ThinkWeek #3 — Day 6 (The Last!)
So, it’s finally here! I can’t believe it! This week has been an absolute whirlwind!
As it’s the last day, I only had a few items on the list:
- Finish “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”.
- Wrap up my “key take-aways” for the week.
- Start consolidating the list of tasks I’ve created throughout the week!
Wrapping up “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”
As you probably saw from yesterday, I’ve already gotten through a lot of the book — so there wasn’t a huge amount to read today (it’s a short book at ~200 pages).
There were some really strong “ah-ha” moments for me today.
The only“…tion” that will make you rich is ACTION!
As I was reading through, it became increasingly clear to me that rich people don’t just do the obvious “finance stuff” and “business stuff” — there’s other fundamental action that goes on behind the scenes, especially:
- Education — Paramount. The more you know, the more you’re able to be, the more you can be the more you can do. The more you do the more value you bring to the world.
- Reflection — This is really implicit, there’s no way you can operate at the level required to really “go big” without being able to take a good, hard look at yourself, your finances and your business(es).
Affirmations, dedications, meditations, visualisations will get you into a great headspace — but to bring ideas that deliver value into the real world, only one thing will do it, action.
That being said, it’s crucial that you do work on the “inner” things as well. It all starts with you, get the foundation right.
You’ve been taught to never get freedom
I’m pretty sure that most of the time, if you ask people what they want when they “make it big” — they’ll say “freedom”. By that, we generally mean “freedom to do what we want with our time”, which normally entails:
- Working for yourself, or on a very loose basis with an employer.
- Freedom to work where you wish, when you wish.
- If you decide not to work, your life doesn’t implode. You have a roof over head, food etc.
In order to do this — specifically number 3 — you’re going to need some form of “passive income”. That is, “money generation that doesn’t require you to do anything”.
The problem is this we are not taught how do this. At all. Ever.
It’s almost like the education system is geared to limiting people to the middle class. 🤔
Similar to the The 80/20 Principle, you’re going to have to adopt some contrarian thinking and ditch a lot of your old beliefs, the main ones being
- Money can be generated without you requiring work.
- You can have your cake and eat it. You can be free.
Focus on building passive income streams.
“Side Hustle” looks like just the handbook we all needed for this!
Money is important, and that’s fine
I’ve really come to realise reading this book just how messed up my “programming” (my view of it, and it’s relationship with me) is with money.
To repeat from yesterday:
Money is extremely important in areas where it works, and extremely unimportant where it doesn’t.
It’s cool, now educate yourself on it’s use, learn to manage it effectively and have a great life!
“Money management” is a mindset and a strategy. These can be tweaked based on your goals — but it’s an enabler, not a “killjoy”. It should be celebrated.
Having money doesn’t make you a bad person, you can just be a bad person who has a stack of cash. The two are not related to each other. Even if the money was sourced by bad means. They’re pieces of paper, hello?!
It all starts with 'Be'
This echoes (although I guess technically it’s the other way around as this book was published first) “The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs” — work on you first. This means your education, your mental health, your physical health, your relationships, your purpose in the world.
This is simply because it makes you more capable. Consider this:
- You are given a business. The business folds. You end with nothing.
- You build a business. The business folds. You build another one.
We see this time and time again — really wealthy people focus on creation. So when destruction comes along (it can, and will do for any number of reasons) — you’re able to live on.
From the book: Be more. Do more. Have more. In that order.
Success is based on a series of skills — it should be practised and mastered.
I’ve got a lot from the book — and I commit to reading it again every month until my mindset shifts to where it needs to be. My base programming has some real “bugfixes” to be made, but I am committed. I want to be free.
Closing the week
I’ve jotted down a few thoughts as my over-arching “key take-away’s” for the week. While these are really “for my benefit” — I hope it gets the cogs turning in your mind for you:
Finding my “WHY” is something I wish I had done long ago
It’s incredible the emotional pull, and imagery it conjures up when I say it.
Having a list of HOWs also acts as a great filter and guiding light of “is this supporting your WHY?” In addition, it let’s you know if your WHATs are not aligned.
I really can’t recommend the book enough, and I’ll be looking to do more sessions with friends, and maybe even clients too.
What I found really sad about this experience? I’ve lost at least 10 years basically tumble-weeding along just doing what everyone else thought I should do. Sure, there’s certainly aspects of my career that I really enjoy — but when I look at my WHY, I start to question things…
Thankfully (and by a weird twist of fate), I’ve agreed to do some work for a client at a slightly different pace/format to my usual thing — and that I believe is more aligned with my WHY.
Self leadership is fundamental, and it starts when you wake up
Both entrepreneurship and/or financial wealth require self leadership — that is having a strong sense of:
- Who you are.
- What you can do.
- Where you’re going.
- Practice of intentionally influencing your thoughts, feelings and behaviour to support the above.
A nice succinct version from Self Leadership International:
“Self-leadership is the process by which you influence yourself to achieve your objectives.”
The “Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs” really crushes a lot of these in one fell swoop (that doesn’t mean you should only have such habits/practices in the morning).
I’m committing to revamping my routine to include the new additions from “Life SAVERS” — affirmations and visualisations.
Be revolutionary, not evolutionary
Frankly, this is the bit that scares me the most. I know I’m at a point where I need to “level up”, and to do that (with where I want to be in life) means I am going to have to make some dramatic changes.
Not only is a ton of this in my head (always fun to fix), but there’s a lot I need to learn and I am at ground zero. I feel like a fish out of water.
That being said, while I find it daunting — it’s also exciting!
Everything I am “wanting” (better lifestyle, entrepreneurship, wealth etc.) are all skills and can be improved based on effort and repetition.
Always look for the “vital few”
Everything gets 80% of it’s results from 20% of its inputs.
Find them and act accordingly.
I’m finding my “Millionaire’s Mind”
This is going to be a major challenge to me. I grew up in an environment that was very accurately described by T.Harv Eker in “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. From the unfounded hatred of “rich people” due to the weird belief that you MUST work yourself to death for money.
Here’s one from today that hit me in the face like a brick — I can’t remember what was exactly written in the book, but (paraphrasing wildly) it was talking about how some (poor) people would refuse to pick up money in the street as it was “below them”.
Free money. You’re poor. There’s money you can have right there. 🤔
(Naturally, this assumes it’s not in a wallet that can be returned)
I’ve even dropped my own money and then refused to pick it up, as I was afraid people would see me picking up change and know I was poor.
How broken am I?!?
So, I’ve a lot of work to do on both my mindset, and general finance management — but I’m all in!
It’s all coming together…
The morning routines, the habits, the blueprint for side hustling, the reminder to look for the “vital few” and the mindset that will grow to enable me become a millionaire.
I’ve a lot of work to do, and a lot of brain re-wiring to do. But I have the blueprints now, it’s time to execute.
This is my third ThinkWeek, and I feel like I am getting better at them. I’m certainly flying home with more actions and more sense of a plan than I have done after previous ThinkWeeks. I’m really happy.
Considering your own ThinkWeek?
I just wanted to share how I (currently) go about organising, and I also wrote down some thoughts on how to improve the next.
Isolate yourself!
You’re there to think — this generally means you’re not hitting the CLURRRB, bars or whatever. Full disclosure — I do have a beer while I write up these blog posts 😉
Take yourself to a reasonably quiet area. Fill up the cupboards with food and prepare to get your think on!
Go where you feel great, and inspires thought
Don’t just lock yourself in a basement. I love the sun and the sea. It energises me. So a prerequisite for me is it must be somewhere close to the sea and sunny.
For my mid-year ThinkWeek, I’ve been going to Menorca. All I hear are cows mooing in the morning.
This was my first “winter” ThinkWeek and came to Tenerife. I think the island itself is a great pick, but the location (Playa de las Americas) is far from isolated (gets pretty boozy with stag/hen parties on Fri/Sat). That’s what I get for not completing my research! (Naturally, I’ve updated my checklist!)
Have a sense of “theme”, but little/no agenda
I wrote down a couple of high-level themes for this week. That’s it.
I think it’s important to just immerse yourself in thought and see where it takes you. Your subconscious will keep hold of those themes and steer you in the right direction.
Have a lot of books, but don’t read them all
Books are amazing, and offer an incredible ROI (often 10 years of author experience for less than £15). However — you want to get to the good stuff quickly (remember 80/20? 20% of the book is the good stuff!):
- Scan the chapter headings — which ones look the most interesting? Start with those. Which ones look uninteresting? Ignore them or flag to finish after ThinkWeek.
- Devour them! Highlight them, dog-ear the pages, write in them — in pen! You’re here to extract as much of their content, as quickly as possible. Go for it!
- If a book isn’t working out for you — shelve it. Move on to another (this is why I said bring lots). I generally have at least 2–3 books I know I won’t get time to read, but they are there as backups.
That’s pretty much it — go and immerse yourself and see what comes out!
Things I need to improve
Some of these are still just “loose ideas”, but thought they may be worth sharing:
- Get separate journals/notebooks. For some reason, I brought an old notebook — and I found myself getting really frustrated with the existing notes being in the way. This is probably some weird OCD thing, but I want to have all my ThinkWeek notes in a single series of journals! 😊
- Consider audio-books. I generally don’t use audio-books for non-fiction. I still find it too awkward to take decent notes on while commuting etc. I can listen to audio-books comfortably at high speed, so I am thinking they may be a good option to trial next ThinkWeek, as I’m sat at a table ready to take notes.
- Better regimen around bedtime. I’ve been pretty good with morning routines, but I had a couple of nights where I stayed up later than I should have. This then of course left me on the back foot for the next day. It’s an intense week and the brain needs plenty of rest!
I also forgot my blue light blocking glasses. Checklist FAIL! (I’ve updated it now). - Prep for blog posts better. I’ve not been happy with the quality of the blog posts throughout the week, I’ve not been taking enough time to review the day and pick out threads/themes/take-away’s etc. Make sure I stop and give myself time to prep before writing.
… and that’s a wrap!
Flying home tomorrow morning — can’t wait to crack on with the next few milestones.
Cracking on with actions from this week and my surgery! 🔪 👣🔧🔨🚶
Be awesome.
