Jade Jean Blog

“It wasn’t easy for me, and it won’t be easy for you to establish new success habits. I’ve taken you out of your world and placed you temporarily in an unnatural environment—a fancy hotel for a couple of days of high-powered training with camera crews and experts hovering about. But when you leave this unreal environment, you’ll return to yourown world, where a habit pattern is established. This habit pattern includes friends and family pressures, support systems (or failure systems), demanding children, ringing telephones, job and money problems. If you don’t form new success habits, you’ll automatically fall back into a pattern of failure.

“But if you daily stretch your brain and the muscles of your body, you’ll form new habits that will, in time, lead to the stretching of your pocketbook.

“Well, that’s enough talk. Let’s plug in a tape from our success collection and go stretch our brains and our muscles. If you haven’t done this for a while, take a moment to warm up. You don’t want to blow a gasket.” With that, we jogged off, with positive thoughts resounding in our ears.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“When I jog I feel better, my legs and stomach look better, my face looks thinner, I sleep better, I eat better. But the major benefit is the inner strength that I develop. It builds my self-esteem.

“Now, to compound the effect, at the same time I jog I also listen to tapes. It’s a wonderful way to exercise body, spirit and mind simultaneously. It only takes twenty to thirty minutes a day. But if you can conquer yourself in this one area of your life, success comes easier in every other area. It builds your desire to be a better person and to be less influenced by the world around you.

“To review, then. First, set your goal. Second, stretch your grooves with tapes and books. Third, follow your hunches. And, fourth, stretch your muscles. Develop these habits.

“This is the formula I have followed. When I got started, I was living in a student apartment with five other single guys. Rent was fifty-five dollars a month. I was making two hundred dollars a month at odd jobs while going to school. I set my goal then to have a hundred-thousanddollar net worth by the time I was thirty. A hundred-thousand-dollar goal was the biggest goal that my unstretched mind grooves could hang onto. Slowly, the grooves in my mind expanded. I read great books. I listened to great tapes. I followed my hunches. My wealth grew—inside and out.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“Thus, by listening to positive thinkers, reading positive books and by learning to follow our hunches, we can actually program ourselves to be more successful.

“And that brings us to the reason I had you come dressed in jogging clothes this morning. One of the best brain-stretching activities is some form of regular exercise. When you sacrifice the time to improve yourself physically—whether you jog, run, walk, swim, bicycle or playtennis—the result is the same. You feel better about yourself. Your physical health improves. Researchers have discovered that poor physical health and high levels of fear seem to go hand in hand. So one way to be less fearful is to get in better physical shape. But for me, the internal advantages are even more important than the obvious physical benefits. Put simply, exercise builds self-esteem. And self-esteem is the fuel that keeps us running after other people give up. The better you feel about yourself, the more willing you will be to accept those big ideas from others and those hunches from your own computer.

“My own favorite exercise is jogging. It’s tough. It’s hard. I hate it. But when I get back from my jog, all sweaty and sore, I feel great inside. I look at my body and say, ‘I conquered you another day. I’m in control here.’

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“Each day, several good, positive and ultimately profitable hunches pass through our minds unnoticed, because we’ve never trained ourselves to be sensitive to them. Listening carefully, you might hear a faint whisper: ‘Maybe you should go look at the Shaw property’ or ‘Why don’t you try a lease/option technique?’ That’s your computer working for you.

“Try to create an environment in which hunches can be nurtured. How? Let me illustrate by describing a scene I witnessed on television as Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the middleweight boxing champion, and his challenger Thomas Hearns were being interviewed about their upcoming fight. The champ was asked if he ever thought of losing, and he replied, ‘I don’t think about losing. I’m feeding the faith and starving the doubt.’ This is great advice on how to nurture your hunches. Feed the faith, starve the doubt. (Hagler knocked out Hearns in the third round.)

“Finally, don’t forget the source of many special hunches. I believe that we also receive spiritual hunches—those nudges of inspiration that many call ‘the still-small voice.’ Learning how to recognize and follow this still- small voice can lead us to levels of success that we could not attain otherwise.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“One is the source of doubt; the other is the source of faith. One tends to have a negative mental attitude, the other a positive mental attitude. However, this is not to say that one is bad and the other is good, that one is right and the other is wrong. Not so. It is the healthy dialogue between these minds that encourages us to make progress tempered with caution. Being more aware of how we think, we can learn to use our brains more effectively.

“Most likely, hunches come from our subconscious mind, which processes information twenty- four hours a day whether we are aware of it or not. It sorts and sifts through these data, ponders and analyzes and then presents to our conscious mind a faint thought or hunch. Most of the time this hunch is not a direct ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that.’ It’s rarely that strong. It’s better described as a leaning toward, a penchant to accept, a gentle nudge in the direction of, a subtle feeling about, or the broadening of one’s attitude with regard to a certain proposed action.

“Hunches are subtle hints and are very fragile. When a hunch passes through our conscious mind, it enters a negative environment. If we’re not sensitive, we can prematurely kill it off. True, some hunches, after careful evaluation, should be rejected, but often hunches are correct.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“I also particularly recommend How to Write a Nothing Down Offer. It will be especially practical during the next ninety days because it analyzes fifty real estate case studies with sample documentation using fifty nothing-down techniques.

“As with the tapes, I encourage you to read books from your success library for at least an hour a day. Consider this study time just as vital to your success as the air you breathe.

“As you listen to and read the great thoughts of others, your own computer will begin to want to create great thoughts of its own. You’ll begin to awaken this sleeping giant. You’ll feel subtle hunches that point you in new directions.

“What is a hunch? A hunch is a thought or a feeling that something is right or wrong.

“How do hunches come? The best way to answer this question is to think about how our minds work. Each of us has a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Generally speaking, it’s the nature of our conscious mind to be literal, rational, logical, serious and negative. The nature of the subconscious mind is to be more positive, creative, playful and visual.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“I would read your books,” Karen said, pointing to me. As you might suspect, I highly recommend them.” I laughed. “Other classic books for your success library include:

Nothing Down Robert G. Allen
Creating Wealth Robert G. Allen
Making Money Howard Ruff

How to Awaken the Financial
Genius Inside You Mark O. Haroldsen
How to Write a Nothing Down Offer Richard I. Allen
How I Turned $1.000 into $5 million
in Real Estate—In My Spare Time William Nickerson

The last book was my first real estate book. I spotted it in my brother- in- law’s bookshelf. He had been successful in real estate investing. Why did I notice it? I’m sure that my subconscious mind, working overtime to he lp me reach my written financial goals, sent a signal to my conscious mind to notice that particular book. It’s a great one.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“What are some other ways of expanding our thinking, Mary?” “Read great books.” I turned to Steve. “What books ought to be in your success library?” “The Good Book, of course,” he said. “A must!”

“Zig Zigler has a great book,” Nora contributed. “See You at the Top. I love Zig. He’s the greatest.” “I agree. Your success library should include the following classics:

See You at the Top Zig Zigler
University of Success Og Mandino
As a Man Thinketh James Allen
Magic of Thinking Big David Schwartz
Psycho-Cybernetics Dr. Maxwell Maltz

“Psycho-Cybernetics is a classic,” Steve interrupted. “It’s about a plastic surgeon who watches the transformations that happen in people once they’ve had plastic surgery.”

Mary joined the discussion. “Steve read that book about two years ago when we were at a low point in our ministry. He wrote the principles in the book on a sheet of paper and stuck it next to the bathroom mirror. And I started reading them, too. It really helped us through a tough six months.”

“I still recall one principle,” Steve added. “I’ll be cheerful, and positive things will come my way.” “That reminds me of something I read,” said Nora. “If your mind can conceive it,

your heart can believe it, you can achieve it.” I agreed. “If you want to be successful, you should have these books in your library and read them often. In addition to these great success books, there are some great how-to books. Can you think of any?”

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“If you expect to have more than the average person, you have to learn to think bigger thoughts. The best way to do this is to increase youryou a set of audiotapes that contain speeches from some of America’s finest big thinkers. By listening to these tapes daily you will gradually stretch the grooves in your brain and increase your capacity to accept
bigger ideas. “Each tape will expand your mind, excite you and motivate you to act.

“I’m going to encourage you, even challenge you, to listen to one of these messages every day—a minimum of thirty minutes. Listen while exercising, cooking, driving around looking for bargains or working in the yard. I’m not kidding when I say that you can get the equivalent of a college education listening to tapes while you’re stuck in traffic. “Advertisers spend billions every year to influence our behavior with repeated commercial messages. If it works for them, why don’t we start changing our behavior by introducing into our habit pattern a regular diet of great ideas on tape? I listen to tapes almost every day and never fail to learn a new thought, strategy or technique. If you make a daily habit of listening to mind-expanding ideas from successful people, the smallthoughts will be crowded out of your life forever.”

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“I reasoned that the grooves must have been the perfect width to capture this size of pebble. Other pebbles were either too small or too big. They just bounced off. I took a stick and began prying out the pebbles when the next question popped into my mind.

“If my shoes had bigger grooves, would I catch bigger pebbles? “Yes, this seemed reasonable. Then, another question came. “If my brain had bigger grooves, would I catch bigger ideas?

“Every day we are bombarded with dozens of million-dollar ideas. But most of them bounce right off because the grooves in our brain are too small to accept them. This morning we are going to discuss how to stretch these grooves that have become so shriveled by negative thinking. “How do you stretch your brain to accept bigger and bigger ideas?” I

asked. “You associate with big thinkers,” Nora said. “Right. Most of us, however, are influenced by small thinkers— small- minded people who take pleasure in telling us what we can’t do. With constant exposure to small ideas, we gradually begin to think smaller thoughts. Small thoughts lead to small results—a diminished life and a smaller amount of income. Yesterday we learned that money is attracted to ideas. Big money is attracted to big ideas. Small money is attracted to small ideas.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH