10 Reasons Why People Are Poor: "I Have No Money!"

By state I mean your physiological and emotional state. Simply put, this is how you feel in the moment. You can be the most talented person in the world, but if you are in a disempowered emotional state you can't achieve crap.

You are in a disempowered state if you feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or fearful. These will influence your decisions and undermine your ability to reach your aspirations and goals. If you find you are constantly experiencing these you are only setting yourself up for failure.

As destructive as the disempowering states are, achieving an empowering state will give you the mental edge and attitude that you need to be successful. Here is a list of empowering states for business: certainty, confidence, clarity, courage, conviction, ambition, and passion. By remaining in these states the majority of the time you will be better equipped to handle the hurdles that you will encounter.

I understand that you can't manage your state every minute of every day. You are not a robot. We live in a world where stuff happens, but when things start to go awry, that's when state management really matters. When something goes wrong most people create a bullshit story to justify why they can't have what they want. It stops them from being honest with themselves and seeing things as they really are If you are able to manage your state during a setback to your plans, you can come out of it stronger by thinking your way through the following steps:

• Imagine your life as a map.
  
• Your goal: Wealth and success.
  
• Step one: See things as they really are.
  
• Step two: See things as better than they are.
  
• Step three: Make a plan to get there.
  

The reason most people are not successful is not because they set their goals too high and miss them; it's because they set their goals too low and hit them. If your goals are low and you keep hitting them then you need to raise your standards and ambitions. You need to have a continuing dedication to going further than those around you. Don't set your goal for average because average sucks.

On the other hand don't set your goals so high that they become unrealistic because people abandon unrealistic goals. Instead, set your goals just above your comfort zone so that they inspire you to continue working toward them. The right goal will make you want to secure the future for not only you, but also your family.

The proper goal will give you wealth and money which is simply a way of achieving freedom.

The philosophy outlined in the book The Secret is not only counter-productive, it is a load of crap. According to The Secret, the way to gain success is to go into a quiet room in your house, turn off the lights, close the shades, sit on the couch, and imagine a check with a big number. If you believe in The Secret, eventually this check should show up at your door. Does this work? No! Why would it?

If this is your strategy for success the only thing that will eventually show up in your mail box is an eviction notice. I believe in manifestation, but I believe you have to take action and go out and meet it. You simply will not achieve success or wealth if you don't take action towards it.

I tried The Secret and nothing happened. I worked towards my goals, and I achieved success.

Poor people believe they are creatures of circumstance. Because of this, life happens to them. Rich people believe they are creators of circumstance. Because of this, they create opportunities within their lives.

There isn't any more destructive belief in the world than to think that life happens to you. Here are three things that happen to you when you believe that you don't create your own destiny:

1) You play the blame game. You blame anyone and everyone for why you don't have what you want. You blame the government, your family, your boss, the economy, or the people on Wall Street. If you do this you are powerless to achieve success.

2) You justify your situation to yourself and to those around you. You use sentences that start with: "It is because." For example, "It is because the economy stinks that I'm not where I want to be," or "It is because people are unfair that I don't have what I want," or "It is because money doesn't really matter that I don't have as much as I would like." By justifying your current situation you accept your current situation.

3) You complain. What you focus on you attract and move toward. When you complain what do you focus on? All the crap in your life and if you focus on all the crap in your life what do you become? A magnet that attracts more crap. Also, you must distance yourself from those around you who complain as they may influence your state in a negative way.

Poor people believe money doesn't matter. Rich people value money and know it matters. I'm not saying it is the end-all, be-all, but it is a beautiful tool. When you have it you can use it in countless ways: to help others, travel, or take care of your parents. Money allows for the freedom to do the things that you want to do. I am not saying that money creates happiness, but a lack of money is a passport to misery. I say solve the money problem and then solve the higher problems afterward.

You must be careful who you choose as your mentor. People without money are very quick to offer their advice, and the world is full of people who claim to be life coaches, business coaches, or success coaches. The scary thing is that most of them haven't achieved anything. If you find a life coach over the internet how do you know they've actually achieved something?

On the flip-side rich people can make for bad mentors too. In the movie Wall Street the character Gordon Gekko says: "Greed is good." I made the mistake of taking this line to heart. I thought that greed was something from which I could draw motivation.

The truth is that greed is not good. Ambition and passion are good. Greed is destructive. The first thing that happens when you get greedy is that your ethics became compromised. You want to make as much money as you can as fast as you can. And it doesn't matter who gets hurt along the way.

However if the person you are modeling yourself after is motivated by greed you do not need to follow in their footsteps entirely. You can pick and choose which characteristics to emulate. You can emulate their ambition but not their greed. You can incorporate their strategies without incorporating their ethics.

Be careful with who you pick as your mentor. Don't pick the unshaven guy on the side of the road wearing the dirty sweat pants, but don't pick the guy whose decisions violate your ethics.

Fear is a natural part of the business world. If the path to success were clear cut and infallible than everyone would be wealthy. Because it isn't everyone must deal with situations that make him or her anxious. There are three different ways to process and manage fear. The first two options will destroy your chances for a successful and healthy life while the third gives you the mindset you need to use fear to your advantage.

1) They pretend that fear does not exist - The people who manage fear through ignoring it end up in a life filled with poverty and misery. By ignoring fear you let it control you because you neither acknowledge it nor learn how to deal with it. Unacknowledged fear renders you impotent in your efforts to reach your goals, and this is the most disempowered state for wealth and success.

2) They act in spite of fear - This way of dealing with fear allows you to achieve certain goals despite being afraid; however, this leads you to a place in your life where you are wealthy and anxious. Yes, you will have wealth, but you will constantly be afraid of taking the wrong step. These people are hung up on the idea of, "What if I fail?" or "what if I don't hit my goal?" This results in a success lifestyle where you second guess all your decisions and live in fear of failure.

3) They embrace fear and let it motivate them - These people achieve their goals and do so by acknowledging their fear without letting it ruin their enjoyment of their success.

Poor people always try to come up with something spectacular and new to make their fortune. This is the biggest trap you face as you work toward your goals. Instead of something new, what you need is a proven system, one that you know works and will help you gain successes.

Warren Buffet once said: "When I buy a business I want to make sure that the system is so good that even an idiot can run it because sooner or later one will." I believe this statement, and that's why I recommend the Straight Line System. It's so simple that it's being used to help hundreds of struggling companies and thousands of people to become wealthy.

What is the system that you have in place? Are you trying to reinvent the wheel or do you have one that is proven?

If you don't have any business experience it's nothing to be ashamed of. No one is born with business skills. Someone has to teach or show you the ropes. This is why you must be careful when choosing your mentor. You want to make sure that you're getting the best information available.

Either you're selling and persuading or you're failing. You may not sell products, but you have to have the ability to sell yourself and your concepts.

You don't need to master persuasion, but you need to become effective at it. It is the most crucial skill that any person could have. Even Warren Buffet, who many don't think of as being a master salesman, has admitted publicly that persuasion is the single most important skill he has.

You don't need to become a hard-core sales person, but you have to learn how to become an effective persuader so that you can share your ideas, concepts, and visions with other people, so they can invest in you. If you are able to sell your vision people will follow you because you can show them the value your value as a human being.

Without the proper persuasive abilities you could create the next big microchip or the cure for cancer and no one would invest in your idea because you aren't able to influence them to do so. If you can't get others to buy into your ideas, you will fail at reaching your goals.

This is why I recommend the Mastering Influence Program. It is the most effective way to close any human being who is closeable. There is no pressure involved for either the buyer or seller, and it isn't so much like selling as it is taking someone from one point to another in a logical decision making process.

There are only two jobs where you can make real money if you work for someone else:

1) If you work in a jab that gives you heavy commissions.
2) If you work in the investment banking industry and can leverage off of a huge company's assets.

Other than these two exceptions if you really want to get ahead in life you have to own your own business. I am not saying that you need to quit your job immediately. That is not what I'm writing this for. Instead, I'm writing this to give you the mindsets you must have to start your own successful business without quitting your job, without having to put up a lot of money, and how to raise (not borrow) money cheaply.

At some point if you want to be wealthy you have to get into your own business. Otherwise you are a pawn in someone else's game of chess.

Here is a brief quiz so that you can see how many of the above points directly affect you. As you look them over grade yourself on a scale from 10 (meaning you do this all the time) to 0 (meaning that you never do this). Think of your score as a golf score: the smaller, the better. This is for your own benefit, and you will never have to reveal what numbers you came up with.

10) You are unable to manage your state. You often feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or fearful about decisions or events in your life. When something goes wrong you find yourself blaming outside forces instead of looking at the situation honestly.

9) You set impotent goals. You find that you often reach the goals that you set with little effort. OR you find that your goals are so lofty that you give up on them after a period of time.

8) You subscribe to The Secret. You believe in the philosophy of The Secret, that by simply focusing your thoughts you can bring specific events to pass without action.

7) You have limiting beliefs about life and money. You believe that you are a creature of circumstance and that you do not control your own destiny. You play the "blame game," justify your current situation to those around you, or complain about why you don't have the things you want. OR You believe money doesn't matter.

6) You choose bad mentors. You met your mentor (or life coach) over the internet. OR You are unsure if his or her achievements are substantial enough to qualify him or her to give you guidance. OR You have a mentor who condones greedy behavior and whose ethics conflict with your own.

5) You are controlled by fear. You think that you do not have any fear and that it does not affect your decisions in any way. OR You acknowledge your fear and make decisions in spite of it, but you often find yourself uncomfortable with the decisions you've made.

4) You are trying to reinvent the wheel. You system for success doesn't have a reliable track record of working because it is new.

3) You are lousy at business. You may have taken some college business classes but have little or no real world experience running your own business.

2) You are uncomfortable with words like "sales," marketing," and "persuasion". you are uncomfortable with the idea of persuading others. OR You feel you don't have the skills to effectively sell yourself and your ideas.

1) You slave away for a paycheck. You are not in a commission based position and work for someone else.

Now add your points up!

If you do every one of these things and received a 100/100, below are some programs and books to help you. Even if your received a 0/100 they can still help you. No matter what your score is you can turn it around and put yourself on the road to wealth.