Amazon bestseller

Book Summary: The Power of Habit p10

Crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose.

By hiring psychologists who peddled vaguely scientific tactics they claimed could make customers spend more. Some of those methods are still in use today. If you walk into a Walmart, Home Depot, or your local shopping center and look closely, you’ll see retailing tricks that have been around for decades, each designed to exploit your shopping subconscious.

Take, for instance, how you buy food. Chances are, the first things you see upon entering your grocery
store are fruits and vegetables arranged in attractive, bountiful piles. If you think about it, positioning produce at the front of a store doesn’t make much sense, because fruits and vegetables bruise easily
at the bottom of a shopping cart; logically, they should be situated by the registers, so they come at the end of a trip. But as marketers and psychologists figured out long ago, if we start our shopping sprees by
loading up on healthy stuff, we’re much more likely to buy Doritos, Oreos, and frozen pizza when we encounter them later on. The burst of subconscious virtuousness that comes from first buying butternut
squash makes it easier to later put a pint of ice cream in the cart.

Take the way most of us turn to the right after entering a store. (Did you know you turn right? It’s almost certain you do. There are thousands of hours of videotapes showing shoppers turning right once they clear the front doors.) As a result of this tendency, retailers fill the right side of the stores with the most profitable products they’re hoping you’ll buy right off the bat.

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ

https://temu.to/m/uz7zxd1qshm

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p13

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DARING GREATLY: PRACTICING GRATITUDE

Gratitude emerged from the data as the antidote to foreboding joy. In fact, every participant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing gratitude. This pattern of association was so thoroughly prevalent in the data that I made a commitment as a researcher not to talk about joy without talking about gratitude.

Participants described happiness as an emotion that’s connected to circumstances, and they described joy as a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.

Scarcity and fear drive foreboding joy. We’re afraid that the feeling of joy won’t last, or that there won’t be enough, or that the transition to disappointment (or whatever is in store for us next) will be too difficult.

I learned the most about gratitude practices and the relationship between scarcity and joy that plays out in vulnerability from the men and women who had experienced some of the most profound losses or survived the greatest traumas.

Joy comes to us in moments—ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.

Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant.

Be grateful for what you have. 🌹

Don’t take what you have for granted— celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others.

When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost.

Don’t squander joy. 🙂

We can’t prepare for tragedy and loss. When we turn every opportunity to feel joy into a test drive for despair, we actually diminish our resilience. Yes, softening into joy is uncomfortable. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s vulnerable. But every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope. The joy becomes part of who we are, and when bad things happen—and they do happen—we are stronger.

THE SHIELD: PERFECTIONISM

The most valuable and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compassionate. Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s the hazardous detour. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth.

Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval.

Healthy striving is self- focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused:
What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle. Perfectionism is not the key to success.

Perfectionism is correlated with
depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame.

Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame. Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because perfection doesn’t exist.

Perfectionism actually sets us up to feel shame, judgment, and blame, which then leads to even more shame and self-blame: “It’s my fault. I’m feeling this way because I’m not good enough.”

🦋🦋 Dare 🦋🦋

Book Summary: The Real Anthony Fauci P.7

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Early Treatment

“The Best Practices for defeating an infectious disease epidemic,” says Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, “dictate that you quarantine and treat the sick, protect the most vulnerable, and aggressively develop repurposed therapeutic drugs, and use early treatment protocols to avoid hospitalizations.” Our objective should have been to devise treatments that would reduce hospitalization and death. We could have easily defanged COVID-19 so that it was less lethal than a seasonal flu. We could have done this very quickly. We could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

Dr. Peter McCullough concurs: “Once a highly transmissible virus like COVID has a beachhead in a population, it is inevitable that it will spread to every individual who lacks immunity. You can slow the spread, but you cannot prevent it—any more than you can prevent the tide from rising.”

Dr. McCullough: “We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.”

The efficacy of some of these drugs as prophylaxis is almost miraculous, plus early intervention in the week after exposure stops viral replication and prevents development of cytokine storm and entrance into the pulmonary phase,” says Dr. Pierre Kory. “We could have stopped the pandemic in its tracks in the spring of 2020.”

They point out that natural immunity, in all known cases, is superior to vaccine-induced immunity, being both more durable (it often lasts a lifetime) and broader spectrum—meaning it provides a shield against subsequent variants. “Vaccinating citizens with natural immunity should never have been our public health policy,” says Dr. Kory.

“It is absolutely shocking that he recommended no outpatient care, not even Vitamin D despite the fact he takes it himself and much of the country is Vitamin D deficient.”

“The outcome we should have been trying to prevent is hospitalizations. You don’t just sit around and wait for an infected patient to become ill.

💥💥 Know your rights 💥💥

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p12

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THE VULNERABILITY

THE word persona is the Greek term for “stage mask.” In my work masks and armor are perfect metaphors for how we protect ourselves from the discomfort of vulnerability. Masks make us feel safer even when they become suffocating.

Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.

Common vulnerability arsenal:

Foreboding joy: the paradoxical dread that clamps down on momentary joyfulness;

Perfectionism: believing that doing everything perfectly means you’ll never feel shame;

Numbing: the embrace of whatever deadens the pain of discomfort and pain.

THE COMMON VULNERABILITY SHIELDS

THE SHIELD: FOREBODING JOY

Joy is probably the most difficult emotion to really feel. 😎 Because when we lose the ability or willingness to be vulnerable, joy becomes something we approach with deep foreboding. We just know that we crave more joy in our lives, that we are joy starved.

What the perpetual-disappointment folks describe is this: “It’s easier to live disappointed than it is to feel disappointed. It feels more vulnerable to dip in and out of disappointment than to just set up camp there. You sacrifice joy, but you suffer less pain.”

Softening into the joyful moments of our lives requires vulnerability.

Once we make the connection between vulnerability and joy, the answer is pretty straightforward: We’re trying to beat vulnerability to the punch. We don’t want to be blindsided by hurt. We don’t want to be caught off-guard, so we literally practice being devastated or never move from self-elected disappointment.

We’re desperate for more joy, but at the same time we can’t tolerate the vulnerability.

We’re visual people. We trust, consume, and mentally store what we see. 👀

💐🌷🌹🌸🌺 Dare 💐🌷🌹🌸🌺

Book Summary: Daring Greatly p11

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research tells us that we judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance.

children who are engaging in the bullying behaviors or vying for social ranking by putting down others have parents who engage in the same behaviors.

Cultivating intimacy—physical or emotional—is almost impossible when our shame triggers meet head-on and create the perfect shame storm.

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them—we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. 💖💖💖

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged and healed.

But in practicing self-love over the past couple of years, I can say that it has immeasurably deepened my relationships with the people I love.

Shame is universal, but the messages and expectations that drive shame are organized by gender.

The expectations and messages that fuel shame keep us from fully realizing who we are as people.

If we’re going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of what we’re supposed to be is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

💖🌹 Dare 🌹💖

Book Summary: The Power of Habit p7

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Small wins are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. “Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage,”

Concentrate on tiny moments of success and build them into mental triggers.

Keystone habit creates a structure that helps other habits to flourish.

At the core of that Starbucks education is an intense focus on an all- important habit: willpower. Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success.

Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more selective schools.

“Highly self-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic- performance variable.” Self- discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

And the best way to strengthen willpower and give students a leg up, studies indicate, is to make it into a habit.

Willpower is a learnable skill, something that can be taught the same way kids learn to do math and say “thank you.” As willpower muscles strengthened, good habits seemed to spill over into other parts of life.

“When you learn to force yourself to go to the gym or start your homework or eat a salad instead of a hamburger, part of what’s happening is that you’re changing how you think. People get better at regulating their impulses. They learn how to distract themselves from temptations. And once you’ve gotten into that willpower groove, your brain is practiced at helping you focus on a goal.”

“When you learn to force yourself to practice for an hour or run fifteen laps, you start building
self- regulatory strength. A five- year- old who can follow the ball for ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on time.”

Firms such as Starbucks— and the Gap, Wal- Mart, restaurants, or any other business that relies on entry- level workers— all face a common problem: No matter how much their employees want to do a great job, many will fail because they lack self- discipline. They show up late. They snap at rude customers. They get distracted or drawn into workplace dramas. They quit for no reason.

If someone has trouble with self- discipline at work, they’re probably also going to have trouble attending a program designed to strengthen their self- discipline after work.

The solution, Starbucks discovered, was turning self- discipline into an organizational habit.

🔰🔰🔰🔰🔰🔰

☕︎ Develop Powerful habits ☕︎

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (16-20) Summary

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Wealth’s Shortcut::
The Fastlane

People would do better, if they knew better.
~ Jim Rohn

The Fastlane Mindposts

Debt Perception: Debt is useful if it allows me to build and grow my system.
Time Perception: Time is the most important asset I have, far exceeding money.
Education Perception: The moment you stop learning is the moment you stop growing. Constant expansion of my knowledge and awareness is critical to my journey.
Money Perception: Money is everywhere, and it’s extremely abundant. Money is
a reflection of how many lives I’ve touched. Money reflects the value I’ve created.
Primary Income Source: I earn income via my business systems and investments.
Primary Wealth Accelerator: I make something from nothing. I give birth to assets and make them valuable to the marketplace. Other times, I take existing assets and add value to them.
Wealth Perception: Build business systems for cash flow and asset valuation.
Wealth Equation: Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value
Strategy: The more I help, the richer I become in time, money, and personal fulfillment.
Destination: Lifetime passive income, either through business or investments.
Responsibility & Control: Life is what I make it. My financial plan is entirely my responsibility and I choose how I react to my circumstances.
Life Perception: My dreams are worth pursuing no matter how outlandish, and I understand that it will take money to make some of those dreams real.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The risk profile of a Fastlane strategy isn’t much different from the Slowlane, but the rewards are far greater.
••The Fastlane Roadmap is an alternative financial strategy predicated on Controllable Unlimited Leverage.
••The Fastlane roadmap is predisposed to wealth.
••The Fastlane Roadmap is capable of generating “Get Rich Quick” results, not to be confused with “Get Rich Easy.”

Switch Teams
and Playbooks

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Producers are indigenous to the Fastlane roadmap.
•• Producers are the minority as are the rich, while consumers are the majority as are the poor.
••When you succeed as a producer, you can consume anything you want.
•• Fastlaners are producers, entrepreneurs, innovators, visionaries, and creators.
••A business does not make a Fastlane—some businesses are jobs in disguise.
••The Fastlane wealth equation is not bound by time and its variables are unlimited and controllable.

How the Rich Really Get Rich

Only those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.
~ TS Eliot

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The key to the Fastlane wealth equation is to have a high speed limit, or an unlimited range of values for units sold. This creates leverage. The market for your product or service determines your upper limit.
••The higher your speed limit, the higher your income potential.
••The primary wealth accelerant for the rich is asset value, defined as appreciable assets created, founded, or bought.
••Wealth creation via asset value is accelerated by each industry’s average multiplier. For every dollar in net income realized, the asset value multiplies by a factor of the multiple.
••Your industry of specialization will determine the average multiple that determines your wealth accelerant factor. If the multiple is 3, your WAF is 300%.
•• Liquidation events transform appreciated assets (“paper” net worth) into money (“real” net worth) that can be transformed into another passive income stream: a money system.

Divorce Wealth from Time

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful, lest you let other people spend it for you.
~ Carl Sandburg

The Five Fastlane Business Seedlings:

1) Rental Systems
2) Computer/Software Systems
3) Content Systems
4) Distribution Systems
5) Human Resource Systems

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• To divorce yourself from the Slowlane’s transactional relationship of “time for money,” you need to become a producer, specifically, a business owner.
•• Business systems break the bond between “your time for money” because they act like surrogate operatives for your time trade.
•• If you have a passive income that exceeds all your needs and lifestyle expenses including taxes, you’re retired.
•• Retirement can happen at any age.
••The fruit from a money tree is passive income.
••A Fastlane objective is to create a business system that survives time, exclusive of your time.
••The 5 money-tree seedlings are rental systems, computer systems, content systems, distribution systems, and human-resource systems.
•• Real estate, licenses, and patents are examples of rental systems.
•• Internet and software businesses are examples of computer systems.
••Authoring books, blogging, and magazines are forms of content systems.
•• Franchising, chaining, network marketing, and television marketing are examples of distribution systems.
•• Human resource systems can add or subtract to passivity.
•• Human resource systems are the most expensive to manage and implement.

Recruit Your Army
of Freedom Fighters

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
~ Proverbs 22:7 (NIV)

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• One saved dollar is the seed to a money tree.
••A mere 5% interest on $10 million dollars is $40,000 a month in passive income.
••A saved dollar is the best passive income instrument.
•• Fastlaners (the rich) don’t use compound interest or the markets to get wealthy but to create income and preserve liquidity.
••A saved dollar is a freedom fighter added to your army.
••The rich leverage compound interest at its crest, applied against large sums of money.
•• Fastlaners eventually become net lenders.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (11-15) Summary

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The Criminal Trade: Your Job

By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually
get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day.
~ Robert Frost

Jobs: Domestication into Normalcy

To Trade Time Is to Trade Life. In a job, you sell your life for money.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• In a job, you sell your freedom (in the form of time) for freedom (in the form of money).
•• Experience is gained in action. The environment of that action is irrelevant.
••Wealth accumulation is thwarted when you don’t control your primary income source.

The Slowlane:
Why You Aren’t Rich

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying.
Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say.
Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.
~ Michael Landon

For compound interest to be effective, you need three things:
1) TIME, as measured in years.
2) A favorable YEARLY INVESTMENT YIELD within those years.
3) An INVESTED SUM, repeatedly invested.

Wealth is built with time as an asset, not as a liability!

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Slowlane wealth is improbable due to Uncontrollable Limited Leverage (ULL).
•• The first variable in the Slowlane wealth equation evolves from a job that factors to intrinsic value that equates to your nominal value for each unit of your life traded.
•• Intrinsic value is the value of your time set by the marketplace and is measured in units of time, either hourly or yearly.
•• In the Slowlane, intrinsic value (regardless of its time measurement) is numerically inhibited because there are only 24 hours in the day (for the hourly worker), and the average lifespan is 74 years (for the salaried worker).
•• Like the Slowlaner’s primary income source (a job), the Slowlaner’s wealth acceleration vehicle (compound interest) is also pegged to time.
•• Like a job, compound interest is mathematically futile and cannot be manipulated. You cannot force-feed the market (or the economy) to give you phenomenal returns, year after year.
••Wealth cannot be accelerated when pegged to mathematics based on time.
•• Time is your primordial fuel and it should not be traded for money.
••Your time should not be an expendable resource for wealth because wealth itself is composed of time.
••Your mortality makes time mathematically retarded for wealth creation.
•• If you don’t control the variables inherent in your wealth universe, you don’t control your financial plan.

The Futile Fight:
Education

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
~ Albert Einstein

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Slowlaners attempt to manipulate intrinsic value by education.
•• Indentured time is time you spend earning a living. It is the opposite of free time.
•• Parasitic debt is debt that creates indentured time and forces work.

The Hypocrisy of the Gurus

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted,
but now it happens to everybody.
~ Adlai Stevenson

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Take advice from people with a proven, successful track record of their espoused discipline.
••Many money gurus often suffer from a Paradox of Practice; they teach one wealth equation while getting rich in another. They’re not rich from their own teachings.

Slowlane Victory…
A Gamble of Hope

I’d rather live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying.
~ MJ DeMarco

12 Distinctions Between Slowlane and Fastlane Millionaires
1) Slowlane millionaires make millions in 30 years or more. Fastlane millionaires make millions in 10 years or less.
2) Slowlane millionaires need to live in middle-class homes. Fastlane millionaires can live in luxury estates.
3) Slowlane millionaires have MBAs. Fastlane millionaires hire people with MBAs.
4) Slowlane millionaires let their assets drift by market forces. Fastlane millionaires control their assets and possess the power to manipulate their value.
5) Slowlane millionaires can’t afford exotic cars. Fastlane millionaires can afford to drive whatever they want.
6) Slowlane millionaires work for their time. Fastlane millionaires have time working for them.
7) Slowlane millionaires are employees. Fastlane millionaires hire employees.
8) Slowlane millionaires have 401Ks. Fastlane millionaires offer 401Ks.
9) Slowlane millionaires use mutual funds and the stock market to get rich. Fastlane millionaires use them to stay rich.
10) Slowlane millionaires let other people control their income streams. Fastlane millionaires control their income streams.
11) Slowlane millionaires are cheap with money. Fastlane millionaires are cheap with time.
12) Slowlane millionaires use their house for net worth. Fastlane millionaires use their house for residency.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Slowlane has seven dangers, five of which cannot be controlled.
••The risk of “lifestyle” is the one risk Slowlaners will try to control.
••The Slowlane is predisposed to mediocrity because its mathematical universe is mediocre.
•• Slowlaners manipulate the “expense” variable because it is the one thing they can control.
•• Exponential income growth and expense management creates wealth—not just by curtailing expenses.
••You can break the Slowlane equation by exploding your intrinsic value via fame or insider corporate management.
•• Successful Slowlaners not famous or in corporate management end in the middle . . . middle class and middle age.
•• Slowlane millionaires are stuck in the middle class.
•• $5 million is the new $1 million.
••A millionaire cannot live a millionaire lifestyle without financial discipline.
•• Lottery winners fall into the millionaire trap and go broke because they attempt to live a “millionaire” lifestyle, not understanding that a few million doesn’t go very far.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (1-10) Summary

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Part 1
Wealth in a Wheelchair:
“Get Rich Slow” is Get Rich Old

The Great Deception
Normal is not something to aspire to,
it’s something to get away from.
~ Jodie Foster

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••“Get Rich Slow” demands a long life of gainful employment.
••“Get Rich Slow” is a losing game because it is codependent on Wall Street and anchored by your time.
••The real golden years of life are when you’re young, sentient, and vibrant.

How I Screwed “Get Rich Slow”
The object of life is not to be on the side of the masses,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Fame or physical talent is not a prerequisite to wealth.
•• Fast wealth is created exponentially, not linearly.
•• Change can happen in an instant.

Part 2
Wealth is Not a Road,
But a Road Trip!

The Road Trip to Wealth
The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
~ Lao Tzu

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Wealth is a formula, not an ingredient.
•• Process makes millionaires. Events are by-products of process.
•• To seek a “wealth chauffeur” is to seek a surrogate for process. Process cannot be outsourced, because process dawns wisdom, personal growth, strength, and events.

The Roadmaps to Wealth
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
~ Lewis Carroll

Debt Perception: Does debt control you or do you control your debt?
Time Perception: How is your time valued and treated? Abundant? Fleeting? Inconsequential?
Education Perception: What role does education have in your life?
Money Perception: What is money’s role in your life? Is money a tool or a toy? Plentiful or scarce?
Primary Income Source: What is your primary means of creating income?
Primary Wealth Accelerator: How are you accelerating your net worth and creating wealth? Or are you?
Wealth Perception: How do you define wealth?
Wealth Equation: What is your mathematical plan for accumulating wealth? What wealth equation defines the physics of your wealth universe?
Destination: Is there a destination? If so, what does it look like?
Responsibility & Control: Are you in control of your life and your financial plan?
Life Perception: How do you live your life? Do you plan for the future? Forsake today for tomorrow? Or tomorrow for today?

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• To force change, change must come from your beliefs, and your roadmap outlines those beliefs.
•• Each roadmap is governed by a wealth equation and predisposed to a financial destination—Sidewalk to poorness, Slowlane to mediocrity, and the Fastlane to wealth.

Part 3
Poorness:
The Sidewalk Roadmap

When you’re the first person whose beliefs are different
from what everyone else believes, you’re basically saying,
“I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.” That’s a very unpleasant position to be in.
It’s at once exhilarating and at the same time, an invitation to be attacked.
~ Larry Ellison

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••A first-class ticket to the Sidewalk is to have no financial plan.
••The Sidewalk’s natural gravitational pull is poorness, both in time and money.
••You cannot solve poor financial management with more money.
••You can be income rich and still ride the Sidewalk dirty.
•• If wealth is defined by income and debt, wealth is an illusion, because it is vulnerable to potholes, detours, and “bumps in the road.” When the income disappears, so does the illusion of wealth.
•• Poor financial management is like gambling; the house eventually wins.

Has Your Wealth Been Toxified?
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Wealth is authored by strong familial relationships, fitness and health, and freedom—not by material possessions.
•• Unaffordable material possessions are destructive to the wealth trinity.

Misuse Money and Money Will Misuse You
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.
~ Clare Boothe Luce

1) Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up.
2) Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams.
3) Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world.
4) Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships.
5) Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation.

If You Think You Can Afford It —You Can’t. Affordability is when you don’t have to think about it.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Money doesn’t buy happiness because money is used for consumer pursuits destructive to freedom. Anything destructive to freedom is destructive to the wealth trinity.
••Money, properly used, can buy freedom, which can lead to happiness.
•• Happiness stems from good health, freedom, and strong interpersonal relationships, not necessarily money.
•• Lifestyle Servitude steals freedom, and what steals freedom, steals wealth.
•• If you think you can afford it, you can’t.
•• The consequence of instant gratification is the destruction of freedom, health, and choice.

Lucky Bastards
Play The Game
I’m a great believer in luck,
and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Like wealth, luck is created by process, not by event.
•• Luck is created by increased probabilities that are improved with the process of action.
•• If you find yourself playing the odds of “big hits,” you are event-driven, not process-driven. This mindset is conducive to the Sidewalk, not the Fastlane.
••“Get Rich Quick” infomercial marketing is a Fastlane because savvy marketers know that Sidewalkers place faith in events over process.
••Moneymaking “systems” are rarely as profitable as the act of selling them to Sidewalkers.

Wealth Demands Accountability

Responsibility is the price of greatness.
~ Winston Churchill

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Hitchhikers assign control over their financial plans to others, which effectively introduces probabilities to victimhood.
••The Law of Victims: You can’t be a victim if you don’t relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim.
•• Responsibility owns your choices.
•• Taking responsibility is the first step to taking the driver’s seat of your life. Accountability is the final.

Part 4
Mediocrity:
The Slowlane Roadmap

The Lie You’ve Been Sold:
The Slowlane
What if I told you ‘insane’ was working fifty hours a week in some office
for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off;
ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering
the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time?
Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?
~ Steve Buscemi (Con Air, paramount pictures, 2003)

Have You Sold Your Soul for a Weekend?

Life does not begin on Friday night and end Monday morning.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Slowlane is a natural course-correction from the Sidewalk evolving from taking responsibility and accountability.
••Wealth is best experienced when you’re young, vibrant, and able, not in the twilight of your life.
••The Slowlane is a plan that takes decades to succeed, often requiring masterful political prowess in a corporate environment.

•• For the Slowlaner, Saturday and Sunday is the paycheck for Monday through Friday.
••The default return on your time in the Slowlane is negative 60%—5-for-2.
••The 5-for-2 trade inherit in the Slowlane is generally fixed and cannot be manipulated, because job standards are five days a week.
••The predisposed destination of the Slowlane is mediocrity. Life isn’t great, but it isn’t so bad either.

Book Summary: The Power of Habit p6

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Attack one habit and then watch the changes ripple through the organization.

You can’t order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. Start by focusing on one thing. If we disrupt the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company.

Some habits have the power to start a chain reaction. Some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking businesses and lives. These are “keystone habits,” and they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms
everything.

Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.

The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.

Keystone habits explain how Michael Phelps became an Olympic champion and why some college students outperform their peers. They describe why some people, after years of trying, suddenly lose
forty pounds while becoming more productive at work and still getting home in time for dinner with their kids. And keystone habits explain how Alcoa became one of the best performing stocks in the Dow Jones index, while also becoming one of the safest places on earth.

Researchers have found institutional habits in almost every organization or company they’ve scrutinized. “Individuals have habits; groups have routines,” wrote the academic Geoffrey Hodgson. “Routines are the organizational analogue of habits.”

“The best agencies understood the importance of routines. The worst agencies were headed
by people who never thought about it, and then wondered why no one followed their orders.”

When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. “Exercise spills over,” said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”

Studies have documented that families who habitually eat dinner together seem to raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, greater emotional control, and more confidence. Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well- being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget. It’s not that a family meal or a tidy bed causes better grades or less frivolous spending. But somehow those initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take hold.

Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as “small wins.” They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.