They focus every day on what they don’t have, on what they’re missing, and wonder why this foretold wealth doesn’t magically appear.

Don’t you have to live meagerly and save every penny so you can amass wealth?

Absolutely not! That’s the plan that KEEPS you broke.

It’s one thing to completely waste and not appreciate anything you have, but living out of fear and hording every single penny (again – out of FEAR) will actually repel any wealth that may be coming your way.

Some people have amassed fortunes in spite of themselves. Many actually wealthy people save every penny and live as though they were poor, even though they have millions of dollars stashed away in the bank and various couch cushions. At the end of the day, these people live a life of poverty every day, by way of their very own deliberate intent.

And then the financial planning gurus come on television and tell everyone how the need to always stash money away for a rainy day. Then regular people who WANT wealth and abundance in their lives follow these penny-pinching examples and wonder why they stay broke and miserable.

Are you coming from a place of lack and fear, or one of love and abundance?

People who are always saving everything away for a “rainy day” are statistically blessed with more rainy days than most anyone. Rainy days are, after all, where their focus is. And we all know that what you focus on grows.

This is not to say that you should spend every last penny you have. But rather, don’t focus your energy and conscious intention on “rainy days” and lack.

Surrounding yourself with poverty and lack at every turn does NOT condition your mind to be at ease with wealth and abundance. Quite the contrary, you’re enforcing a reality of poverty, and virtually guaranteeing that’s what you’ll be experiencing from then on.

Ultimately this means you are living each day out of fear. Not love, hope, excitement and enthusiasm – but fear. And that is the greatest deterrent for wealth and abundance.

The Trick to Money is Having Some – Stewart Wilde

Here’s a radical approach that has worked wonders for us, and should work for you as well – if you can only allow yourself to believe in the possibility.

In The Trick to Money is Having Some, Stewart Wilde recommends immersing yourself in the lifestyle you dream about: a life of wealth, abundance, and possibility.

He encourages you to think and live big – more into the nicest possible house you can afford, and stay at a 5 Star hotel whenever you possibly can.  If you can’t afford to stay at a very expensive 5 Star hotel, you can still go there for a coffee, a drink, or maybe even a modest meal.

The point isn’t to spend beyond your means, but rather to FEEL what it’s like to live surrounded by wealth and abundance. You must feel and experience the sensations, what it’s all about. And then, you will slowly come to expect for life to unravel in this manner. And the more you expect something to go a certain way, the more it will.

Another great book that helps to dispel  many of the myths around money and wealth is  Why You’re Dumb, Sick & Broke…And How to Get Smart, Healthy & Rich! by Randy Gage.

Ask yourself this question every day: where is your focus?

Are you focusing on the experience you wish to have, or the problems you wish would go away? Most people just focus on their problems and what they’re missing. Remember: whatever you focus on grows stronger. So if you focus all your energy on your “problems”, bills, and whatever else is making you unhappy, then guess what you’ll get… More of that.

What IS money anyway? Can you REALLY get excited about it?

Money itself is worthless paper, it means nothing. The real value to money is the promise of what you can do and achieve in exchange for it.

Logically, we know that money can solve a lot of the issues we’re facing. It can allow us to purchase whatever creature comforts we desire, and so on. But it’s hard to get excited about any of that. At the end of the day, what truly excites you is the dream, the thing that money will get for you. So, let’s go to the source.

How can you REALLY manifest money and abundance?

Our true power to manifest our desires into reality is based on feelings, emotions. The best and fastest way to attract something into your life is to focus on what you want, see it clearly in your mind, and experience the joy and feelings of ALREADY HAVING IT. Close your eyes and experience the joy of driving your brand new exotic sports car. FEEL the exhilaration, the excitement, the luxury and abundance. Every morning, set aside 10 minutes for a brief meditation where you close your eyes, sit perfectly still, and repeat this exercise.

So stop focusing on “having a lot of money”. Rather, train your focus on what you want to attract into your life… a beautiful home, a wonderful neighborhood, an exotic car, a great job, freedom to work from home for yourself, etc.

When the fine folks over at Premier Student Loans offered to do a guest post about making money by following your passions, I jumped at the chance to get some quality content for the blog, since my hands are still too full for me to consistently add new content to this site. So, enjoy this guest post, give some serious thought to the role of education in your own success plan, and feel free to leave a comment if you’d like to share your thoughts!

Success, including financial prosperity, rarely comes to those who lack direction or purpose. Most of us possess a loose network of desires, tendencies and interests that guide us to choose a profession and chart a satisfactory direction for our lives.

Perhaps our first stab at a career came when we took the first job we could get, just to get away from, or to please Mom and Dad. Many of us just go on from there, working this or that job, interesting or not. While your job may not necessarily be your life, since you will spend 30 to 50 percent of your life at work, it stands to reason that doing something that you are absolutely crazy about will, at least, make the time go faster.

Stick With Your Passion

All of us want to make a living doing something we really love, but lack the self-confidence to pursue, such as being involved in medical case management, a painter, a gourmet chef, an automobile mechanic, or a writer. As Jack Palance said in the film “City Slickers”, “The secret to life is to pick one thing and stick with it.” The adhesive that will help us “stick with it” and live the lives we love is passion.

On unique occasions, such as being laid off, succumbing to job burn-out, or just wanting more out of life, we decide to make a change and prepare a clean slate on which to plot our next course. It is at these times that our passions, our burning desires, will give us direction and motivation to pursue the next big thing in our lives.

The Other Side of the Passion Coin

We should not accept the objects of our passions on face value, but rather discover what it is about them that really float our boats. If you feel passionate about “helping people”, careers in that field number in the hundreds. They can range from being a live-in aid for a disabled person to going to medical school and becoming a pathologist. On the one hand, a live-in aid has intensive contact with his or her client, including bathing, feeding, and toilet procedures. A pathologist rarely sees patients and works in a lab, preparing specimens and doing hours of microscopic analyses. Both jobs would qualify as “helping people.” The trick to choosing a living by following your passions is to explore careers that offer the most satisfaction that also have the fewest disagreeable features.

Find That Special Niche

A passion for art is also a gossamer-like concept. If all you want to do is paint wildlife and fill up page after page in your sketchbooks, you should run that up the flagpole and go full speed ahead. However, if you passionately love art, and think you should become an artist, but never doodle in the margins of your schoolbooks and are hesitant to make that first mark on a piece of illustration board, look deeper into your passion to discover that special niche.

Perhaps an easier route to living your passion is to look at what you already do. What is the one thing you do that you are always thinking about, analyzing, and doing in your spare time? Making a living while doing what you are passionate about may sound more difficult than hanging in there with your safe old job, but you can seamlessly transition into a new career by setting aside time in the evenings instead of doing non-productive things such as watching TV. There are distance learning courses, online degree programs, and web sites that can teach you just about anything.

Engage!

If you are ready to commit to making money by following your passions, set the stage by making time for yourself, being honest with yourself about your talents and passions, doing all the research, and establishing a game plan. Let the transformation begin!

Veteran readers of this blog will note that I have been out of the loop recently, and the subject of finding what you are passionate about is a large part of the very reason why I dropped out of the blogosphere for so long. In short, I have been struggling with how best to spend the time and resources that I dedicate to my career, and I recently got a wonderful bit of assistance in that regard: Brian Kim’s awesome book, How to FINALLY Find What You Love to Do AND Get Paid For Doing It.

Back in July 2007, I did a review of one of Brian’s other books, The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich, and since that book was incredibly useful, I was ecstatic to hear that Brian had released something new. The concept of finding what it is that we are passionate about is something that so very many people struggle with. After reading Brian’s Book, I can honestly say that the system contained in his book is the best one that I have seen yet.

As Brian so eloquently points out in the book, many people are “secretly leading lives of quiet desperation,” and despite their desire to find fulfillment and financial success, very few people are able to find and stick to a system that allows them to do so. As a result, many people end up just doing whatever they are good at and/or educated for, and what they actually WANT to be doing rarely even enters into the equation.

Using myself as an example, this blog has been up for several years, and although it has been a success on every measurable level, it became more and more apparent to me over time that simply blogging for a living – although enjoyable – was not enough for me. My life requires more of a consistent challenge than just writing provided to me, and I was left asking myself just what it was that I DID want to do.

Although I still love blogging and working on the Internet, I can’t honestly say that I am passionate enough about blogging to see it as my “mission” in life. Does it hold value for other people? Absolutely, and for that I am grateful. However, my destiny lies along a different path, and Brian’s book really helped to open my eyes to some core concepts that needed to be considered as I mapped out the next stages of my life.

How to Find your Passions

There are other books out there on the subject of finding your passions, but as Brian points out in How to FINALLY Find What You Love to Do AND Get Paid For Doing It, most books on this topic ask you to think about the DETAILS of a passion-filled life, but they never really tell you how to find that passion to begin with. The details (type of work, ideal work day, income potential, etc.) are just a small part of the equation compared to the importance of finding the passion FIRST, and then working out the less important details once the passionate foundation has been laid.

In addition to the step by step process that Brian lays out in the book, he is quick to also add in that using the power of your subconscious mind is also an integral part of finding your passions. Brian’s system advises you to not only make a consistent conscious effort towards finding your passions, but to also use your subconscious mind as an active ally in the process, and to respond quickly whenever inspiration or “ah-ha moments” strike.

Did you find your passions?

Another thing I love about the book is that there is a 10-question “test” that you can apply once you think you have nailed down your passions. It is easy to get excited about a new idea or a new plan of action, but if the new passion won’t fuel a long-term process, then it’s not really a passion to begin with.

Chapter 5 is entitled How You’ll Know You’ve Truly Found What You Love to Do, and the 10-question test does a great job of separating temporary enthusiasm from the long-term mindset that true passions are made up of.

How to Make Money with your Passions

There are really only 2 ways of making money: You either use your resources to work for and invest in yourself, or you use those resources to benefit someone else, a.k.a. – an employer. Both of those systems have their benefits, and this book does not take sides. Brian has a section about how to make money as an employee while following your passions, and a separate section for how to make money as a passionate Entrepreneur.

Both of those sections of the book include the same “questions equal answers” mentality, and the questions that you ask yourself about how to monetize your passions are the critical first step towards finding useful answers. People who find the wrong answers are the same people who asked the wrong questions. For both the employee route, as well as the entrepreneurial route, Brian lists the types of questions that you should ask yourself.

I was also very impressed with the short, yet extremely useful section that he put together for entrepreneurs who want to monetize their passions. His overview of the entrepreneurial process of making money while loving what you do is only a few pages long, but it covers a lot of ground and definitely points the would be entrepreneur in the right direction.

Conclusion

Overall, the book How to FINALLY Find What You Love to Do AND Get Paid For Doing It promises a lot, and if you are willing to go through the processes described in the book, you will indeed get a lot out of your time investment. Discovering what to do with the rest of your life is worth a little bit of homework, don’t you think?

For me personally, I have already changed my own mindset about the future, and I have a renewed sense of hope and confidence as a result. Even just a short time after reading the book,  I have already gotten a huge amount of value from it.

Brian Kim has written a lot of great content over the years, and despite the massive impact that this book will have on the lives of anyone who reads it, the cost is very low.

Big props to you, Brian, and thanks for this great book that will help to put so many people on the right path!

Pick up your own copy of
How to FINALLY Find What You Love to Do AND Get Paid For Doing It

BONUS#1: ($12 value) Get a FREE Copy of “The Introspection Workbook” – Use it to help discover the kind of work that’s suited just for you!

BONUS#2: ($12 value) Get a FREE copy of the s
pecial report: ’3 Real Life Stories Of Those Who Did It’ – Read the real life stories of those who have managed to find what they love to do and got paid for doing it! See how they used the information in the book to do so.

Cash. Moolah. Currency. Bucks. Banknotes. Funds. Capital. Legal Tender.

You can choose the word that personally resonates with you whenever you think of having money, but while you are mulling over whichever word really works for you, I am going to share the word that I associate with the concept of having money:

Opportunity.

Money in its physical state has very little value, in and of itself. It is the value that we, as humans, place on money that gives it value, and the more “value” you have, the more OPPORTUNITIES you have to enjoy your life.

Many people have considered money to be “bad” throughout the ages, and to this day many of us (most of us?) still have self-limiting beliefs about money. We have been raised with this cultural – and utterly false – belief that living in financial abundance is not normal, or appropriate, or that living such a lifestyle is something that is meant for people other than ourselves.

However, these cultural programmings are steeped in an unconscious belief that having an excess amount of money is “wrong” for some reason. We have this utterly ridiculous belief that only “certain” people can live an extravagant lifestyle. We think that people other than ourselves have the resources or the opportunities to make a lot of money, but not us. We think that just taking care of our own is a noble and worthy cause, and there is no need for “riches”.

Here’s your wake-up call: The Earth as we know it is founded on exchanging money for the goods, experiences, and services that each and every one of us needs and wants.

• You can be “holier than thou” all day long in your beliefs that you only need enough money to “get by,” and at the end of your journey on Earth, “getting by” will be all that you accomplished.
• You can spend your whole life thinking that only real estate geniuses, marketing wizards, and Hollywood stars have that “special” something that allows them to be rich, and by thinking that way you will spend your entire life watching other people live a life that you could only dream of.
• You can keep thinking that money isn’t one of the primary components of happiness for as long as you like, and although you may be happy on other levels, the opportunities that money represents in life will have slipped you by. You will have missed much of what this life has to offer.

On the other hand, if you are ready to finally lose the shackles of financial bondage that have restricted you for your entire life, then listen up, because I am going to help you to do exactly that!

Today is that Day is proud to announce that the ground-breaking has already begun on the Wealth Creation for Superior Living Podcast.

The podcast will be dedicated to teaching people how to make money so that they can enjoy all that the world has to offer. It’s not about getting rich and becoming a lazy jerk who does nothing but sail around the world and eat caviar. It’s not about having 5 houses, 20 cars, and a fleet of servants to wait on you hand and foot. It’s not about losing touch with your inner spirituality or your belief in happiness as an internal process.

The Wealth Creation for Superior Living Podcast is going to be about teaching people how to make money so that they can have better lives for themselves, and so that they can experience all that there is to experience while they are here on planet Earth!

If money was no object:

• How many wonderful destinations all over the globe would you visit?
• How many different cultures would you experience?
• What would you learn that you haven’t had the time or money to learn yet?
• How much help could you give friends, family members, neighbors, and even strangers?
• What impact could you make on the life of a citizen in your country, or in another country, if you helped them out?
• How much could you help your church, your neighborhood, or your city?

How much LIVING and LEARNING and EXPANDING and TEACHING could you do if money was no object?

In order to help you create wealth so that you can answer those types of questions, the Wealth Creation for Superior Living Podcast will be an on-going series of interviews where I ask the “gurus” in any given industry some hard-hitting, life-changing questions about how to “make it big” in their industry.

This won’t be another pile of useless data about “how to get rich”. The podcast will focus on people who are out there actually making it happen in many different industries, and with many different tools. Topics and industries covered will include all of the following, and many more:

• Real Estate
• Internet Marketing
• Working from Home
• Business/Entrepreneurship
• Network Marketing
• Stocks/Investing
• Law of Attraction/Conscious Creation

The podcast interviews will be conducted with anyone and everyone who works in any industry or uses any tools that other people can also use to create REAL wealth and REAL abundance in their lives.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW

1. If you are a member of Personal Development Partners, you need to do nothing. All members of PDP will have FREE access to every single edition of the podcast. Each episode will be uploaded immediately to the PDP server and a link will be available to all members for instant download.
2. If you are not a member of PDP, you just need to subscribe to the Today is that Day blog. Every episode of the podcast will have a synopsis posted here on the blog highlighting the incredible information that was shared in that edition. Every podcast summary will include a link to pay for and download that episode directly from the site.

Yes, this will be a Premium Podcast, which is your very first lesson in how to create a wealth mindset: People who offer products and services that have real value for other people are perfectly within their right to charge a fair amount of money for those products or services.

There ya go, your first lesson was on the house. Watch this space for future lessons, all of which you will be able to download for a fair price (see above!), or, join PDP right now in order to get all podcasts editions for free.

p.s. – Don’t forget yesterday’s announcement. The membership rate for Personal Development Partners WILL be going up to $20 per month once this podcast launches. Join now while the rate is still $20 every SIX months, and you can be one of the many people who got in early enough to receive a HUGE amount of value for a ridiculously low price.

Most people will answer a question like that with any one of a number of negative thoughts or beliefs, and in most cases, those same negative thoughts or beliefs are the very reason why those people aren’t wealthy.

Yes, there are certain “real world” circumstances that human beings create in order to experience financial abundance, but as with all things, the process needs to start in our heads before any progress can be made out in the real world.

One of the Senior Thought Leaders at Personal Development Partners has a great eBook that discusses these types of concepts, and after reading the book just now, I wanted to share some of the highlights with you. The book is called 30 Days to Wealth, and it was written by the indomitable Shauna Arthurs of Follow Your Path.

Shauna’s book is basically a “point A to point B” trip that takes the reader on a 30-day journey of self discovery as well as real-world action that changes the reader’s understanding of their relationship with money, and ultimately with themselves.

Overall I was impressed with the book, and despite my own abundant mentality, I found several nuggets of information that helped me with my relationship with money, and several timely reminders as well. Things that really struck me included:

• The fact that the book is all about creating a certain way of “being” rather than a mindless “map to riches”. The book talks about and describes methods for becoming wealthy on the inside so that wealth manifests automatically on the outside.
• There were several very practical exercises that teach the reader how to invoke the feelings of wealth, even without actually having it. Learning to have those feelings, of course, then causes the creation of actual wealth out in the “real world”.
• One of the best lessons in the book involves how to deal with our desire for wealth by describing a selfish vs. a selfless situation. I found that to be some valuable insight, since so many people think that wanting money is a “bad” thing.
• There was also a unique time line exercise about making note of things that we regret in our lives for the purpose of releasing the self-limiting beliefs that we created as a result of those events.
• Another great exercise included a method for noticing the things that create negative reactions for us. This is powerful because as we figure out what creates negativity in our lives, we are instantly empowered to release our attachment to those beliefs or concepts, thus breaking their hold over us.
• One of my favorite features was an awesome list of pointed questions that help to identify a person’s true inner beliefs about wealth (or lack thereof), actual motivations behind wealth building efforts, and also whether or not certain actions are truly in alignment with stated desires for wealth and abundance.

Also, one “bonus” lesson outside of the stated 30-day regimen is the very act of focusing on wealth and abundance every single day for 30 days straight. That in and of itself is a valuable exercise that seems simple, but ask yourself how many times you have actually done it.

Overall, I was impressed with 30 Days to Wealth, and I saw it as a valuable tool for creating the “wealth mindset” which in turn creates actual wealth. Great job, Shauna!

If you would like to get your hands on a copy of 30 Days to Wealth, it is one of over a dozen free product downloads that are available to all Premium level or above members of the Personal Development Partners website, or you can purchase the eBook directly.