Two Ways To Get Wealthy

Here are two different ways that you can get rich. At first glance they look very similar, but understanding the difference between them can make an enormous difference in both the quality of life that you enjoy and the amount of wealth you accumulate.

There are many different ways to get rich. The reason that I am focusing on these two particular methods is that they can be successfully applied whether you are an employee, self employed or a business owner.

The first method is to spend less than you earn and then put the excess to work making money for you. The second method is to earn more than you spend and then put the excess to work making money for you. Do you see and understand the difference between these two methods?

Each of these methods has two parts and in both methods the second part is the same. However the first part is vastly different.

The first part of method 1 is to spend less than you earn. What you are doing in this method is to become skilled at budgeting. (For some great tips on budgeting without losing quality of life see my article "How to Invest 25% Of Your Income Without Losing Your Quality of Life")

Budgeting is a sensible thing to do but it has its limitations. The maximum amount of money that you can free up for investing is 100% of your current income and to do that you would have to find some way to live for free, a difficult challenge indeed.

If you are putting your main focus on budgeting then you will find that as your budget gets tougher and tougher your mental focus turns to what you can do without. In other words your focus is on lack or shortage whereas in order to get rich you need to develop abundance thinking. Too much emphasis on budgeting can create a mindset that makes wealth acquisition difficult.

The second way to get rich is very different. Earn more than you spend and then put the excess to work making money for you. With this method your focus is on increasing your earnings.

Creating a pool of potential investment money by increasing your income doesn't have the limitation we discussed above in regards to creating potential investment money by budgeting. There are people who earn double what you earn. There are people who earn ten times what you earn. There are even people who earn one hundred times what you earn. The potential for earning is open ended.

It is important here to note that in the method of earning more than you spend the "you spend" part should ideally remain constant. In other words don't fall into the trap of increasing your spending as fast as you are increasing your earning. If you think it is good psychology to reward yourself immediately for your increased earning then put 10% to 20% of your net increase toward your immediate lifestyle and the other 80% to 90% toward your investing.

I said earlier that the budgeting approach could lead to developing a poverty or lack mind set. The increased earning approach does not have this downfall. When your focus is on increasing your earnings you are developing an abundance mind set which is exactly the mind set that you want if becoming rich is your goal.

You may be wondering how you are going to achieve this increase in income. You can increase your income by combining two strategies.

The first of these two strategies is to make yourself more valuable.

If you are an employee then you need to make yourself more valuable to your employer by ensuring that what you do in your job and the way that you do it improves your employer's chance for gain.

In a small business your employer is probably the owner and the gain that they are interested in is bottom line profit. In a large corporation your employer is probably a manager who is also an employee. The gain they are interested in is probably a promotion up the corporate ladder.

If you are self employed or in business then you need to make yourself, your products and your services more valuable to your marketplace. By more valuable I don't mean that you discount your price. On the contrary, I am talking about improving your products, services, and customer service to the extent that you can increase your price faster than you increase your costs so that your percentage profit is increasing as well as your net dollar profit.

The second of the two strategies for increasing your income is to develop effective skills and effective habits for marketing your increased value.

For an employee it is important to accept the truth that you can be the best employee in the world but if no-one notices then you are unlikely to get a pay rise. See yourself as a product that needs to be well marketed and start studying how to achieve this goal in the most effective manner.

If you are self employed or in business then you need to market your products or service in such a way that the marketplace becomes aware of this extra value that you have developed and the benefit that your extra value will give them. Your marketing needs to make these extra benefits so enticing that people will be happy to pay in order to receive them.

Whether you are an employee or in business the combination of increasing your value and improving your marketing will lead to increased income.

In Conclusion

We looked at two different methods to get rich.

The first focused on reduced spending and investing the overage whereas the second focused on increased income, while maintaining your level of spending, and then investing the overage. We concluded that the second method has greater potential both from a financial and psychological perspective.

By: James Delrojo

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook "Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind" (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to www.YourSuccessMind.com

The Benefits of Sports Psychology for Athletes

Mental Game Coaching is that the segment of sports psychology that concentrates specifically on helping athletes break through the mental barriers that are keeping them from performing up to their peak potential. By focusing on the mental skills needed to be successful in any sporting competition, mental game coaching seeks to achieve the overall goal of performance improvement.

Sports Psychology is about improving your attitude and mental game skills to help you perform your best by identifying limiting beliefs and embracing a healthier philosophy about your sport. Below is a list of the top ten ways that you can benefit from sports psychology:

1. Improve focus and deal with distractions. Many athletes have the ability to concentrate, but often their focus is displaced on the wrong areas such as when a batter thinks “I need to get a hit” while in the batter’s box, which is a result-oriented focus. Much of my instruction on focus deals with helping athlete to stay focused on the present moment and let go of results.

2. Grow confidence in athletes who have doubts. Doubt is the opposite of confidence. If you maintain many doubts prior to or during your performance, this indicates low self-confidence or at least you are sabotaging what confidence you had at the start of the competition. Confidence is what I call a core mental game skill because of its importance and relationship to other mental skills.

3. Develop coping skills to deal with setbacks and errors. Emotional control is a prerequisite to getting into the zone. Athletes with very high and strict expectations, have trouble dealing with minor errors that are a natural part of sports. It’s important to address these expectations and also help athletes stay composed under pressure and when they commit errors or become frustrated.

4. Find the right zone of intensity for your sport. I use intensity in a broad sense to identify the level of arousal or mental activation that is necessary for each person to perform his or her best. This will vary from person to person and from sport to sport. Feeling “up” and positively charged is critical, but not getting overly excited is also important. You have to tread a fine line between being excited to complete, but not getting over-excited.

5. Help teams develop communication skills and cohesion. A major part of sports psychology and mental training is helping teams improve cohesion and communication. The more a team works as a unit, the better the results for all involved.

6. To instill a healthy belief system and identify irrational thoughts. One of the areas I pride myself on is helping athlete identify ineffective beliefs and attitudes such as comfort zones and negative self-labels that hold them back from performing well. These core unhealthy beliefs must be identified and replaced with a new way of thinking. Unhealthy or irrational beliefs will keep you stuck no matter how much you practice or hard you try.

7. Improve or balance motivation for optimal performance. It’s important to look at your level of motivation and just why you are motivated to play your sport. Some motivators are better in the long-term than others. Athletes who are extrinsically motivated often play for the wrong reasons, such as the athlete who only participates in sports because of a parent. I work with athlete to help them adopt a healthy level of motivation and be motivated for the right reasons.

8. Develop confidence post-injury. Some athletes find themselves fully prepared physically to get back into competition and practice, but mentally some scars remain. Injury can hurt confidence, generate doubt during competition, and cause a lack of focus. I help athletes mentally heal from injuries and deal with the fear of re-injury.

9. To develop game-specific strategies and game plans. All great coaches employ game plans, race strategies, and course management skills to help athletes mentally prepare for competition. This is an area beyond developing basic mental skills in which a mental coach helps athletes and teams. This is very important in sports such as golf, racing, and many team sports.

10. To identify and enter the “zone” more often. This incorporates everything I do in the mental side of sports. The overall aim is to help athletes enter the zone by developing foundational mental skills that can help athletes enter the zone more frequently. It’s impossible to play in the zone everyday, but you can set the conditions for it to happen more often.

I will add that sport psychology may not be appropriate for every athlete. Not every person who plays a sport wants to “improve performance.” Sport psychology is probably not for recreation athletes who participate for the social component of a sport or do not spend time working on technique or fitness to improve performance. Young athletes whose parents want them to see a sports psychologist are not good candidate either. It’s very important that the athlete desires to improve his or her mental game without having the motive to satisfy a parent. Similarly, an athlete who sees a mental game expert only to satisfy a coach is not going to fully benefit from mental training.

Sports Psychology does apply to a wide variety of serious athletes. Most of my students (junior, high school, college, and professional athletes) are highly committed to excellence and seeing how far they can go in sports. They love competition and testing themselves against the best in their sport. They understand the importance of a positive attitude and mental toughness. These athletes want every possible advantage they can get including the mental edge over the competition.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/recreation_and_sports/article_407.shtml

Sports Psychology and Performance Enhancement

Mental Game Coaching is that the segment of sports psychology that concentrates specifically on helping athletes break through the mental barriers that are keeping them from performing up to their peak potential. By focusing on the mental skills needed to be successful in any sporting competition, mental game coaching seeks to achieve the overall goal of performance improvement.

Sports Psychology is about improving your attitude and mental game skills to help you perform your best by identifying limiting beliefs and embracing a healthier philosophy about your sport. Below is a list of the top ten ways that you can benefit from sports psychology:

1. Improve focus and deal with distractions. Many athletes have the ability to concentrate, but often their focus is displaced on the wrong areas such as when a batter thinks “I need to get a hit” while in the batter’s box, which is a result-oriented focus. Much of my instruction on focus deals with helping athlete to stay focused on the present moment and let go of results.
2. Grow confidence in athletes who have doubts. Doubt is the opposite of confidence. If you maintain many doubts prior to or during your performance, this indicates low self-confidence or at least you are sabotaging what confidence you had at the start of the competition. Confidence is what I call a core mental game skill because of its importance and relationship to other mental skills.
3. Develop coping skills to deal with setbacks and errors. Emotional control is a prerequisite to getting into the zone. Athletes with very high and strict expectations, have trouble dealing with minor errors that are a natural part of sports. It’s important to address these expectations and also help athletes stay composed under pressure and when they commit errors or become frustrated.
4. Find the right zone of intensity for your sport. I use intensity in a broad sense to identify the level of arousal or mental activation that is necessary for each person to perform his or her best. This will vary from person to person and from sport to sport. Feeling “up” and positively charged is critical, but not getting overly excited is also important. You have to tread a fine line between being excited to complete, but not getting over-excited.
5. Help teams develop communication skills and cohesion. A major part of sports psychology and mental training is helping teams improve cohesion and communication. The more a team works as a unit, the better the results for all involved.
6. To instill a healthy belief system and identify irrational thoughts. One of the areas I pride myself on is helping athlete identify ineffective beliefs and attitudes such as comfort zones and negative self-labels that hold them back from performing well. These core unhealthy beliefs must be identified and replaced with a new way of thinking. Unhealthy or irrational beliefs will keep you stuck no matter how much you practice or hard you try.
7. Improve or balance motivation for optimal performance. It’s important to look at your level of motivation and just why you are motivated to play your sport. Some motivators are better in the long-term than others. Athletes who are extrinsically motivated often play for the wrong reasons, such as the athlete who only participates in sports because of a parent. I work with athlete to help them adopt a healthy level of motivation and be motivated for the right reasons.
8. Develop confidence post-injury. Some athletes find themselves fully prepared physically to get back into competition and practice, but mentally some scars remain. Injury can hurt confidence, generate doubt during competition, and cause a lack of focus. I help athletes mentally heal from injuries and deal with the fear of re-injury.
9. To develop game-specific strategies and game plans. All great coaches employ game plans, race strategies, and course management skills to help athletes mentally prepare for competition. This is an area beyond developing basic mental skills in which a mental coach helps athletes and teams. This is very important in sports such as golf, racing, and many team sports.
10. To identify and enter the “zone” more often. This incorporates everything I do in the mental side of sports. The overall aim is to help athletes enter the zone by developing foundational mental skills that can help athletes enter the zone more frequently. It’s impossible to play in the zone everyday, but you can set the conditions for it to happen more often.

I will add that sport psychology may not be appropriate for every athlete. Not every person who plays a sport wants to “improve performance.” Sport psychology is probably not for recreation athletes who participate for the social component of a sport or do not spend time working on technique or fitness to improve performance. Young athletes whose parents want them to see a sports psychologist are not good candidate either. It’s very important that the athlete desires to improve his or her mental game without having the motive to satisfy a parent. Similarly, an athlete who sees a mental game expert only to satisfy a coach is not going to fully benefit from mental training.

Sports Psychology does apply to a wide variety of serious athletes. Most of my students (junior, high school, college, and professional athletes) are highly committed to excellence and seeing how far they can go in sports. They love competition and testing themselves against the best in their sport. They understand the importance of a positive attitude and mental toughness. These athletes want every possible advantage they can get including the mental edge over the competition.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/recreation_and_sports/article_440.shtml

The Psychology of Urgency: Make Them Want It Now

“I’ll think it over and get back to you.” “Sure, we’ll do that someday.” “I need to check with my colleagues.” “Give me a call next month, then we can set a date.”

Tired of excuses? Looking for a more successful way to get others to take immediate action?

For the last century, psychologists have been studying simple persuasion tactics that will allow you to motivate people and get the results you desire. This article focuses on using the psychology of persuasion to create a sense of urgency in your customers.

The Psychology of Limited Resources

The first strategy for getting people to take immediate action is to present yourself or your product as “limited,” “scarce,” or “in demand.”

Why? People want what they can’t have. Repeatedly, psychologists have shown that human beings find more value in things that they have a hard time obtaining.

If you tell people that they can’t have something, they end up wanting it more! You may have experienced this in your own life. Have you ever found yourself interested in a home or a car and then discovered that someone else may try to buy it first? If you’re anything like me, the item becomes even more valuable to you. You are more motivated to get it.

Do You Want It? You Can’t Have It!

This is an important point for sales and marketing purposes. Car salespeople are quick to let us know that, “This is the last model of its kind available on the entire lot—after it goes, that’s it.” Newspaper and television ads constantly remind us that the “sale ends soon,” that “supplies are limited” and that “time is running out.”

Some retail stores create motivation by putting “sold” tags on merchandise that they have a hard time selling. When customers see the “sold” tag, they become more interested in buying the item.

Infomercials place a ticking clock at the end of the advertisements. They say, “Order before the clock runs out and you will also receive a free set of knives.”

Getting Immediate Results

When I first started speaking and consulting, it was hard for me to get business. I made the error of telling potential customers that I would be available whenever they were ready to hire me. Big mistake.

It wasn’t until I became so busy that I had to start turning customers away that I was able to charge what I am worth. When they felt as if they couldn’t have me, they wanted me more. When I was inaccessible, they became anxious and assigned more value to my service. This sense of urgency has had a huge impact on my business.

Here are three steps that you can use to create a sense of urgency in others:

1. Set a deadline. People are natural procrastinators. Without a deadline—and the potential risk of losing something—people will wait until they collect more information, talk it over with their spouses, or save more money. By setting a deadline, you create an inner drive helps them take action.

2. Remind them that your offer is “limited.” Always present your opportunity as being limited with regards to time or quantity. If someone asks you whether you have a certain product in stock, don’t say, “Oh, yeah, we have tons of them.” The better approach is to say, “Yeah, we have some, but they go fast.”

3. Play hard to get. Remember, people want what they can’t have. By sounding too available, you’re diminishing your value. By sounding somewhat unavailable, you’re greatly increasing your value. Never say, “Oh, yes, I’m available any day next week.” Instead, use the more powerful and persuasive approach by saying, “Hmmm, I’m very busy next week, but I might be able to squeeze you in.”

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_996.shtml

Sports Psychology Guidelines for Sports Parents

Sports parents have a big impact on their young superstars. A healthy and successful sports experience will depend on sports parents' ability to instill confidence and self-esteem in athletes. Read sports psychology expert, Dr. Patrick Cohn's view on how to make sports a successful and fun experience.

Youth sports are huge in today’s society. Coaches and parents have a tremendous impact on how children will engage in sports. I get several emails a month from concerned sports parents asking me how they should help their child superstar win at and enjoy sports. When working with young athletes, I often work with the parents themselves so parents can reinforce the concepts I teach to athletes in our mental game coaching sessions. Below are eight simple guidelines for sports parents to adopt with youth athletes.

8 Simple Guidelines for Sports Parents:

1. Sports should be fun for kids. Treat sport as a game—It’s not a business for kids. With all the money in professional sports today, it is hard for parents to understand that it’s just good fun to young athletes. The primary goal should be to have fun and enjoy the healthy competition.

2. Your own agenda is not your child’s. Young athletes compete in sports for many reasons. They enjoy the competition, like the social aspect, engage with being part of a team, and enjoy the challenge of setting goals. You might have a different agenda than your child and you need to recognize that racing is your child’s sport, not yours.

3. Emphasize a mental focus on the process of execution instead of results or trophies. We live in a society that focuses on results and winning, but winning come from working the process and enjoying the ride. Teach your child to focus on the process of the challenge of playing one shot, stroke, or race at a time instead of the number of wins or trophies.

4. You are a role model for your child athlete. As such, you should model composure and poise on the sidelines. When you are at competition, your child mimics your behavior as well as other role models. You become a role model in how you react to a close race or the questionable behavior of a competitor. Stay calm, composed, and in control during games so your child superstar can mimic those positive behaviors.

5. Refrain from game-time coaching. During competition, it’s time to just let them play. All the practice should be set aside because this is the time that athletes need trust in the training and react on the court or field. “Just do it” as the saying goes. Too much coaching (or over-coaching) can lead to mistakes and cautious performance (called paralysis by over analysis in my work). Save the coaching for practice and use encouragement at game time instead.

6. Help you athlete to detach self-esteem from achievement. Too many athletes I work with attach self-worth to the level of performance or outcomes. Help your child understand that they are a person FIRST who happens to be an athlete instead of an athlete who happens to be a person. Success or number of wins should not determine a person’s self-esteem.

7. Ask your child athlete the right questions. Asking the right questions after competition and games will tell your child what you think is important in sports. If you ask, “Did you win?” your child will think winning is important. If you ask, “Did you have fun?” he or she will assume having fun is important.

8. Pledge the: P.A.Y.S. Parent’s Code of Ethics. PAYS (Parents Association for Youth Sports) provides a parental handbook and code of ethics that adults must sign before each competitive season. This is a great tool to guide parents in their interaction with young athletes.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/parenting/article_243.shtml

The Psychology of Color in Web Design

Persons engaged in website design, here’s a scoop for you! Would you just like to know that by understanding the basics of cognitive psychology around color and patterns, we could further improve our Web design!

Designing a Web site does not only concentrate on making web pages of a certain site interesting and impressive. This skill and talent must also be used to ensure the user-friendliness of a certain site and must strive to reach the widest range of users possible.

So what’s this about psychology? It simply implies that by understanding the capabilities of the human eye, we can produce Website designs that are more user-friendly. Being user-friendly means that our website design will not only cater for normal sighted Internet users but also to those partially sighted, blind or estimated 8-10% of men with red-green colour blindness.

If you don’t know anything about vision and colorblindness and their reaction to various designs, then you must start learning now! 'Normal' vision is subject to huge variances. Even the size of elements will affect an individual user's perception of colour. The colours and the intensity of shades you choose to use in your Website design will be discerned differently by every individual who visits your Website.

Inconsistencies in color patterns are affected by changes in the ambient lighting levels. It’s like changes in your hair color depending on the amount of lighting it was exposed. Some people even see blue colors in some objects like clothing wherein others do not perceive. These persons just happen to have more blue sensitive cones (photosensitive cells which convert light energy into nerve impulses) in their retina. They seem to view the world with 'blue-tinted spectacles'. As a web desinger, you have to be aware that these conditions are the reasons why your perception of your Web design may be different to other people and certainly are not the same with everyone else's.

The key aspect to contemplate to achieve accessibility, aside from impaired vision, is by being aware that your design might be manipulated by assistive technology. Screen readers or magnifiers are examples of this. They are software the physically disabled employ to enhance their experience of user interfaces. Some Web users can only read a certain combination such as yellow text on a black background, which allows no room for greyscale.

In order to have good legibility for users with certain visual difficulties and impairments, strong contrast can be a main ingredient in your design. Test the effectivity of this by manipulating screenshots of your design in a program like Adobe Photoshop. Try converting the image to greyscale then make the screenshot monochrome to see how it might be viewed using the most extreme visual manipulation -- do this by increasing the contrast level to +100. This is a particularly useful approximation of difficulties colour blind users may experience in discerning one colour or shade from another.

You can start adjusting your color application now and keep in mind that your designs will not be considered impressive if few people could discern them.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_356.shtml

Psychology of Success

You must understand You are already a Success, and before you think I'm crazy read further you'll get the point.

Have you Ever wondered what is the thing you personally call success? What makes you feel good about yourself, is it to be rich to be famous to be approved by people to be loved or even to be hated?

It is strange but most people never ask themselves to define the thing, they call success. They have a disjointed picture of what they want in their brain so it is natural for the outcome to be rather unpleasant. The success here is that you do have an outcome and you are responsible for this, you created your life the way it is today.

So the answer is rather simple change your internal definitions to what you truly desire and life will start picking up. The brain is like a car if you don't have the control you will get killed but if you do, it makes your life easier.

The Key is Focus, have a very clear vision of what you want and train your mind to focus it's power to one purpose. It is coordinated and massive action towards a goal that gives you the result.

To conclude a word about failure, it simply Does NOT exist. Feedback is the right word to use. Feedback is your Compass in life without it you are lost.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/self_improvement_and_motivation/article_2427.shtml