Look at the amount of time you spend earning money.

Now before you start justifying the time you spend by saying, "Hey, I actually enjoy my job", I am not suggesting for one moment that enjoyment and financial reward do not go hand in hand here. I am merely pointing out that, for most people at least, it is quite surprising how we have drifted into doing the things we do. Once there, provided the boss isn't a complete idiot and the work is not too unpleasant, well we tend to stay where we are. Or put another way, we get comfortable.

But if you begin to think outside the box or start doing something we find really scary - simply to make a bit more money.

It ain't gonna happen is it?

For people to make a radical change, it normally requires either great unhappiness, or great anger, in their lives. These are the catalysts.

For me it was the latter.

I had a good lifestyle, a successful business and very few worries in life.

Until one day the bank manager refused to give me a loan because "my borrowing was too high".

This, to use last year's analogy, was the first time I had scraped my car along the garage wall and realised how wide the car really was. In this case the car was my financial world and I suddenly realised that I had been closer to the wall than I had imagined for quite some time.

The bank manager's refusal to lend me even more money made me stop and look at all of my financial dealings. Suddenly I realised that I was not in control of my business at all, that I did not really own the house I lived in, that paying back the minimum on my credit cards each month meant I would be in debt for ever and a day, and that in reality, my whole attitude to money was completely wrong. The real shock was the realisation that up to that point I genuinely believed I had been doing everything right.

I vowed there and then that I would get rid of, not some of my debt, but all of my debt and never would I give a bank manager a chance to ever refuse me credit again. It was time to take back control of my life.

It took me three long years - and I made the task more difficult than it should have been by my limited thinking.

I stopped spending money on things that I did not need - that bit was right, but in order to increase my income I worked like a trojan doing as much work as I possibly could. That was not the greatest idea I ever had, but once the debts were all paid off I was able to look back and realise that I could have achieved the same thing with a lot less effort.

Fact one - when you are working every hour God gave there isn't much time left to analyse what you are actually doing - you just keep doing it, doing it, doing it. Any moment I got to myself I just slumped in front of the telly exhausted. There was no time to stop and think about the way I was working. I was a classic example of, "If you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always got".

But I shouldn't be too hard on myself. My strategic objectives were sound it was just the tactical implementation that needed modification.

Now in your heart, dear reader, I know that you can relate to this because all the rich people you have ever known have turned out to be no cleverer than you, right? In fact, truth be known, you actually think that they are dumber than you, don't you - and they probably are. So how come they've got more money?

Well, they are doing different things to you, that's the long and short of it.

These people are not rocket scientists and they are not working 80 hour weeks, they have just found themselves, either by luck or design doing something that makes a lot more money than you.

Bastards!

Go on say it, I know you often think it.
Jim Rohn says "We must learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don't do well simply because they major in minor things."

Is this you? It is certainly me!

Do you spend a lot of your time doing things that don't really make a difference?

I suspect the answer is yes. In fact the answer has to be yes.

A rich friend of mine once said to me that if he had a bad week, and I had a good week, he would still make more money than I would.

That is one hell of a powerful statement and more than anything else it motivated me to change the things I did. Not my values you understand, just the nature of my work.

Now I glibly talk about change like you simply flip the indicator switch and turn right instead of left. I know from experience that it isn't that easy - and so do you. Nothing meets with more resistance than the idea of change itself.

What is it that makes us so reluctant to change? Why do we keep doing what we have always done, and keep getting what we have always got?

Emotional frame of mind perhaps?

Anyone with any ideas?

Thanks to Inside Track.