"The Danger of Apathy" by my awesome friend Melissa Wedel

Apathy:
1. Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference.
2. Lack of emotion or feeling; impassiveness.

"Science may have found a cure for most evils: but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings." Helen Keller

What is the cause of apathy? It is often frustration and a sense of powerlessness that causes people to withdraw from life.

"The world is a dangerous place to live;" said Albert Einstein, "not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it."


From the movie Seven:
William Somerset: I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.

David Mills: You're no different. You're no better.
William Somerset: I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work.


This topic has been on my mind in one way or another all year.

We are all guilty of apathy at one time or another in our own lives. We are all human and sometimes we each feel as though we can't do something any more or simply don't care anymore for whatever reason.

While most of us don't use drugs, beat children nor sponge of the system or steal, there are other areas where we are apathetic and should evaluate those situations in our own lives and make changes for our own futures and the futures of those we love.

People who succeed in life are not apathetic on serious life changing topics.

When you face a problem in your own personal life, be honest with yourself about the cause, don't lie or make excuses. That will never make the problem go away, it will only make it bigger.

As parents we are apathetic to the garbage the feed our children in the public school. Have you gone to your child's school to see what they are feeding your children?? I highly recommend you watch Food Inc and start reading about processed foods.

We're apathetic to the idea that our kids are full of useless knowledge that they can recite word for word about movies, gossip column talk and so on while many cannot even label a US map correctly. Have you limited their TV, video game and social time to unsure they are learning the things they need to?

I know someone who knows more about new cars coming out on the market next year than I could remember but he cannot spend any time learning new skills or reading to improve his poor job situation and provide for his family. He has decided that for whatever reason his job situation will never change and he has given up, he doesn't care anymore.

I know cat breeders who know other breeders who are abusing and mistreating the cats in their care and they say and do nothing about it. One in particular has been involved with animal control and is running from a rescue and animal control while still adding cats to her hoarding situation, and guess what, other breeders want the sale so badly and the money in their pockets that they are apathetic to the plight of the helpless cats that land in her care! Our major cat registries are more worried about politics than the abuse and neglect of the cats whom they register. They have developed a tolerance for the abuse, neglect and exploitation of breeding and show cats.

I know people who tell me they can't buy things their children need nor things that will change their health and life but yet they can buy cigarettes and alcohol.

Many hospitals are full of mobidly obese people who cannot even get out of bed and are dependant on a ventilator to breath. These people began the problem themselves but I can tell you that a 500 lb. bedridden person isn't walking to the kitchen nor going to the store to continue to eat and support their problem, apathetic family member and friends are! If you love someone you'll get them help, do not give them what is killling them!

How many of us know people on social security disability who are not disabled? How many of us know people on food stamps and welfare that have cable TV, internet and video games?


This list could go on and on but my point is simple:
As 2010 draws to a close, take some time to look at your life, really evaluate 2010. Ask yourself if you're where you want to be and will you have the determination, character and strength to change your direction in 2011?

We are all responsible for what we do in response to what life deals you. We all suffer and we've all heard many a great speaker say not to wish for less problems, rather wish you were better! Really ponder that statement.

Think for a moment about people you know who seem to have it all and who are happy and then ask yourself if it's because of their mindset, character and determination or because they don't have any problems in life. If you think that it's because they don't have problems in life, you're wrong. They may not have your problems but believe that they do indeed have problems. They lose people they love also, they have set backs and disappointments. They get knocked down but instead of giving up they get back up and try again and move forward!

Apathy will always be part of our society and people we know but as individuals we cannot afford this dangerous practice in our own lives. Stopping apathy in your own life and situation is the beginning of stopping it on a larger scale!

We are each responsible to help ourselves and not give up, make excuses or worst of all just not caring anymore.

Lastly, a public service announcement: The Apathy Anonymous meeting was canceled due to lack of interest.

Face the Facts - 8 Misleading Fitness "Facts"

8 Misleading Fitness "Facts"
By Steve Edwards
When it comes to our well-being, not much pricks up our ears like the word miracle. But when referring to health and fitness, the word miracle is generally synonymous with the word scam. That is unless finding yourself suddenly motivated to exercise and eat better is something you would consider a miracle. Other than that, miracles don't exist.

At Beachbody®, we're always on the lookout for the next great thing. We analyze every diet, every workout, and every medical breakthrough that promises to reverse the obesity epidemic and make the real world look like, well, the set of The Real World. What we find, without fail, is that the only "miracle" breakthroughs are those that expand on what we already know—that only through exercise and diet will you effectively change your body and your health for good. Let's take a look at eight marketing miracles that fail to do much more considered miraculous than make their creators rich. We'll interpret each one and then let you know how each claim may have a positive effect on your life.

1. You can get thin with a supplement. One of the most common questions we get is whether or not our programs will work without the supplements. Given how many claims there are about miracle cures involving a pill, this question makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that when we tell people that diet and exercise are the major components of our programs, they often become skeptical. We've been led to believe by advertisers that the reason we're overweight or out of shape is because there's a secret ingredient in some supplement that we've been missing. This, to put it a noninflammatory way, is not how it works. The obesity epidemic is the result of two rather simple numbers: we eat about 5 percent more calories than we once did, and we exercise about 20 percent less.
   This in no way means that supplements are worthless. While there are many shady supplement manufacturers in the marketplace, the reason that we have supplements at all is because they can be effective in keeping us healthy. The use of supplements goes back thousands of years. Traditional medicines were the original supplements. There have been many advancements in the modern world, but basically, those same herbs and nutrients that aided people's health once upon a time have the same effects today. But they weren't miracle cures in the old days, and they still aren't. This is the reason we refer to our programs as being supplement-assisted exercises.
2. Medicine can make you healthy. Medicine can make you not sick, but it can't make you healthy. Along with curing us from diseases and injuries, doctors now inject, alter, and prescribe us into becoming healthier-appearing beings. Cosmetic medical advancements are indeed impressive, but let's not lose sight of the facts. The human body needs exercise and nutrients to run smoothly. There is no way to chemically change this. There are certainly medical alterations that can be done to change our bodies once they've been misused and started to fall apart. And there are drugs and other chemical alterations that can reverse certain conditions. But try as they might, scientists have still yet to come up with a way for us not to need to exercise and eat properly so that we can perform to the best of our abilities. We may be able to increase our natural abilities using medicine, but without the fundamental groundwork that is exercise and what we eat, no amount of medical help will allow us to live long and vibrant lives.
3. You can get ripped with the right diet. With the "Flat Belly Diet" on the bestseller list and the "Abs Diet" on the cover of Men's Health, it may be hard to believe that no diet alone is going to land you on the cover of a Joe Weider publication. Dieting can help you lose weight and greatly improve your health. But since that isn't what marketers like to spin, it's generally not what they pitch. The only diet that will give you ripped abs is a starvation diet. And that one comes with a lot of undesirable side effects.
   Many of these diets, including the two referenced above, are basically very healthy. But if you want your body to look ripped, you need to exercise and diet in combination. A healthy body can look lean but rarely ripped. A muscular body with too much fat won't look ripped, either. Only a healthy and muscular body can allow you to both look ripped and perform well. A starved body will be both lean and ripped in appearance, but this is not due to your body being healthy—rather, it's due to the catabolic state you enter as your body feeds on its muscle for survival.
4. You can have a six-pack by only working out your abs. Ab work will make your abdominal muscles strong, but you won't be able to see them unless your diet is in line with your exercise expenditure. The easiest and quickest way to see your abs is to work your entire body intensely and eat well. The more muscle you add to your frame—your entire frame—the more your metabolism will increase, the more fat your body will burn at rest, and the sooner your ab muscles will appear. And, of course, the cleaner you eat, the faster you will make this happen.
   Six-pack abs—like most things used to gauge fitness—are a function of one's overall health and condition. They won't pop up on their own.¹ But you're also not wasting your time working on them. Your core, which is in part your abs, is the foundation that all of your movements are based on. Having a strong core is the single most important aspect to being physically fit.
5. One supplement can make up for a bad diet. We love miracles, especially when they don't require much work on our part. That's why we're always looking for a pill we can take that will make up for our bad habits. Supposed muscle-enhancing supplements have been available since Jack LaLanne invented the Universal Gym, but in the last decade, we've also been bombarded with things promising the opposite. Fat blockers, carb blockers, diet pills, cleansing pills, and so on all promise to rid us of something we wished we hadn't eaten in the first place. This, unfortunately, can't be done.
   There are many good dietary supplements, but heed the word "dietary." Supplements work along with the other factors of your diet. Nothing can even hint at offsetting a poor diet. In fact, one of the main advantages of supplements is exactly the opposite: they make the biggest difference when you're dieting already. Supplements are, basically, condensed nutrients. When you're exercising and also attempting to lose weight, it becomes difficult to get all of the nutrients that your body requires to recover from exercise. This is the realm of the highly effective supplement. Proper supplementation can allow you to eat fewer calories than you normally could and still allow you to recover from hard workouts, which greatly enhances your results. Beachbody's ActiVit® Multivitamin is a great way to make sure you get the nutrients you need each day to get the most out of your fitness program.
6. Cardio is the only exercise you need. Cardio isn't even a scientific term for a type of exercise, yet it's still often trumpeted as the be-all and end-all for exercise effectiveness. This, in my experience, is often a cop-out by medical practitioners who feel the need to recommend exercise but don't want to risk being specific. Cardio as a general term means anything affecting the heart. The problem with interpreting the term is that everything you do has an effect on your heart. And although intense exercise works the heart much more than easy aerobic exercise does, it seems that most people define cardio as aerobic, meaning low-level movement. And low-level movement is not the only exercise you need, unless your physical state inhibits you from doing something more intense.
   The key to changing your body composition, staying young, and remaining healthy is to do short bouts of high-intensity exercise. If done correctly, this is all the "cardio" you need. It also promotes muscle breakdown and hormonal releases that have a pronounced effect on your health. All "cardio" training is good, including low-level aerobic training. It just should, however, not be the only exercise you do.
7. You can plug in and get ripped. Remember the old exercise machine that had a strap you placed around your butt that would vibrate like a washing machine? Back in the 60s, this odd contraption filled fitness centers worldwide and, undoubtedly, made someone a lot of money. It also never shed a pound off of anyone. And even though it's used in many gimmick jokes, we just can't stop trying to replicate it. If you ever see an advertisement for something that does all the work for you and claims you'll look better because of it, start searching for the remote. The calories you burn looking for it will exceed any amount you'll burn using the device.
   As is the case with most gimmicks, there is a scientific example at their root somewhere. Most of these modern contraptions are some type of electronic muscle stimulation (EMS) device. These machines use electrodes to contract your muscles while you do nothing. They were designed for physical therapy and work well within this application of keeping your muscle tissue from atrophying when you can't work your muscles naturally. So, yes, these machines do build muscle. But they lack the ability to stimulate anything near what you would do naturally. To keep the type of physique you would acquire in a round of P90X® would require you to be plugged in for most of any given 24-hour period. And if you're going to go to this much trouble, you'll save yourself a lot of effort by doing any 30-minute exercise video—shoot, one 10-Minute Trainer® workout will do a lot more for you than a full night on an EMS machine!
8. A single type of workout will make you fit. Beware of exercise that promises to be "the only workout you'll ever need." Even if one workout did cover all of your energy systems using each workout modality, it still would not be all you need. The reasons are many, but, primarily, it's because your body adapts over time to any exercise regimen. To achieve continued progress, you need to alter what you do from time to time. The more planned out this is the better.
   There is a reason that Beachbody designs fitness programs. For best results, you should train your body progressively and periodizationally. That is to say that you need to progressively overload your system as it becomes used to any one thing. Then, you should change the focus of your program to target various energy systems. By doing this, you keep your body stimulated and your progress curve will continually ascend.

There is, actually, a medical procedure that removes the fat from your abdominals to make them visible. It does nothing for the rest of your body, does not help your fitness, and has potentially damaging effects over time.

Sign up for the FREE team beachbody newsletter.  It automatically comes with a free account. Go to my page and click the "Join" link, scroll down and click the free membership option: http://beachbodycoach.com/metalpalace

Tom

Over 1 Billion people are STARVING for the first time in history

There is so much YOU and I can do to help reverse this terrible trend.  But first just a few brief statistics so you can begin to appreciate what's happening in the world we live in.  Without enough RAGE I know most people simply won't care:

For the first time, the number of chronically hungry people worldwide is greater than 1 billion, according to a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in June of 2009.  This is an 11% increase from just one year prior.

According to the College of Agriculture and Life Science at Cornell University 1 person dies every second of hunger - 4,000 every hour - 100,000 each day - 36 million each year.  1 child dies every 5 seconds as a result of hunger - 700 every hour - 16 000 each day - 6 million each year.

Here is where WE CAN ALL HELP AND WE MUST HELP.  Money donations are nice but they are typically only temporary and doesn't address the root of the problem for more long term solutions.  We can provide funding for sex education, birth control, agriculture education etc.. These things would give hungry people a lot at long term hunger alleviation but I'm going to focus this article solely on  grain, livestock, and how we vote with our daily dollars right here in the USA. 

Here it is!  This is the one thing that can alleviate hunger for hundreds of millions of men women and children throughout the world and WE MUST DO IT.  Are you ready??  

Buy Grass fed organic Beef instead of Corn Fed Beef or go organic vegetarian!

A whopping 70% percent of the grains our farmers grow right here in the USA gos toward feeding our livestocks all the while an un precedented terrible 1 BILLION plus people in the world are literally starving to death.  Further more; this massive grain fed live stock right here in the USA is arguable the largest contributing factor to our own 80% death rate right here in America.  Most of us are sabotaging our own self interest to save a buck all the while over a Billion people starve to death!  That's stupid!

You see, cows never were suppose to be eating corn.  Mother nature intended for cows to eat Grass.  Not grains!  I don't personally understand how it all works but when humans eat cows that have been on a grain diet we slowly begin dying from the health problems it causes as we get older.  Inflammation, arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high C-Reactive protein levels, less efficient central nervous system and brain function etc...  When humans eat cows that are on an appropriate diet of eating grass then we get our omega 3 Healthy Fats and we live a higher quality of life.  Grass fed Organic beef  is an anti inflammatory rather than inflammatory.  It lessons high blood pressure, cholesterol, promotes better brain health and central nervous system efficiency etc...   It's sadly become common place in the USA for people to begin taking medications around ONLY forty years of age!  For an increasing number of people ONLY 30 years of age!  And inexcusably some of our citizenry don't make it out of child hood without needing medication of some kind as a result of poor diet choices made by the parents or guardians.  That's unintentional child abuse but for a different article on a different day.

We are meat eaters which is fine I'm the first in line for the dead meat wagon.  The problem is within the overwhelming majority of us who are eating grain fed meat rather than grass fed organic. If you're a meat eater and you regularly eat grain fed meat you will live in more needless anguish than you need to as you grow older and you won't die of natural causes whether you believe it or not.  It's just a question of getting yourself informed and then caring enough about the quality of your life and then how you teach your children.

So here is what we have set up currently derived by our daily choices...  We (most of us) buy corn fed beef while over 1 BILLION people are starving to death all the while destroying ourselves in the process. This is unintelligent!

I don't mean to sound like I'm dumping on us.  My aim with this article is to help YOU become more informed so that WE ACT by shifting our corn fed beef purchases to GRASS FED organic beef purchases.  Here is just the tip of the iceberg as to what will happen if enough of US do that...  We (if most of us is we) buy GRASS FED BEEF from now on.  This will set the stage for hundreds of millions of starving men women and children to get the nourishment they need if they get the 70% of our grains that use to feed our livestock.  We, the meat consumers, will live Healthier Happier more fulfilling lives.  Health care would become more affordable for more people.  Since industry and politics always follow the money they will meet the new demand making Grass Fed Organic Beef cheaper to purchase and farmers will be earning a more reasonable income than they are now.  More dreams will come true for a LOT more people.  

Just this one thing alone can do so much.  It's not a silver bullet but it's the closest thing to a silver bullet along with birth control.

The other option is to go vegetarian, organic.  But I'm not going to ask anyone to do that we love our beef!  I LOVE beef!  Furthermore; GRASS FED BEEF is very good for you.  Corn fed beef is not good for you and 70% of our grains CURRENTLY gos toward feeding our livestock while those One BILLION plus people we share the planet with are dying of hunger.

I realize some people still are not going to care.  Even if they have the benefit of knowing all this some still won't give a damn and will keep voting for corn fed beef with their daily dollars.  To those people I say, every time you spend money on corn fed beef you're creating a demand for grain that could be used to save the lives of starving children in the world all the while sabotaging your own self interest in living a healthy life.  That's stupid!  And cruel.  Kill your apathy along with your unintelligent self interest.

Throughout our history there has always been less needless suffering when more fortunate people help those who are less fortunate.  There are many things the fortunate can do but my VERY specific call to action here is to either shift your beef purchases to GRASS FED ORGANIC BEEF or to go organic vegetarian.  Don't keep voting with your daily dollars for corn fed beef because it's the stupid thing to do for your own self interest AND over 1 BILLION people could use those grains just to keep from dying of hunger.

Spread the word.  It's worth spreading!  I don't believe most people are consciously making decisions that sabotage there own self interest while over a billion people starve to death.  I believe we the USA just need more education so we can become more powerful to create change the world so desperately needs.

Tom

There is a constant battle being waged in your body and in life itself

An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life…He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil—he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win, Grandfather?” The Elder simply replied, “The one you feed.”

There are countless real life parallels you can draw from this story.  What a wise story!!  Everyone should know this story and think about it.  Let it stimulate the mind and then let it fuel some daily action for you to take more control over your own life!

The parallel that I thought of right away is the battle of sickness vs health going on in our bodies.  This battle is on going 24/7 and will never stop until life stops. Our body innately wants us to be healthy in this push shove war fare. We sabotage our own self interest every time we eat badly. The body asks for a banana and we send it a coca cola or a fast food "value" meal or both!  When you do that you are feeding the "evil wolf" and that evil wolf WILL get stronger and stronger until it gets YOU!  Sickness and disease in our bodies sits there, contained, quietly waiting for health to get weak.  As soon as sickness and disease sees a vulnerability in health because of how poorly we feed our bodies then sickness and disease moves in and starts to gain power in our bodies!  Case in point: we eat more poorly than ever before in our history and we are more disease riddled than ever before in our history.  The only way to win this struggle is to get involved, cooperate with the positive things going on inside our bodies and see if we can't help out in this push shove match.  This battle has been going on in our bodies since we were created and it's going to continue!  We've got to fight this battle our entire life which is exactly why if your not doing something you can sustain for the rest of your then it doesn't matter how you're helping your own self interest.  You can't just sit on the sidelines, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.  That's a terrible philosophy to have!  You've gotta get off the sidelines and in the game!  See where you can cooperate with the positive and see if you can't help out in this struggle.  There is no other way!  If someone tries to tell you there is another way just take this magic pill and you'll be fine then you've gotta have some backbone and say no!  You're wrong!  This is fundamental stuff and fundamentals are old!  It's existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist so long as there is life on earth.  Magic pills don't exist you've gotta reject that whole idea and not be suckered into it!

Eat good, drink your Shakeology, stimulate your mind and body, do these things every day and you can keep sickness and disease controlled and contained into a very small corner.  It's either cooperate with the positive things going on in your body or live your life in anguish.  There is no other way!

Tom

The ultimate purpose of a job is to... - By Tom Birkenmeyer. Hey that's me!!!

...give you something to do to pay your bills as you work on your wealth in your spare time as well as your security and a greater sense of purpose in the world.

Jobs truly are a good thing as a temporary means to afford your cost of living while you work as part time as you need to to build up a passive income.  That's primarily why I spend my money on MADE IN THE USA whenever possible.  It's one way I can make a contribution DAILY that empowers YOU to step up and own your life so that you can be paid what your worth and live a better life. Or maybe for you personally a job is a good thing because that's all you want to do and have no higher ambitions for yourself and for serving others with a product or a service you can provide to them of value.  I'm not judging your motives for why you might want a job either temporarily or permanently.  That's a personal choice you make that you can either be happy or sad with.  However I do know most people hate their jobs.  And I also know that most people who love their jobs are one paycheck away from bankruptcy.  I also know that some people, whether they are in love with their job or in contempt of their job, have a much higher sense of purpose in their life than to build some elses dream.  Some people, whether they love their job or hate their job, want to be paid more than only 1/3rd of the value they bring to their employer.  Don't kid yourself if you're an employee then your corporate environment, your employer, and taxes are absorbing the overwhelming majority of the value you bring rather than you absorbing the value for the work that you do.  Seem fair?  Hardly not.  But that's the nature of the beast of being an employee.

Like it or not building up a passive income that you own has become a VERY practical matter.  Actually that's not entirely true it's ALWAYS been a very practical thing to do it's just that in the past ten years or so the Economy has underscored how important it is to have a passive income that YOU own.

What do I mean by a passive income?  Imagine this... You've worked at your job for X number of years, did everything you were suppose to do and suddenly your job is gone at no fault of your own.  Maybe your company downsized, maybe they off shored your job to India, maybe it has nothing to do with the economy who knows... The important thing for you is you tied all of your income and benefits to your job so it's all gone because you had all of your eggs in one basket, the wrong basket!  If you did just a little bit of something every day toward building a your own passive income  in your spare time during all those years you were employed then you'd still have an income along with your house and everything you own.  Odds are after years of doing just a little bit of something every day by this point your passive income would have taken over as your larger income.  Cool hey?  Can you imagine how much less stress would be created by the loss of your job?  Probably very little to none at all.

Another example of what I mean by Passive Income... Imagine you LOVE your job.  As a result, if you're like most people, there is nothing driving you to grow closer toward the full development of your human potential.  There are no "logs in the fire" to drive you to keep growing as a human being and maybe you lack the wisdom to realize that lifes great adventure is the continuous growth toward the full development of your human potential and the wise use of all your resources.  God knows I lacked that specific wisdom for the first 30 years of my life and I suffered for it after my comfortable job was off shored to India.  But shortly after I GAINED so much more.  I NEEDED to loose my job at no fault of my own or otherwise as I look back I fear I may not have done anything else to grow and contribute more to the world.  Thank you god for for throwing a big fat wrench into my original retirement plan. THANK YOU!  For a LOT of people contentment is the formula for a rotting mind and body.  Are you content in a job that you love?   If so, has it stunted your personal growth?

 Another example of what I mean by Passive Income... Going back to school for a higher education to better yourself is a popular thing now.  This is a good thing so long as the individual couples new knowledge with daily actions.  However; what most students are not doing is building up a passive income.  Most students today are students that are going back to school at an older age AFTER spending X number of years in the work force but fell on hard economic times which lead to their going back to school.  Now imagine this... YEARS before you fell on hard economic times you started to do just a little bit of something every day in your spare time to build up a passive income that you own.   Years of doing a little bit of something every day has resulted in HUGE growth in your passive income and YOU own it!  Now you have choices when hard economic times hit!  You can simply leave the job scheme and begin contributing to the world in your own way and on your own terms FULL TIME, you can go to school and not have to pick up another job to afford school as well as cost of living which is going to free up your spare time to spend with your family and friends, you can do whatever you want to do.   But if you're like most people and have done nothing to build a passive income then your options are extremely limited and that's a result of a daily slight error in judgment you have been making up til now compounded over a long period of time.

If you're reading this thinking to yourself, my god I have done nothing all these years to get ahead and now I'm broke, don't beat yourself up.  Be upset if you need to make some changes.  Being upset doesn't bother me.  After all a LOT of people need to be upset first before action comes.  I needed it. Apparently I needed to be devastated, upset, and pissed off.  My feelings lead to a discovery process which was VERY painful.  Through my journey that I became very active in I finally started to openly put good things into my brain, change my philosophies, and shape my life on my terms and how I wanted it shaped.  In a sequence of events it went like this... Devasted / hurt feelings --> discovery process ---> putting the blame fully on my own shoulders ---> correcting the errors of the past namely my philosophies because philosophies are behind everything ---> developing and shaping my own life how I wanted it.

See most people have no problem reaching devastation and hurt feelings.  We don't even need any help getting there it just happens it's part of lifes great adventure.  Some people even embark on a discovery process but where most people fail and prevents them from succeeding is the Blame game.  "It's the economy, it's politics, its my friends, its anything but me".  You already know that you have very little to no control whatsoever over politics, the economy, whats going on over in Asia etc.. so why then blame those things you have no control over?  By doing so you rob yourself of all your power over your own life.  That's not an intelligent thing to do.  If you think I'm wrong then keep surrendering your power to whatever it is you're blaming and see if your situation is any better a year from now.  I've seen it in the lives of everyone who fights that fundamental and ya know what?  They are not in the same boat today as they were a year ago, they are in a WORSE boat than they were in a year ago. The even keel belief is a false belief to.  Even keel doesn't exist you're either moving up or down the mountain.  If you can figure out a way to pause time then perhaps even keel can occur.  But then if you pause time you'll just be in the same undesirable situation forever so that wouldn't really serve you either.  Time has got to keep moving forward so that you can harness the power of time to work for you.  But the caveat to that is if you're not positioning your daily actions for time to work for you then it's going to work against you, always.

The moral of my blog is if you work a job to afford the cost of living while in your spare time you build a passive income by providing continuous value to a lot of peoples lives, helping them live a better life, then you can live your life however you want to live it.  Fire your boss, keep your boss, absorb lost wages without even noticing, go to school, stay at home, go on missionary trips to help children in South America, travel, spend more time with family and friends, contribute more to the world you live in, etc...  You can do anything with a passive income.  But if you do what most people do, which is nothing, then you're options are extremely limited by your daily slight error in judgment.  And maybe you want limited options which is fine I'm not telling anyone how to live.  But most people don't want limited options.  If you're like most people and want more freedom then DON'T DO WHAT MOST PEOPLE DO!  Don't think like they think, don't talk like they talk, don't specialize in what they specialize in.  Walk away from the 95% of Americans who aren't doing anything to realize their dreams.  There is no other way to shape your life how you want.  It typically takes years but if you get started TODAY NOT TOMORROW then your day will arrive sooner.  But most people won't which makes it EASIER for the 5% to get ahead.   After all, if everyone did it then the bar would be set higher making it more difficult to be among the 5% crazy enough to go after their dreams.  Next time you see a 95% percentile love them and thank them for making your journey easier.  You've just gotta take that journey and get started today.

In all scenarios it's only a two step process to pull yourself out of an undesirable situation, or a future undesirable situation that you haven't woken up to you yet, so you may be better situated in the future.  1.  It's YOUR fault.  OWN IT.  It may not be your fault if your job was off shored to India, or that your hours were cut, or that your job treats you unfairly and without the integrity you deserve, or that you might not even know it yet but one day you will experience a rude awakening from your employer and you have no passive income to make up for the UNPREDICTABLE rude awakening etc.. But it is your fault that you are in a position of Extreme dire vulnerability because you did nothing to build up a passive income that you own so that when the unpredictable would happen you'd be fine.  Unpredictables are part of life it's not "IF", it's "WHEN". So be ready for that.  No one is stopping you from doing that but YOU.  Get out of your own way!  In the USA you do not have to ask for permission to be successful.  You don't have to get permission from anyone, certainly not your employer, to build up a passive income in your spare time that will eventually DWARF your job income that you OWN.  Knowing all of this, it is absolutely your fault if you've tied all of your income and benefits into your job and suddenly your income is ZERO if something happens to that job.  It's your life, own it! Til you Own it, your employer owns it.

My call to action to you, if you love or hate your job, is to start doing a little bit of something every day in your spare time to build up a passive income that you own.  If you think you have time to put this off because you're comfortable then remember this... Most people spend years building up a passive income before it can replace the income from their job.  If you put this off and in the next one or two years something happens to your job then you are 100% responsible for your financial scenario.  And odds are the something that happens to your job will be something unpredictable.  Even if you're job is secure because you work for the government!  What's going to happen to you if need to come up with ten thousand dollars emergency money FAST?  But still, the most important part of all of this, is continued personal growth don't stagnate here no matter how comfortable and set you are.   Get started and get started today.  And here is the best part about building a passive income that you own... The money is something secondary unless you're broke then it becomes a temporary primary need for obvious reasons.  If you're providing value to people that helps them live a better life then you're going to feel like your life has real purpose behind it.  Making money by itself fills no real purpose.  It's what you do with it to fuel more ideas to help MORE people live happier healthier more fulfilling lives.  I'm not an Independent Team Beachbody coach because I'm motivated by wealth. Money serves VERY little motivation for me.  It's the freedom that it buys me and the larger capacity to do more to help others live better, period.  And consequently I have more wealth than I've ever had before in my life thanks to a fundamental change in my philosophies coupled with the Team Beachbody Opportunity.

For me this is TRUTH that I will not subject to popular vote especially considering the masses are broke, unhappy, or just not where they want to be.  If you want to be successful don't gauge popular opinion except perhaps in a service or product you plan to add value to peoples lives with.  But NEVER subject your truth and your personal philosophies to popular opinion because that is how you will lose.

Some will jump on this fundamental I'm writing about, others won't, but what is your truth?  And as you answer what your truth is maybe you need to go into a discovery process before you decide what your truth is.  As you realize your truth listen to and pay attention to the feedback from the universe.  95% of the material I write about and speak about are fundamentals.  And as Jim Rohn Says, "fundamentals are old".  They don't change!  Fundamentals have been around for thousands of years and are going to be around for thousands of years.  I'm not making this stuff up because you/I can't make up new fundamentals they've been around much longer than you or I have been around for!  So knowing what I know about fundamentals, and as you decide what your truth is, I know that fundamentals offend some people.  Fundamentals aren't meant to offend, insult, or to fight against.  Fundamentals are meant to be worked with and harnessed for our own gains.  That's a choice people make at no fault of the fundamental!

What I'm getting at here is this...

I know that people fighting fundamentals are still stuck in their own same undesirable situations a year later.  You MUST pay attention to that kind of feedback from the universe if you want to move closer to the full development of your own human potential and shape your life how you'd like it to be.  And if you don't want anything in your life to change then you don't have to worry about it.  But that's not really true either.  Some people subscribe to the idea, "If I just keep rolling along keeping the status quo then my personal status quo will not change either" and that would be a false belief whether you think so or not.  If you're not moving closer to the full development of your human potential then your moving away from it.  And if you're moving away from it then you're rotting in both mind and body.  You're always either going up or down the mountain there is nothing else even if you think there is.  If you think there is then that makes you more vulnerable to the process of rotting to death whether you believe it or not.  That's a fundamental!  Don't lull yourself into a complacency about these things because that's another fundamental that if you fight against you will rot.  If you want to rot it's cool with me no judgment here it's your life live it how you want to.  I just think you should know in case it might turn on a light bulb for some of you to "set a better sail" this year than last year and arrive at a more favorable destination a year from now.  After all, the whole purpose for my writing this blog is to empower some of you step up and own your life.  That is a GOOD thing.

Work your JOB to fuel your spare time activity the RIGHT way for a more fulfilling future.  That's how you win :-)

Tom

stevepavlina.com personal development

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-web-site-or-blog/

6. Let your audience see the real you.

My life and my writing are intricately intertwined, such that it’s impossible to separate the two. When someone reads this web site, they’ll eventually come to know a great deal about me as a person. Usually this creates a skewed and inaccurate impression of who I am today because I change a lot over time — I’m not the same person I was last year — but it’s close enough. Getting to know me makes it easier for people to understand the context of what I write, which means that more value can be transferred in less time.

I’ve told many personal stories on this site, including my most painful and difficult experiences. I don’t do this to be gratuitous but rather because those stories help make a point — that no matter where you find yourself today, you always have the opportunity to grow in some small way, and no matter how small those changes are, they’re going to add up over time to create massive lifelong growth. That’s a lesson we all need to remember.

When I find ways to turn some of my darkest experiences into lessons that might help others in similar situations, it actually transforms those painful memories into joyful ones. They take on new meaning for me, and I can see that there was a positive reason I had to endure such experiences, one that ultimately serves the highest good of all. Oddly, I now find that it was my darkest times that help create the most light for others.

With respect to privacy, I don’t really care much for it. I do respect other people’s right to privacy, so when people tell me personal stories via email, I don’t turn around and re-post them to my blog. But I’m OK with being rather un-private myself. The need for privacy comes from the desire to protect the ego, which is a fear-driven desire, and fear is something I just don’t need in my life. My attitude is that it’s perfectly OK to fail or to be rejected publicly. Trying to appear perfect is nothing but a house of cards that will eventually collapse.

I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience that’s based on intimacy and friendship. I dislike seeing people putting me on too much of a pedestal and using labels like “guru” or “overachiever.” Such labels create distance which makes communication harder. They emphasize our differences instead of our similarities. Communication between equals — between friends — is more effective.

More genuine communication means better connections with your audience, which means more repeat traffic and more referral traffic. This isn’t a manipulative game though, and excessive or overly dramatic self-disclosure for the purpose of linkbaiting will only backfire. Your reasons for storytelling must be to benefit your audience. The traffic benefits are a positive side effect.

7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.

If the stuff I’ve written on this site means I’ll never be able to run for a political office, I can live with that. I’m willing to write what is true for me, even if it goes against my social conditioning. Being honest is more important to me than being popular. But the irony is that because bold honesty is so rare among civilized humans, in the long run this may be the best traffic-building strategy of all.

People often warn me not to write things that might alienate a portion of my visitors. But somehow I keep doing the opposite and seeing traffic go up, not down. I don’t treat any subjects as taboo or sacred if they’re relevant to personal growth, and that includes diet and religion. It’s no secret that I’m a vegan ex-Catholic. Do I alienate people when I say that torturing and killing defenseless animals for food is wrong? Perhaps. But truth is truth. I happen to think it’s a bad idea to feed cows cement dust and bovine growth hormone, to pack live chickens into warehouses where the ammonia from their feces is strong enough to burn their skin off, and to feed 70% of our grain to livestock while tens of thousands of people die of hunger each day. I also think it’s a bad idea to pay people to perform these actions on my behalf. It really doesn’t matter to me that 999 people out of 1000 disagree with me. Your disagreement with me doesn’t change what went into producing your burger. It’s still a diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow, one that was doomed to a very sad life because of a decision you made. And you’re still responsible for your role in that cow’s suffering whether you like it or not.

That last paragraph is a good example of the kind of stuff I write that makes people want to put me in a cage, inject me with hormones, and feed me cement dust. It wouldn’t surprise me terribly if that ends up being my fate.

I write what is true for me, regardless of public opinion. Sometimes I’m in the majority; sometimes I’m not. I’m fully aware that some of my opinions are unpopular, and I’m absolutely fine with that. What I’m not fine with is putting truth to a vote.

I take the time to form my own opinions instead of simply regurgitating what I was taught as a child. And I’m also well aware that there are people spending billions of dollars to make you think that a burger is not a very sad, diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow. But I’m going to keep writing to help you remain aware of things like that, even though you may hate me for it. That defensiveness eventually leads to doubt, which leads to change and growth, so it’s perfectly fine. I’m good at dealing with defensiveness.

I don’t worry too much about hurting people’s feelings. Hurt feelings are a step in the right direction for many people. If I’m able to offend you so easily, to me that means you already recognize some truth in what I’ve written, but you aren’t ready to face it consciously yet. If you read something from me that provokes an emotional reaction, then a seed has already been planted. In other words, it’s already too late for you.

My goal isn’t to convince anyone of anything in particular. I’m not an animal rights activist, and I don’t have a religion to promote. My goal is to awaken people to living more consciously. This requires raising people’s awareness across all facets of their lives, so they can make the big decisions for themselves. It requires breaking social conditioning and replacing it with conscious awareness and intention. That’s a big job, but someone has to do it. And if I don’t do it, then I have to admit I’m just part of the problem like all the other hibernating bears.

A lot has been written about the importance of transparency in blogging, and truth is the best transparency of all. Truth creates trust, and trust builds traffic. No games, no gimmicks… just plain old brutal honesty. Even the people that say they hate you will still come back, and eventually those people will become your most ardent supporters. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll learn they can trust you and that your intentions are honorable, and trust is more important than agreement.

8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.

Even though I’m sitting at my computer writing this, seemingly alone, I know you’re a real human being reading it on the other end. My apologies to sentient androids who may be reading this years after it’s been written. You aren’t just a number in my web stats. Despite the technology involved and the time-space differential between my writing and your reading, there’s still a human-to-human connection between us that transcends time and space. And that connection matters to me. I feel its presence whenever I do my best writing.

While I imagine being on a stage in front of a million people when deciding which topic to write about, once I actually get going, I imagine having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. This means revealing some of myself and being honest, as the last two points already addressed, but it also means genuinely caring about you as a person. And that’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of my success as a blogger. I actually care about helping you grow. I want you to become more conscious and aware. I want you to experience less fear in your life. And my concern for your well-being isn’t conditional upon you liking me.

I happen to think we have a lot more similarities than differences. Based on what I know about myself, I imagine you’d like your life to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. I imagine you’d like to be happier, more fulfilled, and more at peace with yourself. I also imagine you’re living below your potential and could use some help overcoming fear and solving certain problems to enable you to tap more of that potential. And finally, I imagine you wouldn’t believe me if I said you can have it all for only $19.95 (as well you shouldn’t).

The reason I work so hard to create original content and then give it away for free is because I want to help as many people as possible. I genuinely care what happens to this beautiful planet and to the people who live here. It’s possible I actually value your life even more than you do. This is the kind of motivation that never wanes. I sometimes lose sight of it when I get caught up in the details, but the connection is always there, waiting for me to tap into it whenever I want. This provides me with a wellspring of creative ideas and an inexhaustible passion for contribution.

I don’t need to play stupid marketing and sales games with you. There’s nothing for you to buy here. Even if I add some products in the future, I’m not going to try to manipulate you into buying something you don’t need with a slew of false promises. I might make more money in the short-term by doing that, but it would sever our genuine connection, create a wall between us, and reduce the level of impact I’m able to have. Ultimately, that approach would lead to failure for me, at least in terms of how I define success. I can’t help you grow if I violate your trust.

I cannot force anyone to grow who doesn’t want to. But there are a lot of people on this planet who are now ready to let go of low-awareness living and start pushing themselves to the next level of human existence. And they need help to get there because it’s a difficult journey, and there are strong forces working against it.

Real human beings helping real human beings is ultimately what traffic growth is all about. That’s precisely what a link or a referral is. If you align yourself with the intention of genuinely helping people because you care, you’ll soon find yourself with an abundance of traffic.

9. Keep money in its proper place.

Money is important. Obviously I have bills to pay. Money pays for my computer, my high-speed internet connection, my house, and my food. I just returned yesterday from a vacation that money paid for. My wife and I had a great time partly because we didn’t have to worry about money at all on the trip. We did everything we wanted to do without being hampered by a lack of funds. And this web site paid for it.

It’s important that I generate some money from my work, but it’s not necessary that I extract every possible dollar. In fact, relative to its traffic levels, I’m seriously under-monetizing this site. But money is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Making a positive contribution to the world is a lot more important to me than money. Money can be useful in achieving this objective, but human relationships are far more important. The funny thing is that the less I rely on money, the more of it I seem to have.

I’m already making more money than I need to pay my bills, and my income from this site keeps going up each month. If I simply keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll probably end up becoming fairly wealthy. But money is an extremely weak motivator for me. Very little of what I do today has a profit motive behind it except to the extent that money will fuel more important goals. That tends to confuse certain people because some of my decisions align with earning money, but many don’t. While I do consider myself an entrepreneur (at least it’s less isolating than “guru”), I only see money as a tool for enhancing and expanding my contribution.

While many entrepreneurs pursue money for the purpose of becoming wealthy, I chose a different route. I sought to earn money for the purpose of increasing my freedom. I don’t want to get myself stuck in a pattern of working for money, so I’m constantly turning down opportunities to make money that would restrict my freedom. For example, I don’t do any consulting or coaching. Consequently, my calendar contains very few fixed appointments. This doesn’t mean I’m idle. It just means I spend my time doing what I freely choose to do instead of what others would have me do. I require this level of flexibility to do my best work.

By paying close attention to how I earn money and not just how much I earn, I keep money in its proper place. This allows me to stay focused on my purpose without getting wrapped up in less important concerns like building a brand, closing sales, or doing phony marketing.

I dislike it when other people use one-dimensional sales and marketing tactics on me, so I avoid using these techniques on this site. I’ve sort of unplugged myself from the current capitalistic system and set up a side system of my own that I find much more congruent with conscious living. I would love for other people to have the same level of freedom I enjoy each day. I’m sure I’ll continue to improve my approach over time, but it’s working wonderfully so far. Imagine having a business with no products, no inventory, no sales, and no customers, but still generating an abundant positive cashflow.

Since the income generation is largely on autopilot, I can focus my time and energy on creating content instead of on doing marketing or trying to sell something. And being able to devote so much time to content creation without worrying how I’ll pay my bills makes it a lot easier to build high traffic.

Some business models make it very challenging to build traffic. You have to spend a lot of time and energy just on lead generation, and then maybe you try to monetize those leads by selling a product or service. It’s always an uphill struggle.

I give all my best content away for free. Word of mouth does the rest. So my traffic building strategy is more like flowing downstream. It hasn’t been a struggle for me at all. And once you have sufficient traffic, it isn’t that hard to monetize it without becoming an ogre.

We’ve all heard the expression, “Build a better mousetrap, and they’ll come.” And we’ve also heard marketing and sales people say that this is just plain wrong — you have to market and sell that mousetrap effectively too. I say they’re all wrong. My approach is the equivalent of, “Build a better mousetrap and give it away for free, and they’ll come — and they’ll bring friends too.”

10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

One thing that turns me off about typical self-help marketing is that authors and speakers often position themselves as if they’re the opposite of their audience. I’m successful and you’re not. I’m rich and you’re not. I’m fit and you’re not. You need me because something is lacking in your life, I have exactly what you lack, and if you pay me (and make me even richer and you poorer), I’ll show you how you can have it too. And if it doesn’t work for you, it just means you’re even more of an idiot than the people who provided my testimonials.

I’m sure you’ve heard this sort of nonsense many times before.

All of this I’ve-arrived-and-you-haven’t stuff is stupid. It suggests that life is about destinations and that once you’ve arrived, you’re done growing and can just relax and sip fruity drinks for the rest of your life. But there’s more to life than border crossings. If you go from single to married or from non-millionaire to millionaire, that’s fine and dandy. Crossing the border into parenthood was a big one for me. But that’s only one day of my life, and to be honest, I didn’t have much control over it except for a decision made nine-months earlier (and it seemed like a pretty attractive idea at the time). What about all those other days though?

Growing as a human being is something I work on daily. I’m deeply passionate about my own growth, so naturally I want to share this part of the journey with others. If I start marketing myself with the “I’m successful and you’re not approach,” I hope someone will come put me out of my misery, since that would mean I’m done growing and ready to die. I don’t expect to ever be done growing as long as I exist as a human being. There are always new distinctions to be made and new experiences to enjoy. And yes… plenty of mistakes to be made as well.

One of the great benefits of focusing on helping others is that it gets fear out of the way. Without fear you become free to just be yourself. You’re able to take intelligent risks and remain detached from any specific outcome because the journey is more important to you than the specific stops along the way. Personally it’s not the destinations that excite me but rather the unfolding process of discovery. I love the anticipation of wondering what lies around each new bend.

If we are to help each other, we need to be partners in the pursuit of growth, not opponents. So it makes no sense to put up fake walls between us. The ego needs walls to protect it, but if we can get past the fear-based needs of the ego, we’ll make a lot more progress.

There are plenty of things I could do with this site that would make me more money or grow traffic faster in the short-term, but I won’t do them because they’ll just put more distance between us. I’ll be on my side, you’ll be on your side, and we’ll each be slightly afraid of the other. I’ll be worried that maybe you won’t buy what I’m selling, and you’ll be worried about getting ripped off or taken advantage of. We’ll just be drinking yet another round of fear, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to grow.

One of my biggest challenges in life right now is figuring out how to help enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to love. Our emotions are an energy source for us (they drive our actions), and most of the world is still driven by fear energy. Watching TV news is a good example; we can actually feel energized by watching others suffer. Hurting animals is another example; we eat their fear for breakfast. But there’s another fuel for human consciousness, and perhaps the best way to describe it is unconditional love. This isn’t the squishy emotion of romantic love — it’s a sense of connection to everything that exists and a desire to serve the highest good of all. Unconditional love, when it becomes one’s primary fuel, cultivates fearlessness. In this state you still have the biological fight-or-flight response, but you aren’t driven by emotional worries like fear of failure or fear of rejection. You feel perfectly safe regardless of external circumstances. And when you have this feeling of unconditional safety, you’re truly free to be yourself, to embrace new experiences, and to grow at a very fast pace.

Personal growth is not a zero-sum game. If you grow as a human being, it doesn’t harm me. In fact, ultimately if all of us grow as individuals, it’s going to make this whole planet better for everyone. When enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to unconditional love, this planet will become a true paradise. That’s a good thing for all of us, one that’s more important than all the money in the world.

Perhaps you have a less ambitious goal for building web traffic than raising human consciousness and working towards world peace. That doesn’t matter. You can still make helping others your primary focus, and if you do that, you’ll find it relatively easy to build a high-traffic web site. If you align yourself with serving the highest good of all, you’ll receive plenty of help along the way, and best of all, you’ll deserve it.

Do your best to help your visitors out of genuine concern for their well-being, and they’ll help you build your traffic and even generate a nice income from it. It’s as simple as that.

Final thoughts

Building a high-traffic website can be very challenging if you’ve never done it before. These tips really only scratch the surface of what you need to know to succeed. Since writing this article, I found an alternative suggestion for those who find it difficult to build substantial traffic and income online. Please check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

I thought this article was so amazing and so relevant to the daily running thoughts of EVERYONE that I wanted to share this to see if it can help some of you out.  Enjoy:

Source - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/

Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job? I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.”

She smiled and said, “Wow. I have been unemployed a really long time. That’s weird… I like it!”

Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992), so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while. In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!”

It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that! Anything but that!”

It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself. There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.

Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:

1. Income for dummies.

Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.

Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working? Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?

Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?

Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?

Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.

Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.

This web site is an example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway. But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right? Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name). Everything after that was profit.

Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.

Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.

2. Limited experience.

You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.

The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over. You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat. In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?

Consider this. Which experience would you rather gain? The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money – or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again? Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience. That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?

3. Lifelong domestication.

Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.

Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?

How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?

Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?

Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…

4. Too many mouths to feed.

Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.

Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax system? Business owners and investors or employees?

You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.

What a generous person you are!

5. Way too risky.

Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.

Morons.

Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.

Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?

The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.

6. Having an evil bovine master.

When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”

Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master? Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.” And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.

So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.

Who’s your daddy?

7. Begging for money.

When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?

Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?

If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”

8. An inbred social life.

Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends. An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay inside where it’s safe.

If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend? If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you? Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!

9. Loss of freedom.

It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.

As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.

God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on her desk! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!

Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun.”

10. Becoming a coward.

Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault. It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards. If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve become your master’s property.

When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become.

I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your courage. Never!

Still want a job?

If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part of the conditioning. But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all. This is only a reminder of what you already know. You can deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there. Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath.

If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.

Happily jobless

What’s the alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other means. Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time – so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it. One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it. It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy. Then you can buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change.

And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate even more value. So even your mistakes can be monetized.

Here are some free resources to help you get started:
The Courage To Live Consciously (article on how to transition to more meaningful work)
Podcast #006 – How to Make Money Without a Job (audio)
Podcast #009 – Kick-start Your Own Business (audio)
Podcast #014 – Embracing Your Passion (audio)
10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed (article)
How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) (article)
How to Make Money From Your Blog (article)

One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others. Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth that much. That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning. It’s absolute nonsense. As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it. There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.

All you really need is the courage to be yourself. Your real value is rooted in who you are, not what you do. The only thing you need actually do is express your real self to the world. You’ve been told all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway.

The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did: ”No, please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke him right in the eyes.

You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.

Final thoughts

While I wouldn’t recommend starting an online business for everyone, for many people it’s one of the best ways to generate income without a job. It has certainly worked disgustingly well for me. If you’re interested in learning more about this option, please check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

This is how I operate... For those of you who want to know me better :-)

For business and my personal life I am always sorting people.  Sorting allows me to help more people, maximize my time for maximal productive, and create amazing new nurturing relationships in my life that are constantly shaping my life in a very positive way and vice versa.

I live to serve people in my capacity as an Independent Team Beachbody coach.  The coolest thing about providing a solution for others is that the solution always allows me to sort out all the excuse makers from people who are being honest and genuinely want to achieve. And then I devote myself to those people who want to achieve! You will be so much more productive with your time if you're sorting rather than convincing and then spending all of your time with achievers and zero percent of your time with excuse makers. Go out there and help people you WILL meet some amazing individuals who will shape your life for the better in profound ways and vice versa :-)

Another way I sort as a Team Beachbody coach is by using third party tools. Once I put the introducing Team Beachbody video or the 100 Doctors video in front of someone it's going to act as a filtering mechanism allowing me to sort the interested from the un interested in a very friendly non intrusive way. I have nothing against anyone who is not interested in Beachbody. It actually removes all pressure on both sides. This is one big reason why I am in so much high demand. A lot of people who talk to me can see themselves doing what I'm doing and would be proud to do exactly what I'm doing to their friends and family. Makes sense doesn't it?

 After I sign up a new coach into my organization the sorting continues! I sort coaches who are engaged and immersed in this process from coaches who are not and then spend the bulk of my time with those coaches who are engaged in this. First thing I do with a new coach is have a getting started right conversation so I can help them achieve their own defined goals. I will give that new coach something easy they can do with complete confidence just to get them started. Something small, simple, and then see if they do it! If they do it then I give that coach a little bit more, and a little bit more basically cultivating some personal growth and development as they evolve into a super star :-)  It really does happen just like that!  If I get a coach with a big mouth but zero action then I know to sort that coach into another category that I do not want to spend a lot of time if any time with. I politely let the coach know that they are in business for them self but not by them self BUT if they disappear then I disappear.   You run I run.  You walk I walk.  It's a cooperative relationship and all sides win in a cooperative relationship.

 In life and in business I am sorting the interested from the un interested, the excuses makers from the achievers, the engaged coaches from the unengaged coaches so that I know how to spend my time for maximum productivity which everyone who's immersed in this benefits from :-)

 Beautiful concept and time management skill hey? Yes it is, indeed :-) Practice it! This business and this life is so much more of a joy if you're sorting :-)

Tom

Leadership and the little things that hold us prisoner to a JOB and prisoner to an Economy

I received this from a very enlightened friend with some wonderful perspective on leadership and the little things that hold us prisoner to a JOB:

"You can pass on leadership, but NOT responsibility, they must take the torch from you as in the Olympic races and carry on as you drive down in their leg working the most excited , newest in that group to burn bright. If you step back too soon, it all falls in as they were not ready yet. It is a totally different thought process when we as a whole have been trained to take all the little bonuses the job gives you like car, per diems, extra little things that actually hold you prisoner to the job, then, they start taking them away one by one, this doesn't seem to phase us and still we stay as now we have seniority and it is all about time we invested, seniority, benefits, and vacations..,we need to wake up and see those 401 k plans, all those benefits, retirement and even social security will not be there when we are ready. IF IT IS GOING TO BE , IT IS UP TO ME

Booming = exponential, always moving forward, unstoppable, and , "Healthy, Wealthy, makes a balanced, happy person,"When the economy is bad, people start looking at options as people are never paid for their worth, unless they are in charge of their paycheck and only in your own business can you truly say, "THEY"don't pay my bills so why do I allow them to tell ME this business won't work. Tom, you are there, Fear will make people react to you and your opportunity in drastic ways, always remember, to "Ask a busy person, they will always make the time" and, work with the greedy, not the needy as you can spin your wheels with the ones that confuse activity ( getting ducks in a row rather than just doing it and getting new people in front row) with accomplishment."

Thank you sandy for your perspective! You have an amazing mind!

Tom http://beachbodycoach.com/metalpalace

Eat Red Meat :-) You will LOVE this...

"Grass-fed beef and other animal foods. As opposed to traditional, grain-fed livestock, meat that comes from animals fed grass also contains anti-inflammatory omega-3s, but in lower concentrations than coldwater fish. Free-range livestock that graze in pastures build up higher levels of omega-3s. Meat from grain-fed animals has virtually no omega-3s and plenty of saturated fat."

Source - http://www.dlife.com/photoGallery/viewGallery.php?albumId=199&photoId=202&ts=1288019004784 

The same information can be found in a plethora of great reputable sources.   This is exciting news because I LOVE LOVE LOVE a good hamburger or a good rib-eye cut of steak.  YUM...  I'd still eat more fish and chicken than cow and pig because they have a much higher concentration of healthy fats.  ESPECIALLY if you have risk factors for heart attack or stroke.  Ya know?

Be a selfless part of the solution for people you care about and put your selfish things away

You can SELL people, convince and persuade, or you can SHARE with people the things you're doing that's changing your life because you care about them and want them to get healthier, wealthier, and feel better to. That's what coaches who are signing up other coaches regularly are doing, SHARING. Don't get into this Team Beachbody opportunity with me to sell! Get into it because there are people you care about who you want to live happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives. Can you handle that and are you selfless enough to be part of a solution people need? If you're not a conduit can you plug people into something that can change there lives? If you're life isn't already changing for the better then what are YOU doing to achieve? Hopefully you still have dreams that aren't beaten down by the economy so badly that you gave up on them. You can qualify yourself for the Team beachbody opportunity just by asking yourself "Is what I'm doing now going to get me to where I want to be?" If the answer is no then you NEED to change the vehicle. A few years ago I changed the vehicle. Two and a half years later I "fired my boss". A few months after that I bought my first home in CASH, no mortgage. Three years ago I was poverty stricken! Now the most exciting part of my life is watching others grow who I have helped. If now is not the time for you then if you keep doing what you're doing are you ever going to have the time? You've got to change the vehicle my friends. If you're ready to for this... If you're ready to change your life... If you're motivated to help others and not to SELL others... Let me know. You can find my phone number in the info tab of my facebook profile or you can email me.

Change the vehicle nothing changes if you don't change.

Tom

Liquid Gold: A Beachbody® Look at Olive Oil By Sasha Papovich

For the Free Newsletter go to my Beachbody coach website: http://beachbodycoach.com/metalpalace click the "Join" button, scroll down and click on the Free Membership button

The Greek poet Homer called it "liquid gold." It's mentioned in the Bible, the Talmud, and the Koran. Greek mythology includes the story of the goddess Athena winning great praise from Zeus for her useful invention of the olive tree. For millennia, the olive tree has been a symbol of peace, purification, and good health. And in recent years, we've all heard the good news that the high-fat oil of the olive fruit is actually good for you. Is it possible that olive oil merits the reverence of ancient Mediterranean culture and the respect of the medical establishment of the West? And if so, what's the real scoop on how to get the most benefit and enjoyment from it?

Olive oil is the only vegetable oil that is created simply by pressing the raw material—in this case, olives. Extra virgin is the best quality because it comes from the first pressing of the olives and is therefore the least processed, which matters to those of us interested in olive oil for its health benefits.

Recent research does indeed show that olive oil is a medicinal powerhouse. More than just an improvement over animal-fat-based oils, antioxidant-rich olive oil can actually protect against degenerative diseases like heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. The FDA has officially credited olive oil with decreasing the risk of coronary heart disease. Olive oil's role in the prevention of bone density loss, diabetes, and obesity is being explored.

And now a little more about those health benefits . . .
Olive oil is composed largely of monounsaturated fatty acids—sometimes called good fats. Monounsaturated fatty acids keep HDL—the so-called good cholesterol—levels up and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, levels down. LDL is the main source of cholesterol buildup in the arteries, and HDL actually works to clear cholesterol from the blood.

The nutrition community is somewhat divided right now as to whether saturated fat and its effect on cholesterol is truly an issue. If you happen to be on the pro-saturated-fat side, olive oil still offers you a host of benefits, primarily because it contains natural antioxidants—polyphenols—which prevent the formation of certain free radicals that cause cell destruction within the body. Free radicals are linked to heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and the general degenerative process of aging.

Recent studies show that olive oil's polyphenols also inhibit another one of the processes that contribute to heart disease. This means that not only do the monounsaturated fats in olive oil resist the plaque-forming process that leads to heart disease, but the antioxidants actually help to inhibit that process as well. When people with high cholesterol levels removed the saturated fat from their diets and replaced it with olive oil, their LDL cholesterol levels dropped by 18 percent. Another study reported that 2 tablespoons a day of olive oil added to an otherwise unchanged diet resulted in significant drops in total and LDL cholesterol. These impressive results can be understood as a by-product of the monounsaturated fats AND of the high levels of polyphenols that are present in olive oil.

But wait, there's more!
Research on olive oil and the symptoms of diabetes has also shown that a diet rich in olive oil helps to prevent belly-fat accumulation and the insulin resistance seen after the high-carbohydrate meals. Anti-inflammatory substances linked to the monounsaturated fats in olive oil can help reduce the severity of arthritis symptoms, and may be able to prevent or reduce the severity of asthma. And early studies reveal that the phenols in olive oil can lessen the inflammation-mediated bone loss involved in osteoporosis.

How much is enough?
So now that we're confident that olive oil is good for the heart and is likely good for many other degenerative or inflammatory conditions, we can look at how to go about adding this nutritional elixir to our diets. Experts agree that at least 2 tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil a day is needed for any of these preventive purposes. While it's true that olive oil adds great benefit regardless of what else you're eating, you can benefit most by substituting olive oil for less healthy fats, rather than just adding more olive oil to your diet.
The most important point about usage, however, is not how much olive oil we consume a day, but what kind of olive oil we use and how we store it.

Olive oil shopping
All olive oil contains monounsaturated fat and phenols, but the amounts vary wildly depending upon the type of olive oil and how it is handled. Simply put: If you're interested in the health benefits of olive oil, don't buy anything less than extra virgin olive oil! All types of olive oil contain monounsaturated fat, but extra virgin olive oils are the least processed forms, which means that their phenol (antioxidant) content is the highest.

Just as important as the purity of the olive oil you buy is its storage both before and after you get it home. Olive oil can become rancid from exposure to light and heat, but even low levels of light and heat exposure that don't cause rancidity can cause the breakdown of phenols, thereby canceling out many of the health-enhancing benefits. Research has shown that consuming olive oil that has been degraded by light and heat is simply not as beneficial, so do your best to control for light and heat both before and after you buy the olive oil.

Look for olive oil that is sold in dark-tinted bottles, since the packaging will help protect the purity and nutritional value of the oil. (Research shows that after just 2 months' exposure to light, antioxidant levels had dropped so much the olive oil could no longer be classified as extra virgin.)

Ask your grocer how long the olive oil has been out; purchase olive oil that has spent the minimum time sitting on the shelf by checking the expiration date or by choosing the bottles at the back of the shelf, as the newest ones often reside there.
Buy your olive oil in smaller containers and store it in the dark.

How to care for and cook with your olive oil
Once you get it home, make sure the oil is stored in a cool area, away from any direct or indirect contact with heat. You can leave a small bottle out at room temperature, refrigerating the rest and refilling your daily-use bottle every week or so. (Refrigerated olive oil will solidify and turn slightly cloudy, but will become clear and liquid as it returns to room temperature.)

Add olive oil to foods immediately after cooking to get the most nutritional benefit. All cooking oils have a "smoke point" at which they begin to break down, thereby compromising taste and, in the case of olive oil, phenols. Although different sources report various grades of olive oil as having various smoke points, it's generally accepted that extra virgin olive oil has a much lower smoke point (anywhere from 200 degrees to the high 300s). If you do want to cook with olive oil (which is perfectly fine and, if done right, delicious), buy a separate bottle of regular or "light" oil, which has a much higher smoke point, upward of 400 degrees.

Instead of serving butter, fill a small condiment dish with extra virgin olive oil for use on bread, rolls, potatoes, or other vegetables. For more flavor, try adding a few drops of balsamic vinegar or a sprinkling of your favorite spices to the olive oil. You can also drizzle your daily serving of 2 tablespoons of olive oil over just about anything after it's been cooked: a morning frittata, your lunchtime salad (mixed with balsamic or a flavored vinegar), or your dinner vegetables, pasta, fish, or chicken.

Trendy superfoods may come and go, but olive oil has been here since the days of the ancient Greeks, and today's medical research validates its long-lived reputation. Whether you're primarily interested in cardiovascular health or protection against degenerative diseases, adding olive oil to your daily diet is delicious and healthful, so drizzle it into your nutrition plan today.