See you there guys

Many people in society today tend to have loose spending habits

They see something they want, and they purchase it

While there is nothing wrong with buying the things your desire, the problem comes at the end of the month when you receive a credit card statement that makes you consider committing arson to your home for the insurance claim

Fear not

I have recently been enlightened with a simple method for you to buy the things you love, without breaking the bank

I recently read the book, “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” by Ramit Sethi. In the book, he describes many different meager changes people can make in their lives that will allow them to save astronomical amounts of money in the short and long term

One of the things he discussed that truly intrigued me was the concept of being frugal vs. being cheap

He describes being frugal as buying the things you love, over the things don’t love as much

And he view cheap as people who basically try to cut down costs in all areas of their life, which both Ramit and myself agree is not the best option

In order to be effectively frugal, one must decide what it is above all else that they love

Maybe you are a lover of restaurants and nightclubs and enjoy spending money at nights out on the town

Maybe you love shoes, and you tend to buy more than ten pairs a month and cant live without the new Manolo Blahniks

Or maybe you’re a coinsurer of world traveling, and like to get out of town at least once a month to an exotic location such as Costa Rica or Paris

Wherever your passion for spending lies, everyone has one or two areas that they value above all else

As I stated before, the problem isn’t spending, but rather spending on to much

Sit down and really think about what you love to spend your money on, and make a personal commitment to spending on that type of purchase above all else

The second part of this exercise is to find out where your other spending habits lie, and find ways to trim them effectively

Assume for a moment you are making $70,000 a year, are passionate for traveling, and are spending $1,200 a month on traveling and another $3,000 on eating out, nightlife, clothes, electronics, etc

This spending pattern can get destructive very quickly

Instead limit going out to eat to $100 a week maximum, and maybe only go out and spend $75 on nightlife. Also limit yourself to one electronic purchase a month (and it must be under 300 dollars) and only spend 200$ a month on clothes

If those simple choices are made, you could reduce your $3,000 a month expenditures to under $1,000 with little to no effort

Now that you are saving roughly $2,000 dollars a month, you can increase your traveling budget by $600 to $1,800 or even to $2,000, and save the rest

By doing this you will save more money and effectively be able to spend more money on the things you love

You will be able to go on two trips a month instead of maybe one, or be able to go shopping every other weekend instead of once a month

All guilt free

You will find yourself stressing about credit card bills and online bank statements less, and enjoy more of the things you love right now

Go out and try it now

Gabriel

Yesterday I had the pleasure of walking down the aisle

No not marriage, not for a while

But rather commencement for graduation from college

At the commencement, there were many speakers, all of which made heartfelt speeches telling myself and the rest of the college graduates how we represent the future of society and that in order for us to leave our mark we need to do something great with our lives and make a difference in the world.

The event got me thinking, everyone at the commencement was tossing around grandesque phrases like, “leave your mark”, “do something meaningful”, “make an impact”, “be SIGNIFICANT”

I found me asking myself,

“What does it mean to be significant?”

A mark on society, a life after death, is something that all of us seek. People like to feel that their life was somehow valued and impacted the lives of others, because it means that they will be remembered and make them feel significant in the world. Having a level of significance in your life makes you feel more loved, cherished, and adds a level of meaningfulness to their lives that may have been previously missing.

In society today, people measure significance by a wide range of factors. Some of these include,

Wealth

Fame

Contribution

Power

Love

While there are many categories for defining significance in someone’s life, they all hold a value in the eyes of society

What I noticed in my talks with my fellow graduates is a wide range of beliefs about what significance means to each of them

What I found is that while the paths that each of them were taking was completely different, they all seemed to have the same end goal in mind when it came to their plans after college

Wealth

The vast majority of college grads I talked to find that their drive in life can be found in obtaining fortune and financial prosperity.

While the need for financial security is perfectly understandable and important more than ever in today’s economic climate, It quickly became apparent to me that these graduates were trying to obtain significance through wealth, whether than basic financial security.

When I asked them about what would happen after they got the nice paying job their answers all varied but all had the same underlying goals.

Money as it seems, gives people the single most important platform in these graduates eyes to obtain the things they truly desire in life

Raise a family

Buy a house

Go on exotic vacations

Buy a fancy car, or trendy clothes

The common denominator between all these may not seem immediately apparent, but upon further investigation it becomes clear, all of these goals offer significance in people’s lives

Whether you are  offering love to children and a spouse and raising a family, putting the hard financial effort into purchasing a home, or traveling to exotic locations around the world, all of them make your life more significant.

While raising a family, buying a house, and traveling are all things that many of us want to do in life,  I believe that many of the graduates I talked to simply like the idea of being significant over the idea of doing these positive things in their lives

In order words, I believe that they feel money = significance

While I do believe that people at a core level are trying to achieve significance by offering their love and contribution to others (raising a family, painting a portrait, etc)  Their goals have become clouded by advertisements and the general materialism that exists in society today.

Money can indeed make your life easier in terms of achieving significance, but significance is not achieved through wealth

What people don’t realize is that you are already significant

In order for you to realize your significance, I want you to write down what made you feel significant in the past, present, and in the future

Really dig deep and write down everything that comes to mind

One your list is written read it back to yourself

Maybe you wrote down some of my previous example of raising a family for your current or future levels of significance.

And maybe for your past you wrote about your mothers love or being the fastest 5^th grader to run the quarter mile

Whatever your examples you need to realize that your significance has always and always will be right there in front of you.

Just as it has occurred in the past, and how you feel it right now, and how it will inevitably be occurring in the future

Your life and its significance already exists because you are here, right now on this planet

You offer your love and your passion in something that you do every day, whether it be a loved one, your work, your partner.

That makes you significant right now

Not Money

Not Fame

Not Power

As long as you are a being on this planet, living or dead, you will offer a level of significance that will be unprecedented, and you will become aware that life = significance

Gabriel

Every week I am going to post a challenge for everyone

Every challenge will be different, though they will all equally challege you in different areas of your life

I will also be doing the challenge, and I hope you will post your comments about what happened on the blog

The goal of these challenges is to expand your comfort zone, and better equip you with better skills neccessary to exceed in life

Sound fun?

I thought So

The first challenge:

You must go up to AT LEAST 25 strangers a week and strike a conversation.

The Rules:

You must not know them

You cannot be intoxicated for more than five of them (AKA only 5 can be in a bar)

The strangers cannot be “a friend of a friend”

Every time you talk to a stranger and just say hi, then walk away, you must restart the challenge. YOu must make an effort to converse with them unless they directly walk or run away from you

You have one week

Sounds simple enough right?

Now for many this challenge may seem simple

But for other it will appear complicated and very difficult

This is because every has different skills they have developmed throughout their lifetime

Some people are naturally charming and strike up conversations with new people all the time

Others keep more to themselves and dont vast out muych of their close group of friends

While neither appraoch is argubly better than the other for your day to day life

It is undenyable the the benifits of being more social at any given moment can lead to many opportunites in your life

Networking, Job Offers, New Friends, New Relationships

All of them can start from a simple “Hello”

Have fun

Gabriel

Some people are constantly challenged by the notion feeling good all the time

While many people may read affirmations to themselves, or surround themselves with sex, drugs, or alcohol, the simple notion of feeling good more than a few hours a day seems to escape many people

While there are different steps on the path to happiness, many people neglect the simplest notion of maintaining a healthy and positive routine that would be simple to implement and would offer immediate positive results

Here is a routine created by my friend Mack and myself that offers a few steps to a simpler and more positive lifestyle

1) Stay away from the computer and internet and videogames and TV. I am not saying quit them, just limit them. Any more than an hour a day staring at a electronic screen starts to affect your brain. It gets you irritable, it gets you in a very introverted mood, it messes up your energy when you go interact with the world. Pay attention and you will notice this. Make sure to use the time you need to be online effectively and don’t abuse it, or it is going to make it much more difficult for you to get into state, and for you to be connected with others — it makes you detached.

2) Exercise. Even if you cant get to a gym, do some pushups crunches and go for a walk, get outside. Get blood flowing. It makes you feel better and it keeps you in shape. If your not exercising then your not meeting your potential physically or mentally.

3) Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep — especially before a big day. More sleep translates to better control over your emotions and thoughts.

4) Find a hobby that you are passionate about, and pursue that hobby and practice that hobby. Be sure to devote a designated amount of time to it every week

5) Spend at least a half hour every week finding out something that would be a good conversational topic, some new type of information for you to learn or bring up. Make a point to work this into your conversations for that week.

6) Meditate, especially guided meditations meant to produce confident self assured thoughts. Commit to it every day for at least a half hour. This is the stuff successful athletes do. DO IT. It’s essential and very helpful.

So there you have it, nothing groundbreaking, nothing innovative, nothing that hard. It’s very simple — so simple that many will dismiss it. I am telling you right now if you make an effort to do this stuff and stick with it, that within 30 days you will feel better then you ever have had before , and then suddenly your life will begin to transform because you are focusing on the things that will help you lead to a more “feel good” lifestyle.

Gabriel

-Abraham Lincoln

Everyone has work that they do

Some people might be an accountant that crunches numbers; others might be an artist who splatters paint on a canvas

Even if you don’t have a typical “job” everyone has their work and puts a ample amount of time into it

I recently was being giving a lift by a friend of mine when we started talking about work and why people work the jobs they do

Let me first begin by saying that this friend’s job is that of an enterprise rent a car driver

His job is to drive customers to and from the enterprise rental location

He does this 40 hours a week

Now some people might look at this job and ask, “why? Isn’t there some other job that pays more/has more perks/is more distinguished?”

(In fact most people would look down on his job, which is simply misplaced anger and a person’s attempt to gain significance by putting another person down)

He said that even before he got his driver license, he always knew that he wanted to be a driver

Whether he was driving cars for a company, being a chauffeur, or even a truck driver

He said he couldn’t think of anything more satisfying

He said that he is planning on getting a truck and driving from the east coast to the west, living on the road

The look of joy on his face when he described his road trip, showed that he had true love and passion for his work

He then said, “Its better to work a job for less money than to wake up to a high paying job you can’t stand”

I laughed and agreed with him, and it got me thinking

“How many people work jobs they don’t love simply because they are led to believe it is safe option, or the only option they have”

A good portion of my friends who just graduated college are about to enter the workforce

My friends have backgrounds in marketing, finance, management, psychology, culinary arts, and many other fields

While I support tall of them in their endeavors into the workforce, the interesting fact is that about 80 percent of them hate the field they work in

Not dislike or it could be better, but hate

The vast majority of college grads are trying to get into the hot career pathways that will lead them to bigger salaries, bigger perk packages, larger expense account s and ultimately more money

They are in the belief that money is part of the key to happiness

So in that belief they get jobs so they can

“I can make enough money to start a family”

“I can make enough money to get the Hollywood wannabes to want to fuck me”

“So I can work in the field for 10 years then have enough money to do what I really want”

“So I can have enough money to travel”

“So I can retire in 20 years”

These are all quotes directly from friends I have at school

They are not mislead, in fact they have been guided in this direction nearly their whole lives by everyone and everything they interacted with

What they do not realize is that all the money in the world will not offer you happiness in life

It’s important to recognize what kind of work you enjoy doing, whether that is a hobby, activity, sport, anything

You need to ask yourself

“If I could do any job in the world, what would that be?”

Assume you would get paid nothing, and there are no perk packages, and there are no qualifications of any kind

What would you do?

Write it down, and post it on your wall

That is what you should be striving for in life, and any other job is simply a waste of your time unless it falls in alignment with your dream work life

If you want to work for PETA then it’s probably not a good idea to view McDonalds as a platform for your future career

Work jobs that interest you, and have direct connections to what you want to do in life

Want to travel the world?

Take a job as tour guide in the country of your choice

Want to own your own business?

Work directly for a small business owner and learn the ropes of running your own company

Want to be a basketball player in the NBA?

Get outside and start shooting hoops

Nothing is unattainable, people will throw all sorts of statistics at you and tell you that whatever you want is not possible

Ignore them

The human potential is limitless and this means you can work in any career you choose

Don’t let someone else dictate how your suppose to live your life, and guide you towards the “safe” jobs

Take a risk; work the jobs they may not pan out, that may not have the great starting salary, that does not have a 401k

Take a chance, that’s what life is all about

Take the reins of your life and work in something that truly moves you, and makes a difference for yourself and others

That will give you joy in life

Not money from a safe job that you doesn’t make you happy

Something to think about

-Gabriel

“One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is a question that has recently become a large hot button, especially for myself as a recent college graduate

People are constantly asking me, “What are your plans? Why are moving to the west coast? What do you want to do with your life?”

Every question is rooted in finding out what I am all about, as in society we are typically defined externally by our careers, goals, and achievements

Ultimately the question is essentially “who are you?”

While no one is asking me this directly, but rather indirectly, it is when we ask this very question to someone DIRECTLY that questions arise

“Who Am I?”

People will immediately either

A)  Draw a blank stare and have to think about who they really are

B)   Offer a abridged answer that typically defines them by the confines of the career, religion, or marital status

The interesting notion is that in fact, neither of these things are your identity

Your identity is something that is intangible, and utterly definable by  terms

The beauty and problem of identity lies in its tangibility

Because while it is tangible, your identity becomes ultimately defined by the people /career/etc that occur in your life

You become a victim of circumstances

For example

Perhaps you weren’t as vocal as other kids in your class

So kids begin to tell you are shy

Since there is no refuting evidence you believe them and in time adopt it as part of your personality

The next time you see a man or woman you want to talk to, you decide not to because “it’s not who you are”

This Pygmalion effect occurs every day in your life, and reinforces who you are in your mind, while simultaneously preventing you from trying new activities that might be “not who you are”

Perception is Projection so to speak

On the other hand because your identity is in face tangible, you have the ability to change it to whatever you want

If for example you are a safe, quiet person, but you desire to a an adventuring hard spoken individual you merely need to change your criteria for who you are

Instead of associating yourself with the mental perception of being “safe and quiet”

You need to find new verbs, terms, and adjectives that better describe who you would like to be

Write them all down on a piece of paper

Yes seriously write them down

The first step is to assume that you are already an adventurous person, and therefore wean your identity to make a shift from quiet and safe to loud and adventurous

You need to try as hard as possible to think, feel, and act as who you aspire to be

Then ask yourself what ACTION you need to take in order to become more adventurous/loud spoken

For example, maybe your friends ask you to go cliff diving, and you jump to say “No thanks, that’s not…..” But you cut yourself off, you realize that you are embodying the characteristics of an adventurous person so therefore you reluctantly accept your friends offer instead of simply saying “that’s not me”

As you follow through with action in addition to assuming the role of the person you want to be, your new identity will begin to take shape, and the amazing part is that you will see immediate results as long as action is taken.

So when you get to the edge of the cliff you don’t look down and say no, but rather you say to yourself “This is who I WANT to be” and jump

Every time you follow through in your actions, thoughts, and beliefs of who you are striving to be, you in fact embody that identity and find that you not only had the capacity to be a different person all along, but that the capacity to do all the things that “weren’t who you are” was within you all along

Have fun being who you want to be

Gabriel

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”

- Henry Ford

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing. “

- Abraham Lincoln

How can I motivate you, what’s stopping you?

People always ask me why I’m so motivated in my life

They don’t understand why I strive to push myself in all the areas of life that I find valuable, rather it be health, relationships, or my business.

The truth of the matter is that my drive in life is not some magical concept that is only attainable by a few members of society

But rather motivation is something that is already within everyone, it’s just a matter of uncovering it

Once a person realizes their capacity to accomplish anything, and finds the things in their life that truly move them because they are PASSIONATE about it then you will find a never ending pool of confidence, love, and desire to push yourself in all areas of your life

One of the blocking paths to being motivated in life is a lack of passion in life

Passion can be found in any aspect of your life, from your intimate relationships, to your work, to even your dreams

The problem is that most people don’t have many things that fuel true passion in their life

They are working a job they don’t love

Or they are in a relationship that is founded on connection rather than true love

Or maybe they just aren’t happy about the things that used to bring them joy in life

The key is there is NO PASSION

Does this mean you should quit your job, leave your partner? And move to India to be a monk with no worldly possessions?

Not at all

But rather your should rediscover the passion in the things you do

There is a reason you are in the relationship you’re in, there is a reason you work the job you work

You need to dig deep and discover what initially enticed you in these areas of life

This is the ground floor for reigniting the passion in your life, and recultivating personal motivation in your life

By discovering what got you into the job, relationship, or whatever area of life you can discover why you do what you do every day

This gives you personal perspective and allows you to rediscover the passion in your life

Or even possibly find out that new passions existed that you never knew about

With passion in your life, the ability to apply it to other areas merely requires a shift in your focus, the passion for your desire to be physically fit for example can be used as leverage for building new relationships

Once passion is back in your life, you now have vastly expanded your potential to accomplish things in not only that area of your life, but in any area of life because you have “refueled” yourself so to speak.

By having drive in life, it will be reflected in all areas of your life, up to and including the nuances in the way you walk, talk, and act in everyday life

No longer are you walking through life like a hamster in a wheel, but rather you have a new found drive in life that is causing you to reassess all the things that matter to you, and gives you the potential to push yourself harder and faster than ever before

“The future depends on what we do in the present.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

I know that it is all about knowing, not belief.

Belief is the vehicle and the GPS. That is the compass to the knowing, which is a direct result of experience. The belief is the frequency to the manifestation, the path to experience, which then creates the most powerful state of knowing.

If you would like to bring to you, all the things you want in life, I think it is very important to understand the difference between what you know, and what you believe. A belief is something that has certain characteristics, and a knowing has certain characteristics.

1. Beliefs are handed to you, knowings are from within.

Which means belief has doubt attached to it, and knowing has none. It comes from within, from your direct experience.

2. Beliefs will let you down in the time of crisis, knowings never let you down.

The reason a belief is something you cannot rely upon is the doubt that is attached to it. Where as “what you know”, what you absolutely KNOW, for example: How to ride a bycicle.. When a crisis comes along, you will not be let down.

3. Your beliefs are mental exercises, your knowings are physical exercises.

Your beliefs are located in the mental realm as thoughts that you constantly reinforce. These are strictly mental exercises. You constantly practice these until they become your reality. That is a reality that is based upon your doubt that is attached to these beliefs.

You may believe that people shouldn’t wear jewllery, or have tattoos, or people are evil if they dont attend church. These kind of beliefs will influence your conduct, and cause you to judge others.

Your knowings are located in the physical domain. Even though it originated in the mental. When you know something, it is a part of your total being. That as you absolutely know as certainty, such as riding a bike, is a part of your celluar being. It resides so deeply within you, that it is in the cells of your humanity. That which you once only believed, because it was given to you from some external source, has now been transformed into a knowing.

4. A belief will restrict you, a knowing will empower you.

Again, the reason a belief will restrict you, is that doubt that is attached. Therefore when you go to act upon it, you do it sort of tenously, with just a little bit of reservation, so there is a restriction. Where a knowing, will empower you. It is the difference in knowing about god, and knowing god. Knowing about god is a belief, where knowing god…just is.

5. Your beliefs are all transitory, while your knowings are eternal.

Think about some of the beliefs you have had, and how they have shifted over the years. Remember when people were SHOCKED to see men wearing long hair, and earings…

So our beliefs about things, are very transitory, and shifting all the time, but what you know is with you forever….