Posts Tagged ‘steve pavlina’

I was recently reading Men With Pens, a great site for blogging tips and other online resources. They also do various blog reviews which they call “Drive by Shootings“. They visit a blog and point out the good and the bad about the design, layout, and the content (They will be reviewing Simplistic Thoughts on October 26). Their latest review was a website called The Enhance Life. After reading Men With Pens’ review of the site, I decided to visit it to take a better look and see what they were talking about.

While doing so I came across an interesting article titled “Over Spending & Impulse Buying: 8 Reasons Why You’re Not To Blame“. As the title describes, the author talks about 8 ways people are influenced to overspend and buy things they don’t need and how it isn’t entirely their fault. While I agree with the fact that companies try desperately hard to get consumers to buy their products, I believe the final responsibility lies with the consumer. Not taking personal responsibility is one of the reasons that so many people are in debt.

Marketers will constantly be coming up with better and more cunning ways to try and convince you to buy something. Most of us are also raised to believe that the more we buy the better we will feel and media keeps this constantly installed in our minds. But it is you who gets to make the final decision whether or not to buy, and it will always be you who has to pay for the debt.

In order to make a smart decision, you must first realize that you are in control to make the decision. You have the power to control whether or not you spend money. A buy one get one free sale might be a good deal, but if you are struggling to pay rent then it isn’t something that you actually need then it probably is a bad decision. It’s true that marketing is becoming more sophisticated and better at influencing us to buy things. I am certainly guilty of this myself and have purchased things I don’t need. However, to put the blame on the marketing, advertisements, product dsiplays, or anything else besides yourself is very similar to blaming the kids who told dared you after you got in trouble.

But putting the blame somewhere else is the reason why so many people are in debt. Putting the blame elsewhere means you have no control over the situation and therefore can’t change it. As Steve Pavlina of Self Development for Smart People discusses in his new book, you must realize that you have the power to control your life. Once you realize that the responsibility is yours alone, you can take steps to change it.

So how can you stop yourself from being influenced and stop your spending?

1. Education- The more you understand about finance the better you will be able to improve your situation and the less likely you will be to spend. Also, learning about marketing and advertising will help you understand how you are being sold to.
2. Cut out the temptations- Stop window shopping. it’s just another excuse to get yourself to the store. Through away ads before looking at them.
3. Create a spending Budget and Stick to it- Creating a budget is a great way to limit the amount of money you spend. You have to stick with it to make it work.
4. Cut something out cold turkey- Do you spend a lot of money on DVDs, electronics, clothes, etc. Completely cut it out for a month. It will seem difficult at the beginning, but it gets much easier after a while and you will be much less likely to spend your hard saved money.
5. Stop watching so much TV and reading so many magazines- The media is constantly trying to influence us to purchase something. Cutting out the TV and magazines helps take away some of those temptations.

Over the last year, I have read over 60 books. With a good portion of those focusing on various aspects of personal development. However, Steve Pavlina’s new book, Personal Development for Smart People is one of the few books that actually focuses on personal development as a way to achieve the things you want in life.

The book covers 7 basic principles. Truth, Love, and Power make up the foundation principles. Oneness, Authority, Courage, are found by combining the foundation principles and Intelligence is the combination of them all. The book throughly explains what each principle is and then explains how to achieve it. The reason that this is a great way to look at personal development, is because it allows you to focus on 3 main principles and then build upon them. For Instance, in order to achieve authority you must first be truthful with yourself and also give yourself power to make any changes you want.

The following chapters then go through how you can apply these principles to change your habits, improve or change your career, manage your money, improve your health and relationships, and find your own spirituality. While we all think about making more money and having a great career, many times this comes at the cost of our health and happiness. The main theme of this book is about aligning all of these to live a full and happy life rather than having parts of your life that completely disagree with each other

Since I was a child, I always believed that I had to make lots of money to be happy. Eventually I found my way to Tokyo where I planned to climb the corporate ladder. However, after doing it for a couple of years, I realized that what really made me happy had nothing to do with money at all. Since then I have quit my job in Tokyo and am moving to a tropical island to start my own business. You can read the full story here. I have never been happier. I was able to come to this decision by using many of the principles in Steve Pavlina’s book. I just didn’t understand it at the time. I just wish I could have read this book a long time ago. I would easily put this in the top 5 most helpful books I have ever read and it should be a required reading for anyone graduating high school.