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Actually a mortgage is likely to be more painful than running 400m, perhaps I should have likened it to the 10,000m steeplechase!  You ever watched that race?  The poor athletes have to sprint for 10 km and leap over barriers along the way.  As the race progresses and their legs get tired more and more athletes stumble, trip, or smash themselves on the hurdles.

That thought got me to thinking that there are many hurdles that cause someone to stumble along the path of paying off their mortgage.

The first hurdle is thinking that you will always have a mortgage!  Fancy that, thinking from your goals and envisioning yourself mortgage free?!!

Apart from that obvious self-imposed hurdle, what hurdles do you see for yourself when it comes to paying off your mortgage?

Post your reply and let’s get some action happening here………….

In the book “THE ONE MINUTE MILLIONAIRE’ the authors explain how clarity leads to power, and that power leads to the results that you desire.  www.oneminutemillionaire.com.

They share this secret… don’t think of your goals, think from your goals.

This means thinking and acting as if our goal or destiny were already achieved.  This mindset creates the power in our actions which accelerates and enhances our ability to fulfil what it is we have been designed to achieve.

Do you remember Jack Nicklaus the golfer?  He says in his book:

“I never hit a shot, even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.  It’s like a colour movie.  First I “see” the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white sitting high up on the bright green grass.  Then the scene quickly changes and I “see” the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behaviour on landing.  Then there’s a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.”

Is anyone old enough to remember the 1984 Olympics?

The darling of the 1984 Olympics was a young female gymnast called Mary Lou Retton.  Everyone watched with anticipation as she prepared for her final vault.  The stakes couldn’t be higher.  She had to get a perfect score, 10 out of 10, or lose the medal, the dream, gold, the team pride, everything they had all been working for.  As the TV cameras beamed worldwide she closed her eyes for a few seconds then got into position, ran like she was on fire, and nailed a perfect 10 off the pommel horse to clinch gold for herself and her team.  When she was asked by reporters afterward what she was thinking when she closed her eyes before her run to victory, she told them she saw herself doing every motion precisely, flawlessly, and achieving a perfect score.

You can bring Transformation by living and acting as transformation has already taken place.

Transformation for all of us begins with ourselves.

One of the mistakes I often make is to place too little value on my time.

What do I mean by that?  Well, I give away my time too freely and do not protect it enough.  Let me explain.

I give away my time, I like to help people and don’t like to charge them.  I am often quoted as saying “for the price of a decent cup of coffee, I’ll help anyone”.  But I have to remember that my time is worth more than $4 per hour.  Isn’t it?

Do the maths with me and then you can apply this to your own situation.

If I want to have an annual income of $100,000 and achieve this by working 40 weeks a year, then I need to earn $2,500 per working week.  If I want to work for 50 hours for each of those weeks then my hourly rate becomes $50.00.  But if I only want to work 30 hours for each of those weeks then my hourly rate becomes $83.33.  So each hour of my working week has to be worth over eighty bucks.

I need to remember this so that when I do offer to help someone for the price of a cup of coffee I am mindful that I need to earn $166 during the next hour.  Is that possible?

The key here is to understand how valuable time is for you.

For me, I know that I can earn $1000 per hour when I am in the right zone.  So I need to make sure I FIRST create the opportunites to do this, and then I can plan to have coffee meetings!  If I try and do it the other way around I am likely to fall short of my target.

And protecting your time is the next important aspect.  By this I mean making sure there is time enough for you, the person.  This means finding ways to recharge your batteries and put energy back in your tanks.  It’s this energy that will keep you going when times get tough.

So please, learn from my mistakes.  Value your time and do the important things first.  And secondly, protect your most important asset – yourself.

Today I met a passionate lady who is launching a private sale company that, she believes, is going to take the market by storm.  And because it’s a private sale this will require the clients to sell their own house.  I’m not convinced that it will work.

In my experience many Sellers do not have the skills to successfully sell their own property.  Firstly they are not able to assess the true market value of their home and seem to always advertise it at a premium to fair value.  Secondly, they don’t have the marketing skills to present it professionally.  And thirdly, they cannot negotiate successfully to a conclusion which means they end up losing by either giving it away too cheaply or not finalising the deal.

And on the other side of the equation we have the Buyers.  It is also my opinion that buyers would prefer not to deal with private sellers because of all the reasons listed above.  And, they are also worried that they may not have the skills to negotiate strongly and could therefore be beaten by a stronger player.  For this reason they avoid negotiating directly.

But what do you think?

When it comes to teaching people about the power of money, therer’s a danger that the vision of loads of money can take over, greed can kick and, and suddenly we find ourselves holding on tighter to our money.  The truth about money is that the tighter you hold on to it, the less you end up with.  Doesn’t make sense, does it?

Money is a funny thing, somehow the more you share the more you have.  Is this really true?  I believe so.

When you share money as a priority in your life you learn the age old principle of sowing and reaping.  What you send out as a seed, generally returns as a harvest.  The easiest way to explain this is to use the example of the apple seed.

When you eat an apple you get to the middle and find the core, and the core is full of apple seeds.  If you plant this seed and nuture it, what grows?  Is it an apple?  No, of course not, it’s an apple tree.  And when that apple tree grows, does it just return one apple?  No way!  The apple tree will provide loads of apples, and keep doing that every year.  And if you had taken each of the seeds in that first apple and planted all of them, you would have an orchard of apple trees all providing you with fresh fruit.  This is the miracle of sowing and reaping.

When you apply this principle to your finances you can learn the power of sowing and reaping in financial terms.  The life changing book The One Minute Millionaire (www.oneminutemillionaire.com) talks about what can be achieved by applying this giving attitude with money.  These guys advocate that Abundance can only happen when you demonstrate that you are prepared to share what you have, they say, for when you share from what you have you make room for more.

You’ll find some inspiring articles on giving, and loads of other financial topics, at www.wisemoney.co.nz, written by a guy I know.

What is one thing you could do this week to begin to share?  Who knows, you may end up with an orchard!

It’s not often the done thing to talk about failures, in fact, often we try and hide our failures so that people don’t think we’re idiots.  But consider the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and even Sylvester Stallone and then understand how many times they did not succeed on their path to triumph.  It would be fair to say that the sum of their failures equals their success.

I’m in the process this week of closing down a business.  It’s something I’ve put my heart and soul into for three years, I’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the project, sold the vision to others who have invested their commitment and passion, blood, sweat and tears… and yet the business is closed and I am in tidy up mode.

I’m trying to remind myself that this is a small step in the grand scheme of life, that it’s a hiccup that will pass and I will succeed again in the future.  But the feeling of failure is one that weighs heavy on my shoulders and its taking all my energy and faith to keep it from consuming me.  Thank heavens I have friends around me that encourage me, a wife that loves me unconditionally, and kids that bring the sparkle back into my day.

Life is full of hurdles, there’s no denying it.  Here’s an excerpt from an email I received last week, I think Nicole sums it up quite well.

Sometimes when we set goals we don’t have a plan if a hurdle happens to come along…and often these hurdles/obstacles are predictable, so when setting goals myself I now also ask myself what is likely to be an obstacle to me achieving this goal and what are my contingencies if this happens. That way I have a plan and don’t get blind sided.  I know its not completly motivational to talk about the hurdles or obstacles but in life reality bites and it is better to be planned and ready so you can spot a hurdle before it wacks you in the forehead!

So with this wisdom in front of me, and the experience of closing a business still consuming me, I thought today I would encourage everyone to plan for hurdles, accept failure, keep the faith, and focus in the big picture.

What is the big picture?  Well I believe that the big picture is made up of WHAT we are doing and, more importantly, WHY.  When I focus on these key points it allows me to keep my eyes on the prize, which keeps my head from dropping and my heart from growing heavy.

I have been encouraged each day by the reminders from those around me that I am bigger than my circumstances and that character is formed during the challenges we face.

Failure is a step towards success, if only we choose to think that way.

Sometimes we need the heat turned up to make us better.  Man I hate that concept but it’s one that I’m getting used to, well, because I don’t have a choice!

Have you ever considered the process that Gold goes through to become one of the most desired metals on earth?  Gold melts at 1062 degrees centigrade, or 1943 in Fahrenheit, and it must be heated to this temperature to go through the refinement process required to extract the pure stuff from the not-so-valuable.  That is a whopping hot temperature and I’m not sure it would be very comfortable to be close to it.  But it’s the kind of heat required based on the rules of nature.

As human beings we’re a bit the same.  We’re made up of all sorts of stuff starting from before we’re born right through to the current day.  We have characteristics, traits, personalities and genetics that make us who we are.  But that doesn’t mean to say that we’re the best we could be.  I’ve found that the heat gets turned up, real HOT, when I need to be refined a bit more, when I need to become better.  It’s almost like someone is watching and knows what areas I need to improve for the next stage of my journey, and so they turn up the heat!

Is it comfortable?  Heck no.  Is good for me?  Absolutely.  Do I like it?  Not at the time, but I have learned that refinement requires heat and it’s something I endure and work through as quickly as I can to get to the other side of the process!  I can’t get through any faster that it should take, but on the other hand I can fight the process and make it take longer than it should!  So I work within the “furnace” to let myself be refined by the heat.

Can you remember a time when the heat got turned up?  Can you remember getting out the other side and feeling better?  If you’re in the middle of the heat right now – take courage.  It’s for a purpose.

“Why the f*&^ would you be telling me to give my hard earned money away?!” 

I could tell this guy was pretty upset and it was all I could do to restrain myself from responding to match his inappropriate way of expressing himself.

So here I am running a seminar, the room is filled with people hungry to learn more about money, and this guy is standing at the back providing some unplanned entertainment.  Luckily for me and everyone else in the room things calmed down pretty quickly and we all moved on, but that situation really made me think about how I teach the principle of giving.

It’s true, I teach the importance of giving as a vital part of the process of controlling your money.  In fact, I teach that you must give first, as a priority, to prove that your money does not own you.  I teach that there are four reason to give first:  spiritual, success, business, and generosity.  In all of these principles the concept of multiplication appplies.  When you give, you allow your money to multiply.  Let me explain with a simple analogy I use when I teach the giving principle to kids.

Take an apple and cut it in half.  In the centre of the apple is the core, and here you find the apple seeds.  If you took an apple seed and planted it in the ground, watered it and looked after it, what would you grow?  An apple?  No, you would grow an apple tree.  And what would the apple tree produce for you?  One apple?  No, the apple tree produces a life time of apples.  All this from one tiny seed.

And so the principle of giving is portrayed.  When you give a little bit of money away you plant a seed somewhere.  That seed can be looked after, watered and nutured, and will produce a harvest somewhere in the world.  The old saying “you reap what you sow” is true, for if you don’t plant the apple seed in the ground you don’t get an apple tree.

So I encourage you to introduce the concept of giving into your finances.  Don’t think that giving money away will limit your lifestyle, rather the oppposite.  Because what I have learned is that when I give some money away I make room for more to enter my life.  If I don’t make room, it doesn’t appear!

Try it and see.

For more info from Phil on how to get more from your money, visit his library of articles on www.wisemoney.co.nz

Today some brief musings on kids and money… and yes I do not want you to deny it – your kids need money!  Here’s a thought, if you’re a kid reading this why don’t you put this post in from of your Mum or Dad?!!

Mum and Dad pay attention.  If you ignore your kids education about money they will leave home useless, by that I mean they will be unable to make financial decisions and probably end up in the “pooh” very quickly.  Is that what you want for your kids?

Now, I do not mean that you shoud hand out hard, cold cash to your kids and call it financial education!  This is not teaching them anything.  I do not mean that you should buy them what they need so that you feel good.  Do not use money as a parenting substitute for it will come back to bite you on the bum in the future.  Be proactive, be positive, and most of all construct opportunities to feed them knowledge about money.  Sometimes that means letting them learn from your mistakes.  but hey, wouldn’t you rather they didn’t end up making the same mistakes you did?

Here are a few ideas on what I think you can do:

1.  Involve your kids in discussions about family goals.  If they know you’re working hard to achieve goals this will teach them how they can be proactive in achieving things in the future.  Role model to them the positive decisions you make around opportunity cost.  That means show them that you sometimes make sacrifices in the short term in order to achieve better things in the long term… you do do this don’t you?

2.  Give the kids some areas of responsibility with money.  You make a judgement call on just how much responsibility they can handle, or how much “risk” there is.  But why not put them in charge of the groceries every now and then?  Stop laughing and consider the wide range of skills you could help them to learn by giving them this level of responsibliity.

3.  Encourage them to contribute.  I’ve just helped a lady who is working hard to achieve some goals for her family.  She has accepted my challenge to involve her daughters, and will be asking them to contribute to the amount required.  Set a target for them to raise and help them ot come up with creative (and legal) ways to raise funds.

I hope this gives you some ideas.  If you have any constructive ideas that could help others, post a response.