When I first came interested in developing a successful mindset I came across an exercise I found by reading the book "What I Didn't Learn At School But Wish I Had" by Jamie McIntyre. I found the exercise to be very insightful, in this particular case it was related to money but I have found it easily applicable to other areas as well (for e.g. health, creativity, intelligence etc.).

According to Jamie McIntyre the exercise is designed to go beyond the conscious mind to access the subconscious files we link to money. When you first begin you will more than likely only be answering from your conscious mind, which will give you automatic conscious answers. Eventually, you will exhaust all your conscious answers and begin to call on the files of the subconscious mind.

I came up with some quite surprising results, experiences and memories from the past that I had no idea affected my feelings toward money. You can do this exercise by yourself, however I found it more effective with a partner.

Mindset Exercise
If you choose to do it with a partner then get them to ask you the three questions listed below, your partner can also write down your replies as you answer each question. Your partner will need to keep asking each question until your answers have been completely exhausted in each area. Push beyond the automatic answers so that you discover the deeper associations and emotional impacts of money in your life. Ask the question at least 20 times until the answers are completely exhausted, then switch to the second question for 20 times, and then the third question.

1. What is money?
2. What is not having money?
3. What is money, really?

Once you feel you have exhausted all possible answers for the questions above you can then begin to understand your current mindset and begin to condition your nervous system for a success, using the insights you have gained. To help you do this try answering the questions below.

1. What are my most limiting beliefs about having absolute financial abundance?
2. What specific amount of money represents financial abundance to me?
3. What will I do today toward developing a financial plan?
4. What did I learn today that I can use to make progress?
5. What financial terms and aspects of personal finance do I not currently understand?
6. Why am I committed to follow through?
7. Give one or two situations from the past of when you pulled through despite difficulty.

This exercise was a great start to rewiring my subconscious association to money and other areas of life I applied it too. I hope it does the same for you, If you would like to learn more about conditioning your subconscious and not only in relation to money but also in other areas of your life, I recommend Anthony Robbins' he is a world leader in the development of a highly successful mindset.

After the insights obtained from yesterdays exercise we are now able to rewire our mind for success and make those changes last. We have all at one stage started something up to improve our lives whether it be a diet , study or exercise only to give up at the first sign of struggle due to the fear of failure or fear that the change will last. In order to overcome these fears we'll go through three simple steps that if applied correctly can create immediate change to improve your life and make that change last.

Step 1 - Raise your Standards
It seems as though many of us go through life accepting things that don't benefit us, don't make us happy or don't allow us to live the life we desire. An example of this was on one occasion while talking to a friend about his job, my friend said to me "I really don't enjoy my job, but I've just got to do it to survive", now as you can maybe understand from this, my friend had just accepted to live of a life of work in an unpleasant job just to get by. Now if my friend continued to accept the job and didn't aspire to raise his standards he would most probably be in the same job or similar and wouldn't be enjoying his million dollar property portfolio he now managers for a living. To make vital changes in my life and raise my standards I basically decided on what I wasn't going to accept in my life, and made clear all the things that I desired.

Step 2 - Change your Limiting Beliefs
Changing your limiting beliefs goes hand in hand with raising your standards, because if you have set a standard for yourself and don't believe you can actually achieve it then you have already sabotaged yourself, you most probably won't even try. What we belief controls our thoughts, how we act, what we feel and how we experience things. Therefore by taking control of our own beliefs and developing a sense of certainty that we can achieve unlimited results then unlimited results will eventually be the outcome. Do you think if Bill Gates believed that Microsoft would never be successful he would of put so much effort in and built into the massive success it is today?

Step 3 - Find your Strategy
Now that you've increased your values and developed the belief in yourselves we need to find a strategy that will get you where you want to go. The strategy that I found to be the most beneficial was getting a mentor, someone who you is already where you want to be. You may be wondering how do I get someone to be my mentor, and why would they want to be my mentor. Well that comes back to your limiting beliefs, you can only ask, and if in the case you are unable to get a mentor one on one, you can always get access to a mentor from reading their books, going to their seminars, watching their videos or any other media they might be on. Once you have found your mentor you will want to learn what they know, what they are doing and how they think. You can then take what you learn and apply it to suit you, possibly even make their methods better.

Ok that's all for today, tomorrow and the next few days we'll be going through ways to improve your quality of life through emotional, physical, relationship, finance and time control.