How many times have you decided, told yourself or thought about avoiding that cookie or bag of chips? And when the time arrives that the cookie or chips are offered to you, you eat it anyway?

That is your money mind working here. It KNOWS that when you say something, you don’t really mean it!

How many times have you made a daily fitness agreement with yourself only to break it the next day? That is your money mind hard at work (or maybe not so hard after all!).

Our money mind takes control of our actions, because it knows it can! It knows that when you make a commitment, you don’t really commit. Maybe you do sometimes, or for the first few days, but then after that the monkey mind, KNOWS. It can expect yout o fall back on your words.

Don’t LET your money mind have control! HOW?

Well it’s pretty simple. Don’t make a commitment to yourself that you won’t stick to. And when you DO commit, don’t break your word! Follow through to the bitter end, no matter HOW hard it feels.

The more you follow through with your commitments and goals, the more in control you become, and the LESS control your monkey mind will get.

Your money mind will learn, that when you say yes, you MEAN yes. And when you say no, you MEAN no. Try it! You’ll see.

Start with small goals. Take it day by day. Set one goal for yourself for today, and make it happen. Do that for a week. Then add another daily goal. Stick to those two goals for one week… EVERY day.

Discipline takes practice. The more you practice, the less control you give to your money mind.

With an internet businesses in particular, it’s way too easy to think you are productive, when in reality your activities far from support your business objectives. There is so much “busy-work” that can consume your work hours: checking email, social network activities that don’t directly contribute to your business or lead generation, too much forum posting, you name it.

I was creating To Do lists on my computer and on paper, but it was hard to complete them on a daily basis. Other tasks always came up and seemed more important.

So I decided to try this strategy, and it’s worked very well for me.

I use a small whiteboard that I keep next to my computer, and I’ve written a list of the things that I want to accomplish daily, without fail. This is my baseline, absolute minimum To Do list. I do plenty of other tasks as well, not to mention running a household, and raising two small children!

As I complete the items, I check them off throughout the day. So my daily goal is to have all items checked off before I go to bed. If I put them off until late, then I pay for it by staying up later than normal to get all items checked off. You can be sure that the next day, I don’t repeat that pattern.

The next morning, I erase the checkmarks and begin again. As my list changes, I erase items and write new ones.

This strategy provides a simple way to hold myself accountable, and visually see progress.

The key here is to commit to yourself that you will absolutely complete each item on the whiteboard. Don’t start this process until you are ready to commit.

Today’s lesson may seem trivial. A lot of people gloss over this… don’t take is seriously.

We all need to work on ourselves every day. Never stop becoming a better person, it’s the ticket to success.

Our lives are what we make of it, so it makes sense that the more we improve ourselves, the better our lives become.

I honestly believe, the if we genuinely help ourselves and others to become better people, then good things will happen to us.

I’ve always been a giving person. I never hesitate to lend a hand, offer financial assistance (when I can), include others who might feel left out.

I am not one of these tit-for-tat types, that counts their contributions and compares it to their returns.

Sure, there are those that will take advantage of you, and in if I find myself in those situations, I love on. But I don’t dwell on it, nor do I consider my contributions as “losses”.

Self improvement can come in many forms…

There is the obvious… work every day on developing your skills. The more skills you gain, the more valuable you become to assisting others.

But there is so much more… a big one being the ATTITUDE and MINDSET that you hold.

Do you live in abundance, meaning you take full advantage of the live that you DO have?

Or, do you live each day focused on what you don’t have or don’t like about your life?

Do show gratitude for what you have? For the earth and environment? For the people around you?

“Victims” don’t get anywhere.

These are people who have excuses for their lack of success, who blame others for their losses, failures, and opposite of abundance. They are the people who have be “dealt a bad hand of cards.”

Their neighbor’s lawns tend to have “greener” grass than their own.

I fortunately had driven parents, who encouraged me to succeed in school, to go to college, and to get a good job. This was a start.

It wasn’t until about two years ago, though, that I realized that I had to take complete ownership and responsibility and of my life and how it was turning out.

I wanted changes in my life. And I finally realized that these changes were NOT going to happen until I took a mind shift, and made the personal goal to…

WORK ON MYSELF EVERY DAY!

I’de like to share a video with you that I filmed in memory of Randy Pausch. Talk about life lessons and self improvement! He said it so well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC4aZTlHV4I