161 Inspiring Quotes on Money and Wealth

By Henrik Edberg Published June 6, 2007 3 comments

Making money and creating wealth is one of my weakest areas – knowledge wise – when it comes to self-improvement.

So I thought it would be useful for me – and hopefully for you too – to put together a list of some of the best quotes on wealth and money that I have come across.

I especially like the ones by William A. Ward, Benjamin Franklin, Gandhi and Henry Ford.

This is 161 motivating and sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking quotes on money and wealth from the past few thousands of years.

I hope you’ll find them as helpful as I have.

And if you want more inspiration then have a look at this post filled with quotes to help you through the midweek slump and this one with quotes on inner peace.

Inspiring Quotes on Money and Wealth

“Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.”
William A. Ward

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
Seneca

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
Ayn Rand

“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shuts down for ten years.”
Warren Buffett

“Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.”
Erich Fromm

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
Jim Rohn

“The person who doesn’t know where his next dollar is coming from usually doesn’t know where his last dollar went.”
Unknown

“It doesn’t matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You’re still left alone with yourself in the end.”
Billy Idol

“Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.”
Daniel Kahneman

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”
Zig Ziglar

“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”
George Lorimer

“I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.”
Robert Bosch

“Making money is a common sense. It’s not rocket science. But unfortunately, when it comes to money, common sense is uncommon.”
Robert Kiyosaki

“That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.”
Henry David Thoreau

“Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.”
Kahlil Gibran

“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.”
Albert Camus

“The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
Henry David Thoreau

“Money is like muck—not good unless it be spread.”
Francis Bacon

“It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages.”
Henry Ford

“Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it.”
Tim Ferriss

“If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.”
Ben Franklin

“I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.”
Warren Buffett

“Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.”
Gandhi

“They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”
Kahlil Gibran

“I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.”
Malcolm Forbes

“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”
Edmund Burke

“When a fellow says it ain’t the money but the principle of the thing, it’s the money.”
Artemus Ward

“Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.”
Unknown

“He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“To acquire money requires valor, to keep money requires prudence, and to spend money well is an art.”
Berthold Auerbach

“Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.”
P.T Barnum

“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.”
T.T. Munger

“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”
Françoise Sagan

“Many folks think they aren’t good at earning money, when what they don’t know is how to use it.”
Frank A. Clark

“When I had money everyone called me brother.”
Polish proverb

“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Earn with your mind, not your time.”
Naval Ravikant

“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”
Miguel de Cervantes

“I pity that man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth shall starve in the process.”
Benjamin Harrison

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“Money often costs too much”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.”
Simone Weil

“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.”
Jonathan Swift

“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.”
Chris Rock

“A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.”
Joe Moore

“Know what you own, and know why you own it.”
Peter Lynch

“Money isn’t everything…but it ranks right up there with oxygen.”
Rita Davenport

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”
Maya Angelou

“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”
James W. Frick

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
Oscar Wilde

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
Jim Rohn

“Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing.”
J. Paul Getty

“Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.”
Robert Kiyosaki

“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”
Henry Ford

“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”
Steve Martin

“Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
Oprah Winfrey

“Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self.”
Nathan W. Morris

“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”
Paul Samuelson

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
Sam Walton

“Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success – and success is in direct proportion to our service.”
Earl Nightingale

“The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.”
Warren Buffett

“Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris – I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.”
Charlie Munger

“Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved.”
Bill Gates

“If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it.”
Kim Garst

“If you want to get rich, remember that the way to do it is via equity, not salary.”
Sam Altman

“No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.”
Plato

“There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money.”
Alan Watts

“It’s simple arithmetic: “Your income can grow only to the extent you do”.
T. Harv Eker

“The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.”
Ben Graham

“Wealth does not make people happy, but positive increases in wealth may.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“99% of all problems can be solved by money — and for the other 1% there’s alcohol.”
Quentin R. Bufogle

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”
Haruki Murakami

“If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”
John Bogle

“The fools in life want things fast and easy — money, success, attention.”
Robert Greene

“It’s amazing how fast later comes when you buy now.”
Milton Berle

“Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money.”
Ray Dalio

“Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.”
Charles Caleb Colton

“A sign of wealth: No longer needing an alarm clock to wake up.”
Greg Isenberg

“Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.”
George Orwell

“The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’”
Sir John Templeton

“Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”
Epictetus

“Money grows on the tree of persistence.”
Japanese proverb

“The more you learn, the more you earn.”
Warren Buffett

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Jim Carrey

“Real wealth is not about money. Real wealth is: not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say “yes”, not worrying about others claiming your time and energy. Real wealth is about freedom.”
James Clear

Motivational Saving Money Quotes

“Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more.”
Jack Benny

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
Epictetus

“The rich invest their money and spend what is left; the poor spend their money and invest what is left.”
Jim Rohn

“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.”
Robert G. Allen

“So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.”
Alan Watts

“Stop buying things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t even like.”
Suze Orman

“Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.”
Benjamin Franklin

“It’s easy to say you don’t care about money when you have plenty of it.”
Ransom Riggs

“In the Middle Ages, the rich spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments while the less well go into debt buying cars and televisions they don’t really need.”
Yuval Noah Harari

“Money moves from those who do not manage it to those who do.”
Dave Ramsey

“If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.”
Warren Buffett

“Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.”
Will Rogers

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.”
Robert Kiyosaki

“You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.”
Dave Ramsey

Smart and Insightful Money Quotes

“Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each.”
Christopher Rice

“Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.”
P.T. Barnum

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
Albert Einstein

“Making money isn’t hard in itself… What’s hard is to earn it by doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“Focus on solving real problems and not on making money. There will be enough takers for your solutions. You will help make the lives of some people better, and money will follow.”
Bhavish Aggarwal

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”
Pablo Picasso

“Before you can become a millionaire, you must learn to think like one. You must learn how to motivate yourself to counter fear with courage.”
Thomas J. Stanley

“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
Steve Jobs

“Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully.”
Scott Alexander

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
Charles Dickens

“If you want to be financially free, you need to become a different person than you are today and let go of whatever has held you back in the past.”
Robert Kiyosaki

“People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”
Joan Rivers

“Wealth is largely the result of habit.”
John Jacob Astor

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
Benjamin Franklin

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
Maya Angelou

“Just because you’re working does not mean you’re making money. That’s two very different things in show business.”
Billy Porter

“A budget is more than just a series of numbers on a page; it is an embodiment of our values.”
Barack Obama

“Rich people believe “I create my life”. Poor people believe “Life happens to me.”
T. Harv Eker

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”
Andy Warhol

“Knowledge is power: you hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It’s only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it. Somebody who reads a book and doesn’t apply it, they’re at no advantage over someone who’s illiterate. None of it works unless you work. We have to do our part. If knowing is half the battle, action is the second half of the battle.”
Jim Kwik

“Children are sponges – they are going to absorb whatever is around them, so we need to be intentional about what surrounds them.”
Dave Ramsey

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Steve Jobs

“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”
Margaret Bonanno

“Fortune sides with him who dares.”
Virgil

“You either master money, or, on some level, money masters you.”
Tony Robbins

Short Money and Personal Finance Quotes

“Success is not how many zeroes your bank account has. It’s about making the most of the life you have.“
Suze Orman

“Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it.”
Robert Kiyosaki

“The only point in making money is, you can tell some big shot where to go.”
Humphrey Bogart

“Frugality includes all the other virtues.”
Cicero

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.”
Roger Babson

“If you are in the world of business, that means you are in the business of making money.”
Stephen A. Smith

“All the money in the world can’t buy you back good health.”
Reba McEntire

“Buy land. They’re not making it anymore.”
Mark Twain

“If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.”
Josh Billings

“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.”
Dave Ramsey

“Making money is easy. It is. The difficult thing in life is not making it; it’s keeping it.”
John McAfee

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.”
Jack Bogle

“Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”
Chuck Palahniuk

“There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich.”
Marlene Dietrich

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
Dolly Parton

“Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.”
Warren Buffett

“Money is not everything, but it is right up there with oxygen.”
Zig Ziglar

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Anne Frank

“Money, like emotions, is something you must control to keep your life on the right track.”
Natasha Munson

“The best way to look stylish on a budget is to try second-hand, bargain hunting, and vintage.”
Orlando Bloom

“Spending money is much more difficult than making money.”
Jack Ma

“The key to making money is to stay invested.”
Suze Orman

“It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.”
David Feherty

“Always plan ahead: it wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
Richard Cushing

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”
Zig Ziglar

“Don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait.”
Will Rogers

“The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.”
Charles Kuralt

“If plan A fails, remember there are 25 more letters.”
Chris Guillebeau

“Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.”
Napoleon Hill

13 Additional Sure-Fire Ways to Live a More Relaxing Life

By Henrik Edberg Published June 2, 2007 9 comments

I hope you can have some use of these tips to decrease stress and negativity and to relaxify your life.

1. Change your way of looking at life.

You can choose how you look at things and how you react. As Holocaust-survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl says in one of my favourite quotes:

“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”

2. Do what you really like to do.

It might be playing with your children, fishing, playing video games/board games/water polo, collecting something, writing or painting. Or something entirely else. Whatever it is, do it on a regular basis. And perhaps try to find time do it more – and/or in a better and more focused way – than you do today. Immersing yourself in such a joyous activity is a great and rewarding break from the stress of your life.

3. Have a good support-group.

Don’t listen too much to people that are very negative or overly critical of you. It can really drag you down and the negativity is most likely more about them and their life than you (don’t block out all criticism though, it can be both valid and useful). If the situation gets really bad try to find ways to spend as little time as possible with such people. Or put an end to the relationship.

4. Finish what you started.

An unfinished task or project can create a lot of underlying anxiety and stress. It picks and picks at the back of your mind even if you aren’t consciously thinking about it. There is an uneasy feeling that you just can’t rid of. Fully finish what you have started. And your mind will relax.

5. Schedule breaks into your calendar.

A jam-packed calendar full of meetings and appointments back-to-back can become overwhelming and exhausting. You may have to schedule breaks into your calendar to be sure to actually take and enjoy them. Otherwise you may get stuck in a never-ending loop of thinking that “I’ll take a break later”. That “later” will, of course, most often mean never.

6. Educate yourself.

Good information can lift the fog of anxiety when faced with a problem or the unknown. If you prepare by reading a bit about what you are about to face then you may not only find some useful solutions that have worked for others before you. You may also discover that the problem is perhaps not as gigantic as your mind is trying to fool you into believing.

By educating yourself you can also set your expectations about the world and how it works to a reasonable level and work better with less disappointment after the initial enthusiasm has dissipated. Knowing what problems you might run into when, for instance, starting a new project can soften the emotional blows and arm you with a few potential solutions.

A third advantage of self-education is that it can help you improve your life and your work in many different ways. Not only by helping you find ways to increase productivity and such things but also if you want promotions, a raise in pay and new opportunities, challenges and other upsides at work etc.

7. Outsource.

If you have a lot to do, don’t do everything yourself. There are only so many hours in a day and, at least sometimes, you cannot do everything yourself. Figure out ways to get good people to exchange their time for your money (or some other value like your time or knowledge) so you can do more of what you really like doing. Or just get some more sleep.

8. Find a solid solution (or two) for beating procrastination.

Consider picking up Brian Tracy’s Eat that Frog! 21 great ways to stop procrastination. As always with Tracy, it has some good and solid advice.

9. Do just one thing at a time.

Single tasking and focusing on doing just one thing at a time not only decreases stress but from my – and many other’s – experience gets things done a whole lot quicker than if you multitask.

10. Take a vacation.

It’s not very healthy to work all the time. Just about everyone needs a vacation where you just let go of everything. Much-written-about author Tim Ferriss even suggests that you take mini-retirements once in while.

11. Stop reading.

Don’t become a self-help junkie. Don’t become an information junkie. You don’t need more information (and faster) all the time. Instead, give you brain a break, sit down at a pub or cafe and just watch the world while sipping a coffee or a beer.

12. Get off the internet.

It’s easy to become a RSS/Email-junkie. Or a Reddit/Digg-junkie. That’s when you check these endless information sources maybe 5, 10 or 20 times a day thinking: “What’s new?”. Get off the internet once in a while or as much as you can. Bunch emails/RSS-reading and similar tasks. Disconnect your internet-connection for at least a while each day or week. It not only calms the mind but also lets you get more of the most important stuff in your life done quicker and easier.

13. Create a space of silence and stillness.

When working block out as many distractions as you can. Besides unplugging your internet-cable and phone-cord also make sure your door is shut. If you can you might even want to lock the door while you work for a specific block of time (perhaps an hour or 90 minutes). This might feel a little uncomfortable at first but it really increases your focus, clarity of mind and puts you in a productive state of well-being.

I Like Bunching

By Henrik Edberg Published May 20, 2007 2 comments

One simple way to increase your productivity is to bunch similar tasks.

Instead of doing one errand each day you do three days of errands in one afternoon.

Instead of responding to emails throughout the day you reply maybe just twice or once a day. Or week.

The advantage of bunching is that you can really get a lot done in a pretty short time. You just have to get into doing a task once. Then you can ride on the flow that the task creates to get the other similar tasks done quickly. I have found that this is often a whole lot better than if I just do one task at a time. If I do that then I have to start over and get into a flow with each task each time which wastes a lot of minutes and makes the tasks seem harder to get done.

Some of the things/tasks/activities you can bunch are:

Online Habits.

I have found the method of removing easy access to bad habits to be effective to reduce procrastination and wasting of time. This little trick has reduced my normal web-browsing a lot and made me check things that had become annoying habits – things like blog-statistics, email and my RSS-reader – a lot less than the previous 8 times a day. Now I usually check all this stuff bunched once in the morning and sometimes once before I go to bed.

Writing Your Blogposts.

While reading blogs for the last year I found that a some prominent bloggers like to write a whole batch of posts in one sitting. Then they just use the future post-function in WordPress – which enables you to set a future date when the post automatically goes live – and go do something else for the day or week. I have found this way of working to be very attractive and useful for a blog like mine where the topics are pretty timeless. Also, on a related note, I remember a good advice from Yaro Starak on this topic. He said that when you get inspired, don’t just write one post, write a whole bunch of them. And then just post them when you feel it’s appropriate.

Running Errands.

An obvious one. Visit the barber, post-office, library and pick up some new flowers in one big swoop.

Shopping.

Instead of shopping for food and related products each day, or when you feel hungry, try to get most of grocery-shopping done once a week.

Phone calls.

I don’t really do a lot of phone calls but have found that when you do a lot of them in a row then the first ones can feel a bit stilted and perhaps awkward. But when you have done a few of them you get warmed up and it get’s easier to relax and get your points across to the people you are talking to.

And that’s some of my thoughts on bunching right now. I’m sure I’ll return to this topic again, possibly quite soon as I’ll start listening to Tim Ferriss “The 4-Hour Workweek” this week and I hear that he’s a big fan of bunching.

Top 5 Tips for Living a More Positive Life

By Henrik Edberg Published May 9, 2007 18 comments

I’ve mentioned all of these suggestions once or twice before but really like them since they are very useful if you want to improve your life.

And, besides, I’d bet that few besides me have read the whole archive anyway. :)

1. Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate!

People often want appreciation from others. It can become a craving need. Instead, start to appreciate everything around you, such as:

The sunshine and the weather.
Your food.
Your health.
The people around you. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.
A good TV-show, a movie or a song.
A good conversation.
Your roof and your house.
All the great things you can find online.
Yourself. If you just look there is a lot to appreciate about yourself.

It’s a quick way to turn a sour mood into a more positive and useful one. Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution. You feel great because you are appreciating your world and the people you appreciate feel great too because they feel appreciated.

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong they’ll often start to appreciate you too thereby starting a growing upward spiral of positive thoughts and emotions.

But don’t focus too much on that though. Just focus on appreciating your world and let rest take care of itself.

One way to use appreciation to get a good start in the morning is by asking yourself a set of questions. Read more about that in How to Start Your Day in a Better Way.

2. Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

The more I do this, the more I discover that it is so key in improving your life. It’s simply filling your life and time with more of what you want.

The thing is that it is very easy to fall into a habit of focusing your thoughts on what you don’t want rather than what you want. If you do that then it will be hard to get what you want in life.

If you want to improve your finances then focus on having a great financial situation rather than your lack of money and your debts. If you want a new relationship then focus on meeting a lot of new people and forming great relationships rather than focusing on your loneliness and your lack. If you don’t then you’ll miss many opportunities that you mind just blocks out since it’s focused on your lack.

But if you do then opportunities will suddenly start to pop out of all that stimuli that is your world. Your mind can mostly just see what you focus it on. So focus on what you want in life.

3. Educate and explore yourself

Self-education can be a great help to live a better life. Read great books on the areas of your life you want to improve. Maybe it’s it your financial situation or your health. Or maybe it’s your relationships.

Ask people with more success in that area than you what they did to improve. If you have a problem in your life, most likely a lot of people have had that problem the last few thousand years. And, at least one of them – or more likely a few â€“ has written down how they solved that problem.

This is also a great way to get to know yourself better and understand why you think, feel and do – or don’t do – the things you do. And knowing yourself better – and other people too, since we share so much that make us alike – is pretty useful if you want to improve your life and lives of other’s too.

Feed your mind daily – or weekly – with great solutions and inspirational and useful information.

4. Take a lot of action in your life

Yeah, this one’s maybe easier said than done. But there is also good information on how to go about it and it’s a great way to improve your life.

“Just do it!” is a nice slogan. But if you feel like you really can’t do what you want then it will probably not be too helpful. If you feel that fear is holding you back from doing something then there are good and practical solutions that has been used throughout hundreds or thousands of years.

One of my favourites is taking small steps and confront your fear little by little and thereby creating a momentum that let’s you move on to the next step. Another is learning to surrender and accept the now. For more on that suggestion and other strategies to reduce fear (such as redefining failure), check out 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear.

Other suggestions to remove or reduce blocks that stop you from taking action is to explore some techniques – such as guided meditations – that can help create a forward momentum within you.

Procrastination is of course also a big problem when trying to take action and getting things done. My favorite technique to beat it so far is using the “Get around to it” Paraliminal. Paraliminals are a sort of guided meditations produced by Learning Strategies. 7 other free, and useful methods to beat this problem can found in this article (and you can find one more here).

5. Improve your social skills

So much of the happiness, value and fun in life come from interactions and relationships with other people. Improving those interactions and your communication skills can greatly improve your life. And – as a bonus – as you focus your attention more outward, toward other people instead of focusing inward much of the negative feelings that can come through overanalysing and feeling self-conscious mostly just disappear. You just are. And that’s a pretty good feeling state to be and communicate in.

Some suggestions for improving these skills can be found in Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation, Focus Outward to Win Friends and Improve Your People Skills and 17 Inspirational Quotes on People Skills. Also, check out 18 Ways to Improve Your Body Language for the ever important non-verbal communication.

17 Inspirational Quotes on People Skills

By Henrik Edberg Published April 10, 2007 23 comments

After over 20 articles with inspirational quotes I thought I’d mix it up a bit and focus each of the upcoming posts on more specific areas.

First up, one of the most important areas for pretty much everyone: people skills.

I hope you can get a bit of wisdom and inspiration out of these quotes and from the people who have walked before us.

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
Doris M. Smith

The less you speak, the more you will hear.
Alexander Solshenitsen

The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding your personality into the man you want to be. Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.
Wilfred Peterson

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
Aesop

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
Charles Lamb

No one needs a smile as much as a person who fails to give one.
Unknown

A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.
Madonna

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
Andrew Carnegie

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.
Albert Schweitzer

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.
Og Mandino

You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.
Dale Carnegie

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Aristotle

I make progress by having people around who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am.
Henry J. Kaiser

If you envy successful people, you create a negative force field of attraction that repels you from ever doing the things that you need to do to be successful. If you admire successful people, you create a positive force field of attraction that draws you toward becoming more and more like the kinds of people that you want to be like.
Brian Tracy

A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.
Russell H. Ewing

The people with whom you work reflect your own attitude. If you are suspicious, unfriendly and condescending, you will find these unlovely traits echoed all about you. But if you are on your best behavior, you will bring out the best in the persons with whom you are going to spend most of your working hours.
Beatrice Vincent

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood.
Ralph Nichols

One Really Simple Tip for Removing Bad Habits

By Henrik Edberg Published April 9, 2007 22 comments

One way to kick a bad habit is to remove the easy availability.

Here’s an example. Since I’ve started blogging I’ve been checking up on the statistics of my readers and earnings several times a day.

Many bloggers/webmasters fall into this habit. We all hope that our readership/earnings will increase so we watch our all of our statistics many times each day.

This interrupts our workflow, wastes time and creates a habit of being disappointed. Your website may be growing, but it’s most often a slow process. So checking too often mostly just means that you’ll be disappointed. This will lead to doubts and possibly even giving up.

So what did I do? I simply deleted the bookmarks to my statistics.

You can do this with any bookmarks or shortcuts that have created an addiction for you. Maybe your addiction is to a forum, maybe it’s to a frequently updated blog, maybe it’s to a computer game.

Now, if you want to visit the sites you have to have google it or type in the address manually. If you want to play then you have to go into the folder where the game is installed.

This has saved me time and reduced negative energy. Since it’s become a bit harder to access my statistics I check them much less, only once or twice a day. I have done the same thing to my RSS-reader. To access it now I google it and only quickly browse it once in the morning and maybe once at night instead of checking it something like eight times a day.

You can also expand this beyond your computer.

If you have a bad habit of eating too much sugar then don’t have cookies and candy at home. I recommend having something to snack on though. I always keep some oranges and carrots in my apartment. When I feel the craving for candy, but find none in my kitchen then I eat an orange instead. Doing this will over time replace one habit with a more useful one and probably make you lose some weight too.

Easy availability is one of the big reasons for developing stupid and unnecessary habits. Take an example like McDonalds. They are everywhere. It’s so easy to just go in there and have a meal. The high availability increases the usage. Reducing the availability redirects you to take another, hopefully more useful path.

This can also be used to your advantage in another way. If you want to establish a habit of writing down your goals each morning then, before you go to bed, put out the pen and paper where it’s most visible at your desk. If you want to establish a habit of working out then leave your training clothes out on a very visible place in your room/apartment/house instead of having them tucked deeply into your closet.

This tip is almost stupidly simple. But, when used, it works surprisingly well.

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