A friend of mine shared this quote with me the other day and I really like it…
“Your path to fulfillment is astonishingly simple: Follow your
preferences, and they will lead you to your path. Find what brings you
joy and satisfaction, and trust that it will also bring you
prosperity…find what matters to you, and trust that it is the signpost
you have been looking for.”-Cherie Carter-Scott
I have always (and still do believe) that God’s will for our lives will line up with our desires. He often calls people to do things that they may not think they are capable of and along everyone’s journeys there will be moments of pain and discomfort. But, following our passion is often a good first step in finding God’s plan for our lives.
Most fathers want to bless their kids. God is a lot better than earthly fathers, so why wouldn’t he line our desires up with our calling?
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The power of saying NO
Learning to say NO to ourselves is one of the most beneficial habits we can develop. I call it a habit because it is truly is. People who never tell themselves NO have a difficult time doing it. On the other hand, people who regularly tell themselves NO find that although it may not be easy, it becomes less difficult the more you do it.
Your success is based on your ability to say NO
It is difficult to find a person who has had success in any area of their lives who didn’t become good at saying NO…
- If you want to lose weight, you have to say NO to your body when it tells you that it is going to die if it doesn’t get a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
- If you want your marriage to last you have to tell yourself NO when you really, really want to say something that you probably shouldn’t.
- If you want to succeed in your career you have to say NO to your body’s desire to be lazy and work hard and smart (even when no one is looking).
- If you want to get out of debt, you have to say NO to the iPhone (or other fun indulgences) even when everyone else around you has one.
The list goes on and on, but the point remains the same: Get good at saying NO.
“Do something you hate every day, just for the practice.”
-John Maxwell
The point John was making in this quote was that in order to succeed you have to do things you do not want to do. People who achieve their dreams have to pass up a whole lot to reach their destination.
Saying NO to couch-potato living
I am writing to myself with this, but I have found it to be true that a regular habit of exercise (saying NO to our body’s desire to become a couch potato) makes everyday challenges easier to handle.
It’s because exercise is more than just conditioning the body - it conditions and disciplines the mind. As we say NO to ourselves and overcome the temptation not to exercise, we become just a little bit better at saying NO and are better equipped to do it in other areas of our lives.
As I think about areas of my life where I have been able to implement this in small steps, the corresponding rewards have been great. My walk with God, my finances, and my relationships have all seen great progress as a result of saying NO in seemingly insignificant moments.
this post was featured in the Carnival of personal finance
Has anyone else noticed this in their own life?
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I found a text file that I had saved with a few quotes that have impacted me over the last few years. I get inspired by them, so I thought I would share them with the readers… I hope you enjoy them.
“If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.” -Abraham Lincoln
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” -William James
“Success is more of a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.” -An Wang
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” -Warren Buffett
“Consider what can be done in ten minutes. If you need a little mental relaxation, you can sit down with a friend and play a game of cards. If you need physical recreation, you can engage in a few exercises that will help tone up your body. Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends.” -William A. Irwin
“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
And here are a few articles I found interesting over the past few days:
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“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”-Henry Ford
- “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”-Sir Winston Churchill
It is okay to fail. I have to tell this to myself quite often actually. I don’t like failing and I prefer to have everything “under control.” The thing is that in order to have much success, you have to have corresponding failures. I have heard it said by a Fortune 500 CEO that he can tell how likely a person is going to be successful by how the person responds to failure. The key is in the response. What happened when you fell off your bike for the first time? Did you ever try again? Or did you give it away? What about when you asked that girl out on a date and she said no? Was that it, single for life? Or did you fight past the fear of failure and get the first date with your wife?
We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we RESPOND to it. I don’t know about you, but I need a good kick in the pants once in a while. I need to fight past the fear of failing and the “what if’s”
What would you try if you knew that you would succeed? Would you apply for that job you have been dreaming of for years? Would you start learning about investing in stocks rather than a savings account? Would you start your own business?
We are only down here for a short while and this life is but a blink of an eye. I refuse to have my life ruled by a fear of failure. How about you?
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Bill Gates is still America’s richest man
Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans was just recently released, and was topped by Bill Gates. Second was none other than my favorite billionaire Warren Buffett.
This is the first year that you need over a billion to get on the list. In fact, the lowest on the “400 totem pole” had a net worth of $1.3 billion, up $300 million from last year.
I was pleased to hear a few months back that Warren Buffett had announced that he would be giving away the vast majority of his wealth to Bill Gates charity. From what I have read Bill Gates is very generous as well.
It is so good to see that the two richest Americans are actively trying to make the world a better place by giving. This just goes to show that money is NOT the root of all evil. It is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10) and people who are motivated by a calling or by a cause often aren’t concerned with money.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
-Winston Churchill
del.icio.us Tags: Forbes 400, richest americans
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One of the joys of working at a brokerage firm is that people are always asking me for investment advice or telling me about how they don’t trust their broker.
Probably the most frequently asked question is, “how do i [tag]save money for retirement[/tag]?”
First, I tell them to follow these 4 steps to retirement savings, and then I tell them not to worry about your rate of return when you are starting out. Yes, it is better to get 12% on your money than 8%, but when you are just starting your retirement savings it should be the least of your concerns.
Let me preface this by saying, this advice is for [tag]beginner[/tag]s who are intimidated by saving for retirement to the point of DOING NOTHING. This is what I suggest to keep them from worrying about which mutual fund to buy when they are starting out.
The biggest hurdle for most people is [tag]saving money[/tag]. As Dave Ramsey
Let’s say you start saving $100 a month towards retirement. When you first start investing, the $100 a month contribution is going to have a larger impact on the size of the total amount saved than your rate of return.
For example, if you have $1000 saved up and add $100, you now have $1100 - which is a 10% increase. But if you have $10,000 saved and you add $100, it is only a 1% increase. Once you have $100,000 saved up that $100 monthly contribution becomes even more insignificant; it is only a 0.1% increase.
So, if you are only increasing your account value by .01% each time you contribute, then it would not be nearly as effective as having a 12% rate of return.
As you can see the importance of consistent contributions is CRUCIAL in the beginning stages, but becomes less significant as your nest egg grows in size. Conversely, your rate of return on your investments starts out with little importance, but becomes CRUCIAL as your nest egg gets larger.
So, if you are a beginner, get started saving and you can take your time learning about which mutual funds are going to give you the best returns.
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The best quotes from Warren
If there is any investor who you could look up to and use as a “role model,” [tag]Warren Buffett[/tag] would be your man. He takes a simplified and [tag]long-term[/tag] approach to [tag]investing[/tag]; and he puts all of the Wall St. day-traders to shame. He is without a doubt one of the greatest investors of all time, and has been in the top 5 richest people for decades. When you hear him speak, he is likely to resemble your grandfather with his sincerity, down-to-earth nature, and wisdom from years of living. If you cannot tell, I am a FAN of Warren.
I gathered a list of [tag]quotes[/tag] from Warren Buffett over the years about life, money, investing, and anything else. If I have any of your own favorite Warren Buffet quotes that I may have missed, please add them to the comments.
Also check out these 9 tips from Warren and these Warren Buffett videos
- A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
- If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
- Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
- Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from the folly rather than participate in it.
- Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
- I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
- If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- In the business world, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
- It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
- It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
- Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
- Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
- Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
- Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
- The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
- The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
- The only time to buy these is on a day with no “y” in it.
- The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
- There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
- We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’
- We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
- We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
- When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
- Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
- You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
(Warren Buffett quotes added 05/07/08…)
- It’s better to have a part interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.
- I should emphasize that we do not measure the progress of our investments by what their market prices do during any given year. Rather, we evaluate their performance by the two methods we apply to the businesses we own. The first test is improvement in earnings, with our making due allowance for industry conditions. The second test, more subjective, is whether their “moats” – a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors – have widened during the year.
- She’s smart, she loves the business, and she loves her associates. That beats having an MBA degree any time.
What are your favorite Warren Buffett quotes?
Please share in the comments below…
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[tag]Expenses rise to meet income[/tag]. This is the gist of [tag]Parkinson’s law[/tag]. This is the reason that a couple months after most people get a raise, it feels just as tight financially as it did before the raise.
We create the additional expenses when the funds are available. Not on purpose, of course, but on accident. As long as the money is in our pocket we can usually find somewhere to spend it.
We teach our kids to put the money in the bank, because we know that if they can’t get to it they will save it. This is the trick to saving money and believe it or not, it works for adults too.
Without an intentional effort, houses, desks, kitchen sinks naturally get messy and cluttered. We have to take action ON PURPOSE to keep things clean and organized. The same ON PURPOSE effort needs to be made to keep our expenses BELOW our income.
It is a profoundly simple concept, but ironically some of the simplest things in life are the most difficult.
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“Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value.”
-Albert Einstein
What a great way to live your life. After all is said and done, the people (Einstein meant ‘man or woman’) of value are the ones who leave the world better than they found it. They are the ones who were less concerned with themselves, but more about bettering society. They were the ones who are remembered a lot longer than those who were only “successful.”
This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. [tag]Joshua 1:8[/tag]
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“There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.”
- Edwin Louis Cole
I remember being a dreamer and the vagueness of the dreams, because I knew that I didn’t have what it took (motivation, consistency) to make it happen. Over the last decade or so, I have worked hard to become more of a planner. The fruit that develops over years of planning is wonderful. The dreams are much clearer and you get to the point where you can start to FEEL what you are dreaming about years before you get there. This is what keeps me motivated.
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