Take Charge and Change Your Life Today!

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction....................................................xiiiChapter 1 Good vs. Evil.........................................1Chapter 2 Got Goals? You Better!................................5Chapter 3 Dirty Money!..........................................9Chapter 4 Find Your "Y".........................................13Chapter 5 Look for the Signs....................................19Chapter 6 Luck Has Nothing to Do with It!.......................25Chapter 7 Check Your Attitude!..................................27Chapter 8 Does Your Past Affect Your Goals?.....................29Chapter 9 What Are You Grateful For?............................39Chapter 10 Vices ... What Are Yours?............................43Chapter 11 Moving On ...........................................49Chapter 12 What Have You Been Reading?..........................53Chapter 13 There's No Room for Negative!........................59Chapter 14 Quitting Time........................................63Chapter 15 It's Your Weight!....................................67Chapter 16 Subconscious Harmony.................................71Chapter 17 The Power of Suggestion..............................77Chapter 18 That's Affirmative!..................................81Chapter 19 Pay Yourself First!..................................85Chapter 20 It's a Long Way to Fall..............................91Chapter 21 Have a Little Faith!.................................97Chapter 22 What Did You Do?.....................................103Chapter 23 Average or Normal?...................................107Chapter 24 By-Products..........................................111Chapter 25 Do You Want It Easy?.................................113Chapter 26 You're a Winner!.....................................117Chapter 27 Think it, Believe it, See it!........................119Chapter 28 If You Won't, Who Will?..............................123Chapter 29 If I Had a Million Dollars ..........................125Chapter 30 It's Only the Beginning!.............................127About the Author................................................129

Chapter One

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. —Jim Rohn

People often ask me what my greatest accomplishments in life are thus far. That answer is easy: teaching people to be in charge of their own lives and, more important, every aspect of their lives today, tomorrow and beyond. I have made millions of dollars in sales and investing in real estate, owning number-one real estate companies based on what I have learned about taking charge of my own life. When I look at these things that I have done and then listen to people tell me that I have had a positive effect on their lives—how they have started to turn things around for the better, or have never felt better about themselves—the answer is just that easy. It's about you, and it's about today.

I may be only thirty-one years old, but I have only lived life for the past seven years. For the majority of my life, I got up every morning, did the same routine, went to work, sat with the same thoughts and the same attitude—and guess what I got? The same results!

The late Jim Rohn, one of the greatest personal motivators in modern history (whom I had the opportunity to meet), said it best: "You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight" (The Treasury of Quotes, 1994). Over the years, I have tried to make my life the best I could with all that I knew. I woke every morning in the same life—my life. I knew if I kept going forward, I would achieve the life I was looking for, the life I knew I was destined for. It was seven years ago when I hit my breaking point and started to change my life.

You may be reading this because you are at your breaking point, or you know your breaking point is coming close. Do not be frightened; embrace it! It is going to take you from where you are today (made up of yesterday) and turn you into who you will be tomorrow. Now that's living life! Everyone has a breaking point. What you do with it is completely up to you; you will determine the outcome, based on your thoughts and actions.

All the people I have worked with—folks I have mentored, given sales seminars to and helped to build careers and personal lives—have made me who I am today.

Studies have been done on children who have experienced less than desirable (or even acceptable) circumstances throughout their lives and have turned out to be the bad apple. We hear this all the time: no wonder they turned out like they did, look at their parents or look at the way they were brought up, look at the circumstances in their lives. If you spent time researching my history and background, you would hear more than the term bad apple. Ask different teachers from my past, ask the people who are the closest to my heart if they thought I would turn out to be anything more than what my past pegged me for. The answer would be an obvious no. I know they were probably not far off; if I had kept going the way I was going, I would have ended up exactly that way, pegged for disaster and in a mess. I have seen people go from the top of their game to the bottom—and from the bottom to the top. The best research we can do is to learn how they went from the bottom to the top, and then we can focus on always being the best. The rest doesn't matter.

The purpose of this book is to prove that the theory about the bad apple is dead wrong! We all have a choice in life: to be better or to be just average. We have to choose to be the best and accept nothing but the best for ourselves and our lives—not because our parents did or did not tell us to be the best, not because we read a book or saw a TV show that told us how to make thousands of dollars a year, but because we deserve it as much today as we did yesterday.

My father used to tell me that he made the wrong choice, but that was the only choice. I love reminding him how wrong he was. There is the positive, right choice and the negative, "not so right" choice. It is not that one is bad or good. I don't live my life as bad or good; I live it by 'right' and 'not so right'.

I have made some "not so right" decisions in my life that would have taken me backward rather than forward, just as I am sure you have. I have also been fortunate enough to make the right decisions that took me to exactly where I needed to be. I do not regret the right decisions, so why regret the ones that weren't so right? I have zero regrets in my life; living with regret is like living with jealousy, fear or anger. You cannot have the life you deserve or dream of with any of those as a part of who you are.

Our oldest son reminds my mother of me as a child: he is nonstop action from sun-up to sun-down. If he can get into it, he will be into it the second we leave the room. The medicine cupboard is locked. Anything that isn't for a 3-year-old is higher than he can reach, with no possible way to climb up and help himself. For those of you who have high-spirited boys, you are in the special club and know exactly what I am talking about. When our son was wild or broke something of his mother's, my wife always...