In other words, you don’t hit goals just because you wrote a number down on the wall to throw darts at, or put up a picture of a Lambo or yacht. You don’t even hit more concrete goals, like making 100 more sales calls each month this year, by simply “naming and claiming” them.
You have to establish habits to reach goals worth setting. It’s like painting yourself into a corner so that you have to reinforce your new habit with more action each new day instead of any of infinite other ways you could be going, as a matter of circumstances you set up that way in advance.
That’s why some people have said that I don’t believe in goal setting. It’s not having the goal in mind that will manifest it into your living reality. It’s cultivating the process that moves you closer to it, and the habits and routines that secure and fuel that process.
Getting what you want in life is not about having the answer, but finding the way, and moving it further along as effectively as you can.
After a tumultuous 2022, the bookend of an even more chaotic 2020 through 2021, this new year is a fresh start for everybody.
I recommend getting organized with some kind of calendar, day planner, an app, a stack of index cards paperclipped together with a pen, anything. Just make it something you can use to track new routines and habits you want to commit to that will move you closer to your goals.
For example, I have what I call my mental operating system.
It’s a handbook I keep that outlines everything about who I am. It lists my three goals for the quarter, professionally and personally.
It’s not that I don’t believe in goal setting. If you set goals and write them down, my hat’s off to you. Most people don’t even get that far along their entire lives!
I also recommend you get this ebook, “The Million Dollar Morning” by Jonathan Maxim, and go down to FedEx with it on a thumbdrive and print it all out. The cardstock makes it nicer than paper so I really feel reverent toward it. I kept it in the folder with my handbook and started carrying it around with me everywhere. When I went on vacation last week, the ebook on cardstock in my mental operating system folder went with me.
So, what is “The Million Dollar Morning?” I’m going to tell you about it in this post, but I highly recommend you get the entire ebook yourself.
Here’s a brief summary of “The Million Dollar Morning.”
The author was insecure about being a small guy for many years. He says he was timid and nervous weighing just 141 pounds, so he started working out.
In nine years, he packed on 29 pounds of muscle and fat. 25 pounds of it was raw muscle. That took him nearly a decade of hard work. He got up to 170 lbs with 7% body fat by keeping a routine that made him feel like a million dollars every morning.
That is all just in the introduction to the booklet. Then, “The Million Dollar Morning Routine” walks through the exact process, systems, methodology, and mindset the author used to achieve his results.
Maintaining yourself in peak physical health and fitness is the backbone of everything else in life. These foundations help support you moving toward your other goals faster. Besides, without bodily health and strength, achieving your other goals feels hardly as rewarding.
“The Million Dollar Morning” is more than a book about getting into good shape. It provides a mental framework to live by, to establish strong habits, and take control of our lives by seizing the day by our routines.
Deliberately planning your morning routine to cultivate the habits that move you closer to your goals is an option. You don’t have to wake up on the defense every day and live a life of habitual reaction if you don’t want to.
You can start putting together a plan and making a definite inroad to building habits you will enjoy continuing and building forward. That is the way to set yourself up for real personal fulfillment and success.
It’s not just the planning. It’s the set up. You have to plan, then set yourself up to keep a habit going and growing in importance to you, so that it moves you closer to your goals.
When I first started in the fitness business running a fitness app, I was spending all my own money on investing in the platform. I was financially broke.
It was before I had had any big wins in business yet. Since I was in limbo, I started questioning why I was working out. Why was I meditating, journaling, and working out?
During those years getting started, I was struggling mentally and doubt crept in, taking the form of: If it doesn’t put money in my pocket why am I doing it? My main problem is I don’t have money right now. Why bother with exercising and journaling?
I ended up just powering through it. I told myself, “No, I’m just going to commit to this. I know the outcome will be positive.” Fast-forward six years, and those habits have cultivated all kinds of financial and personal benefits in my life.
During those early years I would wake up at 5am. I would meditate, do some push-ups or some yoga, and I would write in my journal.
My life was not really looking great on paper at the time. My business was not making money and I didn’t know for sure if it ever would. I was under a ton of pressure from investors and partners I was trying to entice to work with my platform.
Regardless of the stress and low bank balance I felt great every day! I actually felt amazing! My mindset was healthy. I was staying motivated and positive without immediate results to show for all the work I was doing. I could keep crushing each day in the face of immense challenges.
That’s why the morning routine is important. No matter where you’re at in life, if you are struggling financially, or if you’re looking to lose weight, or gain muscle, then you’re going to start setting standards for yourself and expecting improvement to come.
That way, your million dollar morning routine will start to become part of who you are.
A winning morning routine, that you can stick to, will take you from hurrying and being frantic and stressed to start your every day— to being calm, powerful, happy, and ready to rock.
Here’s the strategy to establish a simple morning routine for success that you will actually follow through with.
Start small and build one or two habits at a time into your morning routine. What you don’t want to do is start out with all this enthusiasm for a stack of resolutions.
If you pile on five or six new habits at once and resolve to wake up two hours earlier and go for it all at once, you are likely to set yourself up for failure that way. It’s too much to bite off all at once. You might start out excited at first, but can easily find yourself deflated.
Most anyone can white-knuckle it for some days, or even a couple weeks, but the problem is it’s not sustainable. Instead, make each change small enough that you will actually follow through with it, until it becomes embedded into your routine automatically.
What I want you to do is start small. Don’t try to up-end your whole life. Try adding one thing or subtracting one thing at a time. (I actually liked removing habits from my morning routine to perfect it, more than adding new habits.)
When it comes to diet and nutrition, I recommend adding certain habits. When it comes to lifestyle stuff, I recommend subtracting certain habits.
Let’s say for example, you want to eat more vegetables to have a healthier diet – If you make sure you start your day with healthy food, in a good breakfast, you won’t find cravings for candy bars or other vices as compelling throughout the day.
Let’s say you want to have more energy during the day. It might help to subtract an hour of being a vegetable in front of YouTube or Netflix before bed each night.
That extra hour of sleep could leave you with an outsized boost in your daily life. If you find yourself tired all the time, or frequently too tired to live your best life, it’s at least worth trying.
But whatever you do, make these changes one or two at a time. Notice the results each day, and week by week you can gradually add or subtract more until you are following your own perfect million dollar morning routine.
Much of the inspiration for “The Million Dollar Morning Routine” came from the book, “The Power of Habit.” It’s a New York Times bestseller worth digging into. That’s definitely a book worth grabbing if you want to go deeper into this subject.
The bottom line is, as tempting as it may be to believe there is one somewhere, there is no such thing as an ON / OFF switch for establishing a new habit or making a new routine a consistent part of your day.
You will simply hit that switch right back OFF again as easily as people hit the snooze button without three things:
Whole-hearted dedication means you have no other lagging commitments in your heart that are contradictory to your new habit and no negative self-talk or doubts about really wanting it.
Your definite plan of action is something you can and must adjust to adapt and optimize. That’s a matter of being realistic, paying attention to yourself and your progress, approaching it all with the attitude of a problem solver, and continually refining your routines to move you toward your goals more.
A small act of commitment is something like getting a book or day planner, writing down goals and then tracking progress next to them in writing in a text document, or taking the first step in something you want to do the night before to get it prepared for an easy start the next day.
Otherwise, you will forget, meander, and then notice your resolve failed, which can easily knock the wind out of your sails with self-doubt and compromises to preserve your self concept against cognitive dissonance. This will kill a new habit before it’s even had a chance to take root!
The biggest step in every amazing morning routine actually happens the night before. You can ask any successful person whether they consciously plan that way or have just always been conscientious and organized to plan each day the night before. They will tell you it’s true!
A big part of that is the nighttime routine to support your mornings. Equally important is setting and keeping a bedtime based on waking up energized. How much energy you have when you wake up is greatly dependent on when you go to bed. People who don’t have that whole-hearted dedication to living their best lives will make excuses like, “Oh, I can’t fall asleep before midnight,” or “My body just won’t wake up that early!,” and so on.
A simple way to take control of your mornings, if you feel like they are already out of hand, is to just give yourself an additional hour each morning.
Wake up one hour sooner than you’ve been waking up. Say you usually wake up at 7AM and then get ready for your day in a stressful rush. Target 6AM for your new wake up time. That way it gives yourself an hour to perform the new morning routines that will improve your life.
If you are used to going to bed at midnight, don’t bother the first night trying to go to sleep an hour earlier. That could just lead to tossing and turning for an hour and frustration that disturbs your sleep the rest of the night.
It’s actually easier to just wake up an hour sooner consistently. Your body is apt to learn your new schedule and then you will naturally start winding down an hour earlier in the evenings.
You are at your strongest in the morning after waking up. Your cortisol and adrenaline levels are higher than the rest of the day. Your blood pressure and pulse are higher. You’re more well rested, so your mind is fresh to get work done that actually moves the needle.
Using your morning for personal and business development is an age-old “secret” to success. We all know that’s what it takes. Sometimes it takes studying exactly how from someone who’s done it, so that you can make this change in your life this year.
Hopefully this article got you re-energized about forming your new habits and reinventing your lifestyle in 2023 with a million dollar morning routine.
It’s also my hope that you take some specific advice from this article about how to go about establishing new habits and a winning morning routine. By putting some of these detailed suggestions into practice, you might find that it catalyzes a reaction in your life that gives you momentum toward your goals.
The post The Million Dollar Morning Overview first appeared on Jonathan Maxim | Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker.]]>The goal after reading this is for you to manifest some real results by leveraging the law of attraction for manifesting something you genuinely want. Let’s go ahead and get started.
You may recall from the last article, we covered:
If you haven’t read the preceding article, I encourage you to go back and read it first. This is all a heart, soul, and mindset game. You’ll need those fundamentals laid up in the right order to get calibrated. Otherwise, none of this is going to work.
Even if you’ve already read the last parts of this manifestation series, re-reading them more than once does not hurt and will amplify your newfound abilities.
This is because these words, in this order, work just like a program that runs through your mind and reorients your mindset. The more you embed these teachings, the more indelible your new mindset will become. You can actually engineer your own mind this way to wake up the next day and think differently, act differently, and get a different level of results— the exact results you want to manifest.
To manifest anything you have to set your frequency and your vibration to a receptive setting. Most people are usually tense and not in the right vibration to tune into what it is that they want to receive.
When that is in order, then you can get to actually manifesting. The best way to get started is to know what your vision is. You have to understand what it is that you want.
Here’s how: Make a vision board or mood board. You can use a Pinterest board, or whatever your favorite platform is, however you translate what’s in your mind and what’s in your heart onto an external record of it. To be honest, that’s an act of manifestation itself. It proves to you that you can take an idea from your mind and convert it into a material form in the external world.
Find pictures online of everything you want to attract into your life and manifest as your reality. Then, start putting them together on your visualization or mood board.
When I made a mood board, I put a house, a guy surfing on a beach, & a pretty lady. Interestingly enough, shortly after making my mood board, I met a pretty lady and we have since become engaged.
In fact, I have realized, manifested, and actualized almost everything on that mood board I made not very long ago. It feels like only yesterday.
Next, I’m going to teach you how to add feeling and emotion to your vision after you’ve manifested it as far as a mood board. Emotion is energy in motion, and it’s driven by your feeling of desire, and your desires are driven by your reasons.
What you can do now is supplement the mood board with a manifesting journal. You can either keep a separate journal on a Word doc, or notes on your phone, or you can write comments directly on your mood board (If you used a platform that lets you comment on your photo uploads).
You can also get a physical journal of some kind and write in it old school with a pen or pencil in hand with your mood board open, looking at your vision of what you desire. There’s something very powerfully activating for most people about putting a pen or pencil in hand and scratching the words onto paper with it. There’s even science behind that, as well.
Once you’ve chosen the style of manifesting journal you’ll be using, write whatever comes to mind as you look at your mood board. Write how you feel about what you desire and why you want it. Write how you feel about not having it.
Some people cry when they do this part. Legendary investor Charlie Munger, the lifelong partner of Warren Buffet (Who was the richest man in the world for years), made up his mind he would never be without great wealth when his son died. He chose this because he did not have the money for a doctor.
Here’s a pro tip: Do not let negative vibrations contaminate the manifesting journal. They are low vibration and literally repel what you want, instead of attuning your being to being receptive to it. Don’t write with a feeling of desperation, frustration, resentment, or greed. Let your positive and true-felt emotions flow out through your journal.
Ironically, a sense of detachment is necessary here. You want what you desire, but you must not be despondent that you don’t have it, at this moment. That’s because you have to believe you will have it. If you are despondent, you don’t believe you will manifest what you desire.
The law of attraction works if you believe in it, and if you believe in what you want, because you know it’s genuine and truly about you, and for you, and not for or because of anyone else.
“Modern men cannot find God because they will not look low enough.” -C. G. Jung
Now, here’s another essential part of manifesting science, and how the law of attraction actually works in practice. Unless you’re on that level already with previous smaller manifestations, you cannot just imagine a Lambo with a supermodel holding a bottle of champagne and box of cigars is outside your house right now, about to knock on your door and manifest it this moment.
So, what you have to do is start with manifesting something small.
Start with something that you do not currently have that puts you more in line emotionally with your mood board visualizations and that gets you closer to that reality. It’s important to note that you should choose something with a viable pathway to attainment. You don’t have to know what that pathway is or over analyze it, just choose something that feels close enough that you could draw it to you with the law of attraction.
Here’s an example of how to do this. This is a simple model of a manifestation in practice. Say you want to set out an intention to receive a text message from somebody who you do not usually hear from very often, but not someone you don’t know at all, and have never heard from.
A law of attraction technique, a way to visualize this and feel into it, is to take out your phone and hold it in your hand. Close your eyes, sit back, take a deep breath, slow down the flow of your thoughts and feelings, and be still.
Once you’re still and quiet, with your phone still in hand, then, in your mind’s eye, with your eyes closed – Visualize that text message coming in from that person. Imagine the phone vibrating or ringing, and imagine seeing that notification when you check your phone.
Now’s your chance to become childlike again in your faith by using your imagination to play pretend. This is 100% play and fun for you. Consider it a way to delight yourself, pretending something positively uplifting and fun is happening. Try and act as if it’s really happening like you were acting it out convincingly for a movie scene, or as a joke to make yourself or your friends laugh.
Go through the whole process. Visualize opening that message, imagine what you would say in your response, how you would feel, how it would make you sit up in your chair and smile or whatever. Feel into how the message might make you laugh, something like that.
Now, we’re going to go about our business, refreshed from our meditative exercise, and let the universe do the work for us. It works through some inscrutable force that makes the law of attraction truly operative, repeatable, and usable by anyone who understands it and follows its rules.
What you don’t want to do now is try hard (or even at all) to make it happen. The fundamental premise and feeling of that approach is that it’s not happening— that you haven’t manifested the text. If you operate with that as your premise, that’s what you will attract instead, more of not getting that text from that person. More of the void.
This is the pitfall of the law of attraction and how people can spend a lifetime attracting what they do not desire by operating with the premise that it’s not happening. The stronger you feel about anything, the more powerfully you will attune toward attracting that reality, whether that’s positively tilted, or negatively.
This is the tricky part about manifesting, and about life in general, as a conscious animal in this world. If you feel you’ve had difficulty manifesting what you want in life, that could be the bug in your system that’s causing it. It’s very tough to unlearn this mechanism if you’re fully invested in it with strong emotional resolve and repetition.
If that’s you, please reread this series until it’s written into your subconscious scripts, and just see how it will begin to materially and substantially change your life.
The post How To Manifest Anything You Want Pt III first appeared on Jonathan Maxim | Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker.]]>That sounds crazy, but this really works. It’s based on understanding the law of attraction.
This is a law. It’s a rule. It is set in stone. There are no compromises with anything that is a law. That’s the scientific definition of a law. There’s no arguing with it.
Everything you do has a cause and effect. Everything that you do has an implication. A key part of understanding this law is: There are no accidents.
So when you abide by the law of attraction, and when you understand the law, it starts working in your favor, just like understanding any other law. If you understand there’s a speed limit, you won’t get speeding tickets.
Secondly, there is understanding that you were born to desire. You were born to have desires and to fulfill those desires, and you were born with intentions. Your purpose in life is to fulfill those intentions. You don’t ever have to feel bad about having desire or wanting things.
You don’t have to feel bad about wanting money and prosperity or family or whatever it is. You are born with those innate desires. And that’s what makes you unique. That’s what gives you a creative perspective on things because you have a certain set of preferences that are aligned with the destiny you were born to manifest through the law of attraction.
Those preferences speak to you by turning into your desires, and as desire, literal patterns of energy that you can feel, send vibrations into the universe, and that the universe sends energy back to you that reflects your desires through manifestation.
Thirdly, trusting your emotions is necessary to manifest what you want. You have to understand that your emotions are your guidance system. They help you to know where you are and where you’re going. They’re like the navigation system for the human machine.
They’re naturally configured in a way that puts us on the right path automatically when we are in tune with them. Gut instinct. Intuition. How we feel about things. This is what determines the correct direction that we should be taking. That’s the direction that is most in alignment with our body, our mind, and our soul.
That’s where the gut instinct comes from. It’s the physical, the spiritual, and the mental components working together with us at the center of it all. And when those are all aligned, that’s when things start happening, when we know the favor of the universe.
When you are manifesting, the heightened states are the most powerful time to be manifesting. So, when you are excited, when you’re feeling very positive, if you send out those rockets of desire (As the book calls them) that’s when manifestation is strongest. These are the moments where you are in a high state of receiving, and when you’re feeling the most optimistic and positive.
There’s a timely component to it, as well.
The mindset is everything because the mind is what calibrates our heart’s desires with the rest of the laws of nature. We use our mind like a tuning fork, to calibrate our body and soul. And the mind is so powerful, so vast, and complex, that our mind calibrates itself, too.
So, the mind and its mindset is the crux of all this manifestational ability. To manifest what you desire, you have to have the right mindset. If you don’t, things will not feel good, or they won’t feel right. When things are not feeling good, that is a sign of resistance, and that means that you are resisting what is supposed to be coming your way.
For example, let’s just say that you are frustrated because you don’t have enough money coming in to pay the bills. You try being angry and then you get your belt loop caught on a door handle, stub your toe, and then you get into your car and have a fender bender.
Those are all results of resisting, instead of just allowing and saying, “I trust that the universe will bring abundance my way, money into my account and I don’t need to panic or freak out or anything”.
That’s just a mindset habit, you can train your brain and body to feel. Unfortunately, there are many people who live in unsavory, negative feedback loops, perpetually. Or, arguably even worse than that, maybe they live in a numb state of “unfeeling”, where they don’t actually notice their emotions anymore, or hardly feel them at all.
Let me remind you that your vision will ultimately manifest, whether you like it or not. It’s a law of nature. So you need to be clear on your vision. Now, getting clear on your vision is kind of the hard part, right?
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakes.” -C. G. Jung
A lot of people don’t know what they want and people come to me all the time who are like that. They say, “Hey, I’m stuck in a rut. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do next. I’m not sure what I want.”
So, that is where you have to peel the layers back, unravel the onion, and be introspective. Go take a real look inside yourself.
Some of the best ways to be introspective are journaling, meditation, and talking with friends that you trust. Lean into the people you know who are non-judgmental. Sooner or later, you will have somebody who’s going to ask the right questions. And then you give them the answer, your answer.
Maybe they challenge it and ask why again, and again, and again. And again, until you finally get to the heart of what’s actually happening. Not until then will you begin to fight for yourself and find your heart.
(Pro Tip: If you don’t have anyone like that, and you’re too shy, or can’t talk to someone else for whatever reason – watch a movie or listen to a music album critically— Do this with your own questions and life situation in mind, and try to guess who all the characters are or what the lyrics are about.)
The post How To Manifest Anything You Want Pt II first appeared on Jonathan Maxim | Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker.]]>Manifesting has helped people like Tony Robbins persevere through a turbulent upbringing to become highly influential and successful. So whether you’re just starting out, already successful, or down on your luck and deep in debt, we are eager to teach you how to strategically manifest anything you want.
Three years ago, I wanted to get a Mercedes G Class since I’d spent plenty of time customizing cars with my dad, and I had developed a deep love for them. Now, remember, this car was really expensive, and taking Jay Z’s advice, I realized I couldn’t afford it since I couldn’t buy it twice.
I didn’t want to lease it, either, so I asked my neighbor for his opinion on getting a G Wagon (He already had the exact model I wanted). He eventually let me test drive it, and this experience got me in touch with my inner self, as I realized that the car was bringing me the joy I expected.
After returning it, I went online and found one with the exact specifications I wanted; Matte, dark gun-metal gray, with the bigger upgraded tires. It was also in my price range, which saved me from the stress of dealing with a car salesperson. Although I still didn’t have all the money, I unexpectedly closed a great deal at work shortly after. This led me to take my girlfriend to San Francisco so we could get the car.
We’d only been together a few months, but we made the most of this trip after getting the car. We drove the immaculate California coast, Carmel, and ended up in Big Sur. In the most remote chances, we found an excellent and affordable room late at night (The area is a very popular tourist destination). What was about to be an uncertain night, spent in the car with no gas, quickly turned into a serendipitous series of events.
We woke up comfortably in an exquisite room, at a picturesque boutique hotel, with a breathtaking view of the ocean. We even went to a black sand beach, hiked, and tasted local wines. We quite literally fell in love.
One of the fundamental materials that guided me at the start of my manifesting journey is a book by Esther and Jerry Hicks about learning to manifest your desires. I’ve read it multiple times and digested its core message with my partner, and we both believe that you get what you think about, whether you want it or not.
This book will encourage you to get in touch with your feminine side and be more aware of your feelings. You’ll learn to pay attention to what feels good, natural and in tune, and you can start practicing this approach before you even finish the book.
Another book I’d like to share with you is “The Secret,” which I heard about through Rob Dyrdek. You can put on its audiobook before you sleep, so you reprogram your mind to think from a state of abundance and positivity. This will help you wake up in the mood to win.
With Esther and Jerry, an enlightening encounter with a healer in Arizona during the eighties propelled them into a spiritual experience, which enabled them to channel the voice of Abraham. I specifically recall a quote from them about how thinking more about something makes you vibrate like it, which makes you attract it more.
For instance, I thought more and more about having the car and eventually got it. If I’d spent more time thinking about how I don’t have the car, I would keep not having the car. So, on that note, let me walk you threw the steps to take before you start manifesting:
The law of attraction emphasizes that whatever you put your attention to through thought or desire eventually becomes your reality. You have to think of it as a recipe. Every intention, desire, thought, feeling, or emotion is an ingredient.
If you don’t possess and use the ingredients, your meal won’t turn out as you wanted. Want a sweet cake? Then use sugar instead of salt when you’re baking. “The Secret”actually reiterates this, though from a different viewpoint.
We all have desires and preferences, but there’s that one thing that you’re meant to do. It’s what you need to figure out because it spurs your creativity and makes your life more dynamic. So if your preferences differ from those of someone else, it’s not necessarily bad.
It probably means that you are on different paths and don’t need to collaborate with them. Instead, your purpose gives you direction and helps you avoid wasting time and effort on what won’t ultimately get you closer to your destination.
This modern world with all sorts of cold and empty targets can have you focusing on the wrong things. You obsess about technical performance indicators, finances and other notions that don’t really say much about whether you’re a good or bad person.
This is why it is vital to give this alpha masculine side a break and listen to the subtler voice carried by your emotions. If something doesn’t feel right, even if it gets you the result, it might destroy you.
Luckily, the literature mentioned above can teach you how to move up the emotional spectrum and gradually let go of negativity and insecurity. Consequently, you’ll no longer be ruled by vanity, and you can stop trying to impress people who don’t care.
Lastly, you should always note the moments when you’re extremely happy and thankful. These are the times when your mind is most likely to point you towards what you can do to feel delighted more often.
So when you are soaked in massive positivity, visualize what you want in your future, do some journaling, and draw on your whiteboard or whatever medium you use when brainstorming.
We’ve covered a lot in this piece, and there’s definitely more to come, like the mindstate, seven habits and the actual manifestation process, so make sure you read on.
The post How to manifest anything you want Pt I first appeared on Jonathan Maxim | Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker.]]>