Creating a Better Life

Being Well, Getting Rich, and a new site for Free Personal Development Material

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on putting together a new site to replace my free personal development ebooks and free personal development audio pages.  This morning, I moved the last of the ebooks off of the ebooks page, and I think it’s about time that I pointed people to the new site.

The new site is at freepdmaterial.com - Free Personal Development Material.  Now that the ebooks have been moved, my next step will be the audio page.

I’d love to hear your comments on this new resource, and please let me know via the contact form about any resources that you’d like to see added.

And speaking of added resources, let me just mention the last two that I wrote about.  Both are fantastic audios of personal development classics, provided by equally fantastic fellow bloggers.

The Science of Being Well by Wallace Wattles - Free Audio Book

Mike Dewitt of Spooky Action put this one together, and it’s just as good as The Science of Getting Rich Audio that he released last year.  The Science of Being Well has the same philosophy as The Science of Getting Rich, but the main focus of the book is on health, rather than wealth.  But guess what… they are both obtained the same way.

Download The Science of Being Well by Wallace Wattles Audio Book Here

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - Free Audio Book

Karen Lynch of Live the Power (and her husband Kevin from My Internet Business) are offering this one.  I probably don’t need to explain to readers of this blog just what Think and Grow Rich is, but for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s arguably the most popular personal development book that is focused on wealth building.

Download Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Audio Book Here

And regarding the new site - if you like what it offers, Stumbles, Diggs, and/or links are always appreciated.  You can also subscribe to updates here.

Make it a great day!

Free Ebooks - How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and More

I’m not adding this to my free ebooks page since it’s a limited time offer, but it’s also too good not to tell people about.

[Update 7/15/2008 - check out this post at Free Personal Development Material for another source for How to Win Friends and Influence People]

Beginners Marketing Class is offering a free 30 day membership through the end of February, and a part of that offer includes a number of free ebooks to add to your library. The one that struck my interest the most was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - a classic in the personal development genre.

How to Win Friends and Influence People promises to help you:

• Get out of a mental rut, think new thoughts, acquire new visions, discover new ambitions.
• Make friends quickly and easily.
• Increase your popularity.
• Win people to your way of thinking.
• Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.
• Handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.
• Become a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
• Arouse enthusiasm among your associates.

I still think that it’s one of the most unfortunately titled books out there. Winning Friends and Influencing People sounds pretty manipulative and conniving… but this book is far from that. It’s more of a manual for human communication - don’t let the title turn you off like it did for me for so long.

Also freely available when you sign up for Beginners Marketing Class are The Master Key System by Charles Haanel, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles, and a number of lesser known works.

Personally, I’ve signed up for the free membership so that I can do some exploring of the site; I’ll be sure to let you know if I decide to upgrade. If you sign up and decide to convert to the monthly, annual, or lifetime membership options, I’d love it if you’d share your thoughts about the site in the comments.

But for now, go ahead and pick up your free ebooks by clicking here.

(Hat tip to Chuck for the comment he left on the free ebook page.)

The Ultimate Cure for Procrastination

The death of success comes from the delusion of “I’ll Do It Later.”

This one is even more insidious than the secret to failure that I wrote about a while back… because when we say that “I’ll do it later”, we are usually lying to ourselves on some level.

We may not intend to be lying… but we usually are.

In Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, W. Clement Stone and Napoleon Hill have a solution for this -

Do It Now

That’s it.

Just Do It Now.

Whenever you find yourself saying “I’ll do it later”, answer yourself with the self-motivator Do It Now.

When You Can’t Do It Now

Sometimes you honestly can’t Do It Now. If you’re in the middle of something else, and the thought “Wow, the garbage needs to go out” comes up, you’ve got a couple of choices.

1.) Stop what you are doing and take the garbage out.

2.) Continue what you are doing and take the garbage out later.

The problem with “later” is that if we don’t get “take out the garbage” out of our heads, it’s going to keep popping up until it’s taken care of.

In these situations, I like to use what David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity, calls the “Two Minute Rule.”

If it can be accomplished in two minutes or less… Do It Now.

If it can’t, capture the thought in whatever way you prefer - write it down, record it… whatever works best for you.

The “two minutes” is an arbitrary time frame. The idea behind it is to decide which of the following would take more time with the least disturbance - recording it for later action, or Doing It Now.

It may actually take 5 minutes, but if that garbage has been piling up for awhile… it may be best to just go ahead and Do It Now.

What Just Came Up For You?

While reading this, what came up for you that needs to get done, but you haven’t for whatever reason?

Why not Do It Now?

[ image credit: Piotr Lewandowski on stock.xchng ]

Pointers To Resources For Your Better Life #6

Reborn magazines, podcasts from a motivational master, and planning to succeed in 2008… welcome to the 6th edition of Pointers To Resources For Your Better Life.

Success Magazine Lives!

Karen Lynch of Live The Power let us know that the famous Success Magazine will be making a comeback in 2008. I’m pretty jazzed about this - as a fan of Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, and Og Mandino, it’s really neat to see the magazine making a comeback.

Zig Ziglar Podcast

Classic Zig audio and video from Inspiring Words of Encouragement. If you haven’t ever heard Zig Ziglar before, I think you’re in for a treat. Here’s a link to one of my favorites - The Story of the Biscuits - which includes an inspiring story about encouraging others.

See Your 2008 Now

One of the top suggestions from people who have enjoyed success is that we see it, act it, live it, and be it before we achieve it. Here are a couple of exercises that might help you to do that.

Vickie of Contemplate This suggests that we write up something from the perspective of the end of 2008. I joined in, and it really was powerful. My wife even said that it was her favorite piece of my writing - I guess doubling a guy’s income really does make him sexier .

To add in some visuals that your subconscious can really soak up, you can set up what’s known as a “Treasure Map” or “Vision Board”. Lorraine Cohen of Powerfull Living has published an in depth article explaining the process of creating a treasure map (and shares her finished product). After you’ve finished with yours (or before you’ve started if you want more tips), check out Edward Mills’ Vision Board 2008 Invitational and display your future for the world to see! I’m committed to getting mine done well before Edward’s deadline (January 14th) - I hope you’ll join me!

Make it a great week!

[ image credit: marcin krawczyk on stock.xchng ]

Seven Things I Learned from Jack Canfield

Quite a while back, I listened in on a conference call with Jack Canfield (best known as the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and one of the teachers featured in the movie The Secret) that was sponsored by Feed333. The notes I took on the call have been sitting on my hard drive, and I decided to review them and share the points that stuck with me the most.

1.) Canfield was a student of W. Clement Stone, who believed that the world was “plotting to do him good.” I’m a big admirer of Stone, and am currently working my way through the 17 Success Principles he and Napoleon Hill outlined in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. My esteem for Canfield just about doubled when he talked about this.

2.) He explained that some people are what is called “Psychologically Reversed“. This means that, in those who suffer from this condition, their subconscious minds can assume that “good is bad” and “bad is good”, which leads to all sorts of self destructive behavior… and the more the behavior is pushed against, the worse it becomes. He never directly references EFT, but explains that tapping on what EFT refers to as the karate chop point can remove the reversal.

3.) Debt is not a terrible thing. It’s sometimes an investment in the future.

4.) When it comes to the Law of Attraction, it’s not the thought - it’s the feeling that is produced by the thought that does the vibrating. This seems to be a bit different from the Abraham-Hicks viewpoint, which says that the thought vibrates, and the feeling tells us if our current dominant thought will bring us closer to what we want. I personally don’t care what’s vibrating, as long as it’s vibrating where I want it to.

5.) You can begin affirmations with the following if it feels like you are lying to yourself: “I’m now in the process of attracting all that I need to x”.

6.) The Hawthorne Effect - that which you measure and report on will improve exponentially.

7.) Be open to feedback… you’re going to get it anyway!

So feel free to leave some feedback in the comments, or via my contact page.