Many influencers, Instagrammers and YouTubers give tips on how to save money on laundry, hairdressers, food and lots of other things.

One of the YouTubers I recently noticed explained how he lives on oatmeal and Heinz tomato soup in order to save and invest and become financially independent.

An Instagrammer posted about avoiding a competition and a party at the rowing club because he wanted to save the money.

Other people even discuss opting out of having children because – sigh – children are expensive.

One thing they all have in common is that they let money control their choices and thus also their lives, when it should be the other way around.

They should be having fun and meeting other people and enjoying life to the fullest. Money should be a servant for them to live a rich life.

Instead, they let their choices be restricted by some numbers.

I have long wondered what the real problem is with that approach… apart from them missing out on all the fun.

I have a take on that:

If money rules over so much in your life, you have become a slave to money.

You should turn it around.

Instead of shaving the cost down and having a Scrooge-like approach to life, you should focus fully on knowing and aiming for the type of life you want to live, and then go for it – no matter what it costs.

It must be a goal to attract whatever money it takes to live that life. Instead of cutting your life down to fit the money.

We only have one life.

When faced with these everyday choices, ask yourself:

Do you really want to eat oatmeal? Would you rather go out and eat with your friends? Do you want to party at the rowing club? Do you want to have children?

You should even go a few steps further and ask: If everything were possible, where would you like to live, what would you like to eat, and what would you like to do?

The people who become slaves to money forget to ask themselves these fundamental questions before making the calculator delete those opportunities.

You should make money your servant, not your master.

You have to set big, passionate goals and achieve them.

It may be goals that you don’t know how to land because these goals are inspiring and will make you grow.

If you delete things from the list because of money, you’re letting money be your master.

Let’s take a look at when money is your servant and when it’s your master.

Money is your master if…

• You let money decide whether you should strive for something.
• You let money decide which job you should take.
• You refrain from doing things you love because of the cost.
• You refrain from getting an education because of the cost.
• You look at the price before you look at the item.
• You avoid discussing financial issues with people in your life.
• You often come into conflict about money with people in your life.
• You run out of money at the end of the month.
• You habitually spend more money than you earn.
• You hide behind the door when charities ask for donations.
• You worry about money.
• Your investments (or lack thereof) can keep you awake at night.

Money is your servant (and you are its master) if:

• You understand how much power you yourself have to create your life… including your income and your wealth.
• You get money to work for you and not the other way around.
• You spend money to support your personal growth and development.
• You let money flow because you understand that what you send out comes back.
• You have a feeling that you’ll have enough to create the life that you want.
• You have not chosen a job or career based on how much you can earn.
• You spend time thinking about what you want to create in the next phase of your life.
• You understand that you can spend money to help you get to the next level.

Here’s What to Do About It

Did any of the examples hit you in a sore spot?

Maybe it’s time to review your relationship with money.

You need to focus on increasing your income – and preferably from multiple sources – than on saving to invest.

The good news is that money is always on the move. If you’re looking for it, it’s looking for you too.

Money has no national borders, no need for sleep, and no language barriers. Money doesn’t care about your sex, your race, your skin color, or your age.

Money gets you the things you want. It’s an incredible servant if you let it be.

It’s about setting huge and ambitious goals and achieving them. Always ask what before you ask how much.

Life is not about curling up. It is about growing and unfolding.

Remember, a single good investment or business idea can create high return, and that can be the thing that gets the ball rolling for you.

Don’t forget to download my e-book Free Yourself where you’ll learn to invest as one of the best – super charge yourself through the plateaus. You can download it here.

If you examine how people succeed with almost anything, there is always an important ingredient that is just as crucial for their outcome as flour is for bread.

No flour, no bread.

What is it?

Persistence.

The ability to keep going, even when it gets difficult.

As Bertrand Russell says:

“No great achievement is possible without persistent work.”

It’s not rocket science, but it’s important.

Are you persistent with your goals and wants?

Whether it’s investing and researching companies, going for a run every morning, or writing a book.

The truth is that few people possess the ability to be persistent when things get a little difficult or uncomfortable.

It’s not that hard to be persistent with watching Netflix every night or going to the Friday bar. It’s the stuff that requires focus, sweat, or anything uncomfortable that is tricky.

In the stock world, many people give up the moment the stock market falls.

They get nervous, sell the shares, and never return.

How do you develop the ability to be persistent?

Here are seven steps to building it:

1. Identify a Strong Desire

It has to be something that you really want to achieve.

If you’ve tried something before but have stalled, could it be you’re not really interested and don’t think it’s really that important?

I taught myself to knit during my first maternity leave, and I knitted baby vests while the baby slept for naps. But I didn’t really have a big desire to knit. It was just something that was fun to do during the little breaks that occur when caring for a baby.

Do I knit today?

Not at all. And I don’t care. There are other things that have far higher priority for me (like investments, the blog, and teaching).

2. Have a Specific Goal

Wanting something is not enough.

You need to be specific and write what you want to achieve and by when.

It should be something challenging. Even better if it’s something you have never done before.

Sometimes we stop doing something because it’s no longer challenging and gets boring. As human beings, we are meant to develop and grow.

What’s the next level for you?

3. Find Out Why You Want It

Is there a deeper reason behind your desire and goal?

Can you find a reason that is related to doing something good for others in the world?

Keep asking yourself, “and why?” until you have exhausted your motives.

Changes are if, your goal benefits others, you will be more motivated in the long run.

If, for example, your goal is to invest and build a fortune, think of the things that you can do in the future with or for the people you love. Or the causes you can donate to.

If your goal is to eat healthier or exercise, you think of how you’ll live longer and have better health – and how you can be there more for those you care about.

Who would you like to do something for?

What would you like to change in the world?

4. Seek Information

Before you lay out your plan, you need to acquire information and knowledge.

Look at how others have achieved your goal and see if you can repeat the process.

If your goal is to run, for example, it may be a good idea to take a look at other people’s running schedules before making one.

You also need to get hold of running books, running blogs, and maybe join a running club and get a running coach.

The same with investing: Read books, read blog posts, listen to podcasts, join a community (you are welcome here in my Facebook Group), and take courses.

The information will help you devise a strategy and make a plan – but also keep you motivated.

5. Make a Plan

Have a strategy and make a specific plan with sub-goals.

If you want to run a marathon and have never run before, you may first need to make a plan to run 5k in a timed competition, then 10k, then a half marathon.

You need to make a weekly running schedule so that you reach your sub-goals.

You need to look at how important the small sub-goals are for the main goal. The same with investing. Have a main goal and set up sub-goals. How much are you going to invest each month? How much will your portfolio growth within 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years?

6. Decide Wholeheartedly to Do It

Make up your mind. No emergency exit.

Decide wholeheartedly to do something every day to move forward.

Even on a rainy day.

It’s the consistent daily actions that are the building blocks of your success.

7. Visualize The Result and Feel the Joy

Sports stars visualize their victories.

They see how they enter the field and score goals.

They feel the emotion and hear the audience cheering. They are positive and feel the excitement.

Studies have shown that it affects their performance. Statistically speaking, they actually score more goals if they visualize it first.

You have to do the same.

Stay focused on the belief that it can be done and feel the joy already today.

The brain doesn’t know the difference between fiction and reality. It will believe that you can do it.

That keeps you motivated.

The Road to Living Your Dream Life

When we are persistent, we have the opportunity to achieve our goals and dreams.

The biggest danger is probably that you slip back into your old habits and patterns because you get caught up in the everyday machine.

Avoid the danger of getting caught up in the fear of what could go wrong by visualizing the goal.

Remember that procrastination creates more fear and action creates confidence.

In the end, it comes down to taking action, building knowledge, experience, and habits.

Learn about investing like Warren Buffett in my free e-book Free Yourself here.

It is hard for you to get rich if you don’t believe it’s possible.

It’s hard for you to become wealthy if you consciously or unconsciously feel a little guilty about wanting more.

It’s difficult to maintain your wealth if you’re afraid of losing money.

Nevertheless, the truth is that building, attracting, and maintaining wealth begins in your mind.

It may sound strange to some people, but nonetheless, it’s true.

What do you think about money?

Is it forbidden (“money is the root of all evil”)? Or neutral? Or maybe a means of doing potentially good stuff, like donating to orphans?

What do you tell yourself about money?

Here are some habits that can help you build generational wealth.

1. Visualize and Believe that You are Wealthy

Our minds give us what we ask for.

If you feel insecure and involuntarily fear losing it all, your mind will do anything to attract said disaster.

Your mind really wants you to be the master.

It wants you to succeed in anything you imagine.

Whatever you fear becomes a kind of prophecy.

If, on the other hand, you imagine yourself in prosperity, you will get a huge tailwind.

So why not just decide to believe in the best from the start?

You can’t gain speed when you’re stepping on the brakes

Warren Buffett said as a child that he would become a millionaire before he turned 30. He envisioned himself as rich from the very beginning.

Maybe that was precisely why he became the richest man in the world (until he started donating his fortune).

While you’re at it, imagine all the good things you will do with that wealth.

2. Set Ambitious Goals

Strong goals are the driving force that gets you moving at high speed.

It’s important to set big, juicy goals – otherwise you’re like a car without fuel.

When setting goals, don’t be like a grumpy, realistic grandpa.

If you set yourself a goal that’s in line with the progress you’re experiencing today, the energy will be flat from the outset. Why? Because there’s not really anything new in it, is there?

If you 10x the goal, you’re guaranteed to fly up from the chair with the question: “Cool, when do we get started?”

Let’s say you launch a small business and your goal is a turnover of 1 million the first year. It’s realistic and on par with your closest competitors.

If, on the other hand, you say to yourself that your turnover needs to be 10 million, then it starts to feel wild and fun.

Likewise, if your realistic goal is 10 million, up it to 100 million. Wild stuff, right?

Something happens with the energy when the goal is challenging. You become much more driven to succeed.

Your imagination is stimulated to think up new solutions all the time because you can’t get there by doing what you usually do.

3. Make Up Your Mind Wholeheartedly

The main reason most people don’t really change their lives is that they never really commit to it.

They just let the days come and go without committing wholeheartedly to whatever it is. There’s a “but” in there somewhere.

Maybe you’re on the verge of deciding to begin investing in the stock market.

Maybe you’re considering starting your own business.

Maybe it’s something completely different you’re undecided about.

Whatever it is, you know what you need to decide wholeheartedly to do.

Things start to shift when you’re 100% committed to it. The universe aligns in a crazy way to help you.

4. Ask Good Questions

We all face difficult days and unexpected events in life.

How we handle them differs enormously.

The same type of event can cause one person to become depressed and another person to commit to change.

Why do we react so differently?

Much of it has to do with the conversation we have with ourselves.

If you slow down and listen to your thoughts, you’ll hear some phrases repeated over and over again in your mind. Maybe you hear some questions too.

What type of questions do you ask yourself?

Do those questions drive you forward? Are they motivating? Or are they knocking you down?

Do you tend to ask, “Why does this always happen to me?” or “What did I do wrong?”

Or do you ask more motivating types of questions, like: “What can I learn from this?”, “How can I make sure it doesn’t happen again?”, or “how can I be grateful that this happened?”.

5. Focus, Focus, Focus

When Warren Buffett and Bill Gates met for the first time, the host asked what the most important factor contributing to their successes was.

They are both extremely wealthy. One, as you probably know, because of coding and building software, and the other, through investing.

They both gave the same one-word answer: focus.

You may have heard that it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something.

No doubt Warren Buffett put 10,000 hours into learning about money and stock market investments before approaching the first investor for the original partnership.

No doubt Bill Gates put 10,000 hours into programming in his parents’ basement long before he even established Microsoft.

Are you ready to put 10,000 hours into something in order to have an extraordinary life?

Do you want to put 10,000 hours into learning how to invest? How about 1,000 hours? 100?

10,000 hours is enough to make almost anybody bail, but the good news is that you don’t need to put 10,000 hours into investing in the stock market in order to succeed with it.

The Shortcut

The good news is that there’s a shortcut.

You can learn from others who have focused and spent 10,ooo hours learning it.

If you are willing to spend time learning from someone who has put in 10,000 hours of learning, you can get to a pretty high level much faster.

To jump some plateaus, it’s an excellent idea to learn from someone who knows more about a subject than you do. Learn from the best.

That way, you can save time by learning from others’ mistakes and successes and fast-track your success.

Learn faster by downloading my free e-book. Click here to get it.

If you are dependent on receiving a monthly salary, you have a particular way of thinking that has been encoded in you through years of schooling and socialization in the job market.

There are some special phrases, sentences and wordings that repeat themselves.

Maybe you use them too, and maybe you have never questioned your choice of wording.

Have a look at this list of ten typical phrases.

Maybe you can recognize yourself in one or more of them?

1. “It’s Not Good for My Career to ____”

You can put almost anything in here.

For example:

“It’s not good for my career to have children now.”

“It’s not good for my career to move now.”

“It’s not good for my career to take a leave to travel the world.”

People who are addicted to work tend to rob themselves of – or procrastinate on – some of life’s greatest gifts because they elevate their careers to a sacred spot.

It may not be consciously that they place a higher value on work than life.

It may be caused by an inner insecurity about what will happen and how they’ll survive and support their family if they don’t have a “career”.

But what exactly is a career?

It sounds like a thing you should have, right?

But what does that mean?

It means a job where you strive to do it well so your boss will approve and give you a promotion. But let’s be honest, it’s a job, even if it’s a fancy one.

Try to replace the word “career” with “job”.

“It’s not good for my job right now that I take a leave to travel the world.”

That sounds silly, right?

Try not to use the word “career”.

It makes you behave in a certain way that’s not really in your interest.

Avoiding the word “career” abolishes that tendency to put the world of jobs and salary on a pedestal as something almost sacred. Almost religious..

2. “There’s a Gap in Your/My Resume.”

Thinking of a resume as something fragile that unravels if you are not constantly on the go is probably one of the most foolish one of the most foolish mistakes you can make.

Nevertheless, both employees and employers often think along those lines.

You even hear the question during job interviews.

“Why is there a gap in your CV from 2009 to 2010?”

HR people ask these questions.

I think you should challenge it. Explain what you spent the time doing and emphasize what skills you got out of it.

Maybe you can even explain it on the resume so you tackle the gap question upfront.

3. “It’s Good for Your Resume”

I wish people didn’t make decisions solely based on how impressive it looks on a piece of paper.

But they do.

People take courses, do internships, and even pursue education and jobs because they think about what impression it gives on their resume.

Next time you say something about how it looks on a resume, try saying “It will look good on a piece of paper” instead.

Silly, right?

How about thinking about what skills you get from those pursuits and how you can use them in the future?

4. “I Can’t Afford to Take That Course”

The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.

When you ask yourself if you can afford to do something, also ask yourself if you can afford not to do it.

When I sign up for a course, I always ask myself what it will take before I can earn that money back with the new skills I get.

There is usually not that much that needs to happen.

This is how entrepreneurs and investors think.

I don’t think much about what it costs – I think much more about what I can get out of it and what it can do for me and my clients in the future.

5. I Can’t Afford to Hire Help

I can’t afford cleaning help. I can’t afford an accountant. I can’t afford a babysitter.

Okay. So you say.

Have you calculated what you make in an hour?

Don’t you earn more than a cleaning assistant per hour? I should hope so.

You think like a wage slave who sees money as a fixed monthly salary.

Entrepreneurs and investors know that time is money, and that they need to buy more time by outsourcing so they have as much time as possible to focus on what they are good at.

6. “I Don’t Have Time to Pursue My Hobby”

You don’t have time to play tennis, swim in the ocean or do horseback riding (or whatever you love)?

You’re robbing yourself of the most precious thing in life … namely, life itself.

Time-poor people are the new poor.

Unfortunately, it’s very common to not prioritize old hobbies in order to have more time for a career.

7. “Do You Want to Meet for a Coffee in Week 34?”

Seriously?

Normal people don’t talk like that.

Oh, wait. All the career people do.

If you find yourself thinking in terms of ‘project weeks’ and have to plan beyond this week and next in order to schedule time for your best friend, it’s probably a sign you should kick it down a notch.”

8. “Sorry, I Can’t Tell You How Much I Earn”

It’s a shame to think like that, because you and your colleague have no opportunity to assess whether you get a reasonable salary or not.

At least be transparent with your colleagues. Transparency can put you and your coworkers in a better position when you have to renegotiate your salary.

9. “I Can’t Resign or Change Jobs Because They Need Me”

I’m sorry to tell you the harsh truth, but your workplace wouldn’t bat an eye at firing you.

You don’t owe them your life.

I made this mistake early on in my career when I worked as an office manager.

I thought the office would fall apart without me, and I postponed an internship at my dream workplace for 6 months (a newspaper).

To be in good standing with the new place, I found another guy to take the internship for the first 6 months.

Guess what. They hired him for a real permanent job – not me. He got there first.

The office management job couldn’t even find the time to write me a decent recommendation.

I still resent to this day that I wasn’t more selfish.

10. “What Am I Going to Do With All That Money?”

Some people think they will get corrupt if they have too much money.

They almost feel that it’s immoral to have more than their monthly salary in the bank account.

Where in the world does that idea come from?

Money isn’t dangerous. Money is a wonderful tool for living a great life.

Learn to appreciate money and make it grow so you have other sources of income than your paid work.

If you want to learn how to invest in stocks, you can download my investment book, Free Yourself, right here.