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I had a money makeover some years back and, while that got me on the right track, I still stress about finances. So while the concept of money management is not new to me, I still continuously strive to learn more on the topic. Most of the books I’ve read about finance had some great tips that I’ve incorporated into my budget, but I’ve always felt like something was missing.
As it turned out, The 30-Day Money Cleanse provided more insight into what I needed to do. The ideas were simple and easy to implement. My first task was glaringly obvious, but something I had never done: calculate my annual expenses. While I knew what I spent each month, I never took the time to find out how much that equaled in a year. I was completely floored. Did I really spend that much money on eating out? Was all the money I spent on clothes worth what I didn’t spend on finally creating my home library? And what in the world did I do with all those tech gadgets I purchased?
I’ll admit that my first response to all of this was guilt and shame; I wanted to just give up right there. But I didn’t – I kept reading. And that was when I finally understood why knowing where all my money was going was so important – because now, I could choose where I actually wanted it to go. I wasn’t powerless after all.
It was exciting to think about how I really wanted to live my life. Once I understood what mattered, it didn’t feel like I was getting rid of anything. Instead, I saw money that I once wasted was now being funneled into things that are truly important to me. I want to spend time with friends and family, but there are much more interesting and “fabulously frugal” ways to do so than just eating out. And taking stock of all the things I bought but didn’t use made it easy to put that money into my library instead.
This is what I learned – don’t let the fear of guilt or shame get in the way of taking a closer look at your relationship with money. You may be shocked at first by what you find; but when you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that this awareness brings with it so much power to truly transform your life.
Morgan Vogt, Sourcebooks Employee
Computers work because information is gathered, transmitted and stored via electrical signals.
The human brain works because information is gathered, transmitted and stored via electrical signals.
Computers work because they are directed to do so by special programs referred to as software. Humans create the software for computers. Perhaps in the future computers will be able to create their own software. (artificial intelligence)
The human brain works (thinks, calculates, remembers, deduces etc.) because it possesses the most complex software (human intelligence) known to mankind. Moreover, the human brain can change and create new software (thoughts, ideas, memories etc.) throughout its life. No current computer is capable of doing that.
The hardware of a computer consists of a series of wires, electrical micro circuits, chips, processors, screen etc., all of which are made by man. There is no computer on the face of the earth that is capable of repairing or replacing even the simplest part of its own hardware.
The human brain, on a daily basis, changes its hardware, better known as neural circuits. The basic unit of the human neural circuit is the neuron. Thousands of neurons die on a daily basis and are replaced by new ones. Branches of existing neurons wither while new ones reach out to connect with adjacent neurons. This is our neural network, our hardware, and it changes daily. No computer on the face of the earth can do this.
There are many things we can do to harm the growth of our neural circuitry. The good news is that there are many things we can do to stimulate the growth of our neural circuits, at any stage of life.
This involves making better lifestyle choices. What are they?
David Bardsley
Being human is tricky, because life can be both magical and messy from one moment to the next. Part of this is ultimately because we never chose this life. It’s not as if one day we decided to be born and, next thing we knew, we were taking our first breath. Nope. That’s not how it worked. But just because we didn’t choose to be born doesn’t mean we don’t get to choose how to live—our ultimate choice.
We have all heard the saying “life is full of choices.” I can hear the game show Let’s Make a Deal ringing in my ears now: “What’s behind door number 3, Johnny?” The average adult makes over 35,000 choices per day. Over a year, that’s over 12 million choices—over a lifetime, just under 1 billion. Of course, many of these decisions don’t have a profound impact on the direction of our life. I’m not sure if whether I wore black or blue socks one day will determine much about my future. However, many of our choices do directly impact us and, in many cases, we unintentionally chose wrongly.
The reason I say “unintentionally” is because I believe that we all want to live long and healthy lives. I don’t hear many people say, “I want to be super healthy and die at a young age.” I also believe that we want to be happy and create a meaningful life filled with love, gratitude, kindness, connection, and belonging. This is why I wrote this book. I wanted to create an aid to help people and the world. Because I know what it means to make too many wrong choices. I mastered the art of trying to find the meaningful and the feel-good in all the wrong places. And my hope is to help people avoid the mistakes I made by offering the same roadmap that turned my life around and inspired me to finally live a life that matters.
I hope you choose to not only buy and read this book, but to actually do it. I promise it will be a choice you won’t regret.
You matter.
Matthew Emerzian
Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, the choice as to how you will be in the future is yours, and yours alone. Here are 3 tips from Dr. Nido Qubein that will help you make the right one.
Business leaders today share a common dream: to improve business performance and increase profits. In short, great leaders are always in search of better results.
To change our results, we have to change the behaviors of our people.