conversely, when you’re an ass to someone, the same ripple effect applies.

And when you do nothing?  You are the example that serves to direct others who are looking to the outside world to drive their actions.  What will the memory of your actions encourage others to do, long after you draw your last breath?

Though the General’s line was scripted by a Hollywood screenwriter, it continues to affect how I view my actions on a day to day basis.  It inspires me to take action to make the world a better place.

You Have Power And Influence And Value, Whether You See It In Yourself Or Not

If you are reading this, chances are you’re better off than at least a billion or so people in this world.  You have electricity.  Water.  The ability to communicate with the people around you.  And that makes you a Titan to those who don’t.  Even if you feel powerless to handle your own life stresses (which quite honestly, are unlikely to be worse than the poorest people on this Earth), you have the power to do something truly, utterly amazing.

You can save lives.  Let me repeat that:  You can save people’s freakin’ lives.

Yes, you. You. Not “those other people.”  I’m talking to you.

You have something that other people don’t.  You have time, even if it doesn’t feel like it (you made the time to read this, didn’t you?).  You have money, because you spend at least some of it on things you don’t need.  You have influence, because you interact with other people online each day.

Power.  Influence.  Value.  Are you using it to enrich your life only, or do you realize exactly how much you can enrich others?  I’m not trying to guilt trip you - but what I am doing is trying to smack you upside the head and realize how you can help change the world - even if you have the most limited of means.

You see, your spare change - or even your modest donations - may not make much difference in your first/second-world nations, but they can literally save lives and change the future of millions over the coming decades in third world countries.   But only if you take command of the massive personal power you have to direct even a fraction of your power, influence and value there.

Introducing The Poverty Snowball

You may have heard of the “debt snowball” - the idea that you pay off your lowest balance credit card first, which gives you a tangible psychological boost based on the fact that you are seeing debt disappear immediately.  This boost reinforces the idea that every dollar matters, and you become more motivated to channel additional money into debt elimination - wiping out debt faster.

We can have a “poverty snowball” as well.  If we contribute to meaningful causes that help elevate conditions for others, we can take people out of the poverty cycle forever. If we use our influence to convince others to do the same, we take even more people out of the cycle.  And as more and more people realize the power they have to actually make a difference - even with small actions - people are taken out of that cycle at a faster and faster rate, creating a long term avalanche of global economic improvement.

Remember that scene in Schindler’s List, where they show the descendants of the thousand or so Jewish people he saved placing stones on Schindler’s grave as they walk past?  He saved roughly 1,200 people, and at the time of the films release around 6,000 descendants were alive because of him.  How many people will that end up being in 100 years?

Now think about it - if you help a few people during your brief stay on the planet, and you influence a few others to do the same, how many people will that affect over the next 100 years?  Now that’s something worthy of remembrance.

Passing On The Poverty Snowball With A Big Ol’ Push

One of the people who has influenced me the most to give has been my amazing wife, Alison. She uses her influence to spread the word about charities and events that can affect the lives of people she’ll never meet, and that’s insanely inspiring.  She’s made a difference through her direct donations but has also influenced others to give, too, which acts as a force multiplier to her gifts.

She’s used the power of her words to open my eyes up to an amazing anti-poverty charity called Heifer International, which helps take people out of the poverty cycle every day.  Now I’d like to give her the opportunity to give the poverty snowball another push by telling you about it in her own words:

Everyone likes refunds.  There’s almost nothing better than buying a gift that you know is going to give something back, right?

Well that’s what Heifer International has been doing for almost 60 years.  No, they don’t refund you part of your hard-earned cash with a smile and a pat on the back; instead, they have a pay-it-forward approach that’s proven to make a difference in the world.

Here’s what happens:  Heifer International takes your monetary donation and uses it to create a ripple effect in the world in the hopes of bringing about an end to poverty and hunger.  A donation to Heifer International purchases a food gift - a flock of geese, hive of bees, a cow, any number of options - to help a poverty-stricken family overcome financial hardship.  A family that would otherwise have no income can profit in many ways from a Heifer gift.

For example, a family that owns goats can have fresh milk every day and sell the extra at the local market, putting food on the table and money in the family’s pocket for other basic necessities.  The waste produced by the goats can be used as fertilizer in their garden, or, again, sold at the local market.  Goats are easy to feed - there’s a reason why every sentence that refers to non-picky eaters begins with “he eats like a” ends with “goat” - and put no burden on a low-income family to support.  Children who would otherwise spend the day picking through trash for scraps or sell-able items are instead able to go to school with full stomachs and the hope for a brighter future.

Heifer International is committed to changing the devastating course of poverty in the world one family at a time.  Before the gifts are even given, Heifer is changing the world through educating the recipients on animal husbandry, well-being, sustainable development of the land, and - most notably - on the importance of passing on what they have learned.  In addition, recipients promise to pass along offspring from their animals to their neighbors, benefiting entire communities one family at a time.

Giving a gift through Heifer International - even one gift, whether that be one chicken or a flock of goats -  makes an exponential difference in the lives of people throughout the world.

How’s that for a refund?

Damn, I love that woman.

Now It’s Your Turn To Give The Poverty Snowball A Push

Now that you know about Heifer International, I encourage you to strongly consider a donation - even if it’s a small one - to get that poverty snowball started.  If you’re feeling hesitant, so be it - consider it from a selfish standpoint.  If you gave just $5 a month to an anti-poverty charity that could change lives - and save them - wouldn’t you feel better about your life and the value of it?  Wouldn’t the sense of contribution create a meaningful impact on your own self-image?

Don’t settle for just being a consumer of the wealth, power and influence you command in your own life.  Leverage it in simple, effective ways that elevate those who have less opportunity than you do and start an upward spiral which, while it might not reach its peak in your lifetime, will still be the better because of what you do.

Use your influence to spread the word.  Use your resources to spread your power.  Speak.  Give.

What you do today echoes in eternity.

That’s it.  I can hear you from here.

P.S. - Please Stumble and Digg this post so the snowball picks up speed faster

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

Thanks for subscribing to the RSS feed. Click here to download the first chapter of What's Holding You Back? ... or, if you've already downloaded it, click here to get the entire book right now!

Why Your Mirror Makes It So Hard To Stop Procrastinating

What do you see when you look in the mirror?  If you answered “I see myself,” I’ve got news for you - you’re lying. You don’t see yourself - you see what you physically look like, plus all your emotional baggage.  Whatever your reflection looks like, it’s completely distorted based on your self-image, self-esteem and self-loathing, and it’s not an accurate picture of who you are.

Why am I bringing this up?  Because as a human being, your ability to take action is based on the value judgments you make about yourself. Words like “winner,” “loser,” “achiever,” “slacker,” “success” and “failure” are the labels we put on ourselves either based on what people tell us or what we choose to believe about ourselves.  And the right label - or the wrong one - will undeniably direct the course of your life.

The problem is, most of us don’t consciously decide what that label is going to be.  And we suffer for it.

You Can’t Trust What You See In Your Mirror

What you see in your mirror is a reflection of who you think you are - and since we’re such experts on keeping our emotional baggage packed up tight, you don’t want that driving your life.  There are too many things that give us delusions of inadequacy as it is.  Too many labels driving our actions.

Want to know why you can’t stop procrastinating?  Because somewhere in that reflection you see yourself as someone who has procrastinating wired right into your DNA, like your eye color or your ability (or non-ability) to roll your tongue.  But procrastinating isn’t a character trait - it’s a pattern.  It’s a learned behavior.  But you’re not seeing it that way, and that’s why you’re still tolerating it. You think it’s you - but it isn’t.

It’s Time To Decide Who You Want To Be - And Who You Are

Don’t let emotional baggage drive you.  Don’t let the labels people gave to you (or the ones you gave yourself) drive you any longer.  Decide that the next time you look in the mirror, you’re going to challenge those labels and call yourself something different than what you’ve been calling yourself so far.  You want to stop procrastinating?  Stop identifying with it.  It’s just a learned behavior - and you can unlearn it.  It’s just a pattern you can interrupt and overwrite with a new pattern.

I’m not promising that you’re going to rewrite that pattern overnight.  But I can promise you that you’re never going to stop procrastinating until you decide that you’re going to stop identifying with the label of “procrastinator” and see yourself as something different.  The mirror lies, because we lie to ourselves.  Wouldn’t it be nice to start telling ourselves the truth - that we can be who we decide to be, instead of who we’re “stuck with?”

That’s your homework.  60 seconds in front of the mirror.  Think about the labels you’re giving yourself, and decide that you’re going to start peeling them off, one by one.  Spend 60 seconds a day on this, and I’ll bet you’ll start finding it easier to stop procrastinating.  Do it now.  You’ll thank yourself for it.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

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There’s No Magic Pill That Makes You Stop Procrastinating (No Matter How Badly You Wish It So)

I blame the microwave. Besides Google Search, I can’t think of anything in the world that so strongly feeds our innate desire to have something now, now, NOW. We’ve become a generation of people who want instant results without doing the work.  The magic pill.  That damned genie in that damned bottle.  We long to believe that there’s some magic switch that we can flip, and everything will be okay.  But it ain’t so.

For those of us living in this little thing we call “reality,” life is a little more complicated than that.  We can’t just take a pill and experience a massively pleasant psychological change.  (Well, technically we can, but that either involves illegal and addictive narcotics or some bizarrely named pharmaceutical like ProZanaPaxil that comes with 55 paragraphs of reported side effects.  Such as sudden and uncomfortable death).

But that doesn’t stop us from trying. The desire to believe in something that will “make it all better” is so strong that we will push past all logical reason, believing that if we could just develop a magical ability like Willpower or Inner Strength or Passion we could become non-stop achievers. All we have to do is get that One Thing and we can crash through those walls like Superman and become “totally successful.”

The only problem with that strategy is it goes against the way our brains are wired.

The Reason Why Procrastination Makes Total Sense

Our brains aren’t stupid.  They’re smart.  I mean, they’re 100 percent brains, for crying out loud.  You can’t get any brainier than that.  And our brain’s decision making ability is highly driven by emotion - but those emotions are also highly driven by logic.

For example, when you believe something is going to make you uncomfortable or put you at risk, your brain logically isn’t all too interested in doing that.  And so it starts focusing on the risk and the danger, and translates those thoughts into emotions that fall somewhere in the “get the hell away from this” category.  Fight or flight.  It makes sense.

In other words, procrastination is a completely natural defense mechanism that keeps you away from things that stress you out.  It’s kind of like your body’s immune system - it sees something it doesn’t like, and BAM, it tries to lock it out.

But sometimes our immune system can work against us.  For example, if you receive an organ transplant, your body will work overtime fighting off the “foreign” tissue - which, naturally, isn’t in your best interest.  To get around this, doctors would give you anti-rejection drugs to suppress certain parts of your immune system so that you can continue doing that “living” thing you like so much.

How We Get Around To Overcoming Procrastination

Whenever we get past procrastination, we do it by producing the mental version of those anti-rejection drugs.  We inject these into those little mental conversations we have, the ones we’re usually unaware of because it’s off in the back of our mind.  You know, those lame conversations that go something like this:

You: I really need to get around to doing <whatever>.

Your Brain: Ugh.  That’s going to be really, really hard / painful / uncomfortable / whatever.

You: Yeah, I guess - hey, look, something new in my feed reader!  (distraction ensues)

Did you see what happened in that conversation?  Your brain set off that “but I don’t like this!” flag and you took it.  You let it distract you.  You obeyed. You were whipped, my friend.

And this isn’t always a bad thing.  It’s like physical pain - sometimes it’s there to tell you that you shouldn’t be doing this.  Take your hand off the stove, already. But a lot of times the pain isn’t such a big deal, like the soreness you get after a great workout - it’s pain, but you just have to push past it to get what you want.

When we get past procrastinating, it’s because we respond to our brain with a “So what?” instead of a “Ok, I guess you’re right.”   We accept the fact that there will be pain/discomfort, and we move on. We become “grown-ups” about it all instead of treating ourselves like sheltered kids. We move on, we push through the pain, and we claim our prize of achievement on the other end.  Our conversations look more like this instead:

You: I really need to get around to doing <whatever>.

Your Brain: Ugh.  That’s going to be really, really hard / painful / uncomfortable / whatever.

You: Yeah, I guess - hey, look, something new in my feed reader!  (distraction ensues)

You: I know.  But I really want this, and I’m going to do it.

Your Brain: But this is going to be really hard.

You: I know.  But I really want this, and I’m going to do it.

Your Brain: But this is going to be really, really hard.  And uncomfortable.  And –

You: I know.  But I really want this, and I’m going to do it. I’m tired of putting this off.

Your Brain: But –

You: Shut up.  I’m doing it.

See, here, you’re turning the tables.  You’re getting the last word in.  You’re consciously aware of the conversation, and you’re taking control over it instead of saying “Okay, I guess you’re right …”

Whoever gets the last word wins.  You just have to make sure you’re the one doing it.

Your Brain:  “That’s Easier Said Than Done.”  Me:  “That’s No Excuse.”

Yes, this is easier said than done, but that doesn’t stop you from doing it every day.  There are things you make yourself do even though the thrill isn’t there, because you don’t let that conversation own you.  Sometimes it’s because you’re taking a stand.  Sometimes it’s simply because you have no other option - you’ve procrastinated all you can, and now you’re out of time.  You tell yourself “Those excuses aren’t valid any more - this simply has to get done.”

In upcoming posts we’re going to talk about how to start getting the upper hand and stop procrastination in its tracks, but for now I’m just going to leave you with this:  Stop beating yourself up about procrastination. It’s natural.  It actually has a purpose in an instinctive, base survival sort of way.

But we’re not animals running around on instinct, or toddlers at at the mercy of our underdeveloped self-control.  We’re adults.  We have the power to push past the reactive flinching that is the foundtion of procrastinations and tell ourselves, “It’s ok.  This sucks, but we’re going to do it anyway.”

Quit beating yourself up.  That’s not helping.  Stick around, subscribe to this blog, and get a little more awareness about how to control those conversations in your head.

And if you’re serious about overcoming procrastination, go ahead and sign up for my Advance Discount List.  I’ll be releasing my Never Procrastinate Again program on the 15th, and if you’re on the list, you’ll get an early discount on it that you won’t find anywhere else.  Click here to get on the list right now.

Another solid post by Dave Navarro - get your daily fix at Rock Your Day and spread the word!

Thanks for subscribing to the RSS feed. Click here to download the first chapter of What's Holding You Back? ... or, if you've already downloaded it, click here to get the entire book right now!