A self-made millionaire shares her recipe for success, happiness and financial freedom

I like to view Thanksgiving as a national celebration of gratitude. Three years ago on Thanksgiving Day, I started a new family tradition: I asked everyone present at the dinner table to share a few things they’re most grateful for and write them down on a colorful leaf cutout. Each year, I ask my friends and family to add another leaf. I adorn our Christmas tree with this colorful gratitude garland. Last Thanksgiving when I asked my then two-year-old daughter to decorate her leaf, she added sparkles and glittery gems. When it came time to help her write her message of gratitude on the back, I asked her, “what makes you happy?”. She replied, “Purple!”. It truly is all of the little things that make life so beautiful.

Since then, our family shares “happy things” during dinner, year ’round. It’s so cool – our daughter looks forward to our evening tradition and usually initiates the daily gratitude conversation.

Over time, I’ve learned something that is so ridiculously simple: that happiness is a choice. Even during intensely difficult times (caring for my mom during her long, debilitating illness and mourning her resulting death, for instance), I realized that I could be happy anyway. It isn’t circumstance that dictates whether I live a happy life — rather, it is a matter of choice. I can succumb to sadness and overwhelm or I can choose to focus on gratitude, love and happiness. I’ve witnessed that by focusing my thoughts on the happy things, rather than those that sadden me or stress me out, I attract more positive circumstances and contentment to my life. This simple act of gratitude literally transforms my experiences.

How do I change my focus? I make it my mission to look for at least five things each day that make my heart melt, my soul sing and my smile widen. I actively search for things to add to my list. By doing so, my focus changes and in turn, so does my mood. It doesn’t always come easy– I’m genetically predisposed to clinical depression. I’ve learned that happiness takes practice. With practice, I develop a HABIT of feeling happy.

“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.”
– Albert Clarke

For the skeptics in the bunch, I’d like to point out that the power of gratitude is PROVEN. Two psychologists say their Research Project on Gratitude and Thanksgiving indicates that gratitude plays a significant role in a person’s sense of well-being:

“The study required several hundred people in three different groups to keep daily diaries. The first group kept a diary of the events that occurred during the day, while the second group recorded their unpleasant experiences. The last group made a daily list of things for which they were grateful.

The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. Additionally, the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress, was more likely to help others, exercised more regularly and made more progress toward personal goals. According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved. McCollough and Emmons also noted that gratitude encouraged a positive cycle of reciprocal kindness among people since one act of gratitude encourages another.”

Furthermore, happy people MAKE MORE MONEY! Newsweek reports, “although money doesn’t buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented people are also more likely to marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.”

So dear readers, enjoy a HAPPY Thanksgiving! Please share your gratitude for the “happy things” in your life by leaving a comment. Here are a few of mine for today:

tickling my daughter awake
my husband’s laid back attitude
my sister and I putting aside our differences and enjoying the holiday– and one another
my book club friends
learning to play the Marimba
my massage therapist
watching the birds congregate at my birdfeeder
spiced apple cider
you, my reader, for sharing your thoughts with me

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Do you have a big but problem? You’ll never be successful, happy and wealthy if your but is too big. Here, let me show you why…

“But I have so little to offer.”

“But the key to my success always lies just beyond my reach and the window to opportunity keeps slamming shut on me.”

“But I’m too scared.”

“But I don’t have anything worthy to offer.”

“But everyone in my life keeps bursting my bubble.”

“But I’m not pretty or skinny enough.”

“But I’m broken.”

“But no one believes in me anymore.”

“But I’m a victim.”

“But nothing I do ever works out.”

“But everyone tells me I can’t do it.”

“But no one loves me.”

“But I’m the ugly one.”

“But I’m too old.”

“But I can’t keep up with all this new-fangled technology.”

“But my life is too complicated and I’m too entangled.”

“But it’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m terrified of dogs.”

“But my wishes never come true.”

“But I don’t have anything unique to offer.”

“But I’m stuck (in a boring job; in my marriage; in this godforsaken town).”

“But I don’t know where to find what I need.’

“But it takes too much work.”

“But I’m broke.”

“But no one wants to help me.”

“But there’s not enough time.”

“But it’s too complicated.”

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please, already…. Shut your big but up!

The next time you hear the “big but” voice in your head, confront it. Put up your dukes and pound it to pieces. Shove those poisonous buts into your garbage disposal and pulverize them. Wash the toxic remains away and watch as they swirl down the drain and become one with the rest of the sewage.

Kick your big but’s a$$.

Until you conquer your “big but” problem, it’ll hold you back and prevent you from achieving success.

Our lives are nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. If you don’t like the story your life has become — tell yourself a better one. Think about all of the things you can do instead of the things you can’t. Start a different internal conversation and you’ll become wealthy in more ways than one.

Imagine the kind of person you want to be and think the thoughts that person would think. Act the way that person would act. Once you start behaving like this person, others will start treating you like that person. You’ll start to believe it. Then it will be true. Then you’ll be open to learn. Open to change. Open to grow. You’ll be ready to allow success, wealth and happiness into your life. Researchers find that an optimistic personal outlook is more than just seeing the bright side of things. Believing in yourself actually produces increases in good health, motivation, and achievement in most people. (Schulman, P. 1999. “Applying Learned Optimism to Increase Sales Productivity”)

Make no excuses. Allow it to happen. If it works for me, then why not you? Your new life will astound you.

(Hey now, I said no more buts!)

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I attended a writers’ retreat at a scenic guest ranch last weekend and had two days of blissful solitude to dedicate to writing. As the twelve other writers in attendance furiously tapped out world-record word counts, I barely managed to scribble one hundred incomplete sentences.

If it sounds like a serious case of writer’s block, you’d be only partially correct. (I can blame this bout on the grief I experienced recently when I lost my blogspot domain website and realized I would need to start over.) But more importantly, I discovered that I needed the solitude to reflect on more than just my writing.

The ranch was a gorgeous, inspiring place to move in and out of my head. I walked along the river, hiked up into the hills, exchanged warm greetings with the resident furry beings and admired the tranquil beauty of the place. I sat upon a gigantic pancake-flat rock along the river’s edge to watch the birds bathe and preen for so long that my butt froze. My camera accompanied me everywhere and it seemed that everywhere I turned, a picture was begging to be taken. If it’s true that a picture says a thousand words, than I suppose I “wrote” plenty.

Truth is, I’m feeling restless. Early winter always puts me in a bit of a funk. I know that I need a new, engaging project, especially this time of year. My intention is to wake each morning eager to do something that grabs hold of my attention with such vigor that time becomes a non-issue. My life, by intentional design, is open to endless opportunities. And with this blessing comes a seemingly impossible list of options from which to choose. Sometimes the enormity of choice feels overwhelming and I’m tempted to respond with apathy.

When I was a working stiff (meaning that my job wasn’t a good fit for me), I’d hit the snooze button on my alarm clock at least a half dozen times, then make my grumpy commute. At work, I’d watch the wall clock all day, urging the arms to tick forward faster so that I could punch out and make my escape. That was hell. I wasn’t making a living — I was earning a slow death. Once that realization hit, I was no longer willing to participate in that kind of “life”.

One introspective day, I asked myself what I wanted to do when I woke up. “Toss the alarm clock, sleep until I’m done and work at something I love to do, from home, in my pajamas.” the little voice said. I figured out how to make it happen. And I lived. This shift happened only after I could identify what it was I wanted to do.

And this is where I tell you about zingers and the 100 incomplete sentences that I wrote during the retreat this weekend.

My spare words came as a result of a simple ten minute writing exercise. Here’s how it works:

1. Number the left side of your paper from 1-100.
2. Write as fast as you can on one topic (see below for topic ideas)
3. You don’t have to write in complete sentences. Just get it down, even if some of it doesn’t make sense.
4. Repeats are okay.
5. Write the list in one sitting. It is the sheer volume of entries that dredges up the information from your subconscious mind.
6. When you are finished, look for patterns. Usually the first thirty items are pretty obvious to you. The second third often contains repeats, and somewhere in the last 10-20 answers, you’ll find a zinger that surprises you.

Some Ideas for Lists of 100:

100 marketing ideas for my business
100 ways I can make money
100 things I want to do
100 things I’m good at
100 things I’d do if I had the time
100 things I’m grateful for

I chose to write a list of 100 things I want to do. Many of my responses were predictable for me (places to see, ways to be creative, nature appreciation) and some took me completely by surprise (ride a zip line, attend a sand castle contest, stay with a host family in an African tribal village). And then, just as predicted in the instructions, the last dozen were my zingers:

89. hit the road and go wherever we want to go
90. settle in and snuggle
91. see the world
92. wonder
93. feel
94. experience
95. live
96. be awake
97. be amazed
98. feel content
99. find the story
100. tell it.

As soon as these items were out, I knew what I want to do: I want to hit the road with my family in a cozy, snuggly home-on-wheels and let curiosity lead our way. I want to experience amazing places and meet amazing people. With a camera in one hand and a pen in the other, I want to become a travel photojournalist.

Try it. Find your zingers. Live life your way.

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Everyone needs food, shelter and clothing. But beyond basic survival needs, there is an endless array of money-hungry possibilities that can consume disposable income. Many let money slip through their fingers without giving much thought to the big picture. We often buy the latest and greatest stuff simply because our neighbors do; so we can keep up with the infamous Jones family. Advertisers, the media and society influence how we spend.

But living according to your own personal values is the key to happiness and financial well-being. Once you’ve mindfully identified what truly makes you tick, your financial decisions can be guided into alignment with your value system. When you live (and spend) true to your values, you are bound to feel fulfilled, content, peaceful and happy.

You may value a beautiful home — so you spend generously on a home purchase and decorating, remodeling and furnishings. I may value freedom, travel and recreation above all else — so I don’t mind living in a more simple home. Perhaps you feel strongly that it’s important to protect the environment — so you’re willing to fork out more moola to purchase a vehicle that operates on alternative fuel. Your neighbor’s priority might be safety — so they drive a large SUV.

On the other hand, perhaps you are unconsciously investing in things that are not as important to you as others are. Financial happiness occurs once you figure out what is important to you and spend accordingly. Evaluating your key priorities provides a beginning structure for your spending plan– a budget that you’ll be enthusiastically motivated and happy to adhere to. Not sure what your top priorities are? Take a good look at your Treasure Map to a Rich Life — it will reveal important clues.

For purposes of illustration, I’m sharing my own list of priorities and values today. It’s been my experience that the ways in which we choose to think directly influences our actual behavior and in turn, our behavior powers our outcome. Therefore, note my choice of words that serve as affirmations such as “I choose to…” rather than “I wish…”.

My List of Priorities and Personal Values:

1. Family Relationships: I value spending quality time with my family each and every day. I choose to spend more time with my family than on any other endeavor, including my career. Therefore, I accept less income in exchange for more free time.

2. Friendships: I choose to have enough free time to nurture, maintain, and enjoy my friends. Again, I choose to trade income for free time.

3. Health: I value strength, energy, and longevity. I choose to take care of my physical self so that I am better equipped to do all of the things that I love to do. Therefore, I gladly trade money for organic foods and weekly massage therapy.

4. Fun: Life is a precious gift meant to be enjoyed. I choose to live an enthusiastic life; to enjoy my relationships, hobbies and interests; to laugh, smile and acknowledge my gratitude daily. Therefore, I choose to be a do-er, not a have-er.

5. Freedom: Freedom from money worries, serious health problems, stress, and time restrictions. I choose to be able to do what I want, when I want, where I want; and to be free from shoulda-coulda-can’t types of thinking. I choose to be free from the need to wake in the morning by the obnoxious bleeping of an alarm clock. Therefore, I choose to be my own boss and set my own hours.

6. Curiosity-Led Learning: I value a lifetime love of learning. I choose to pursue my own interests, and I facilitate the same curiosity-led learning opportunities for my daughter.

7. Environment and Sustainability: I believe that everyone has an individual responsibility to protect our natural resources. I choose a lifestyle that emphasizes sustainability over wasteful consumption. Besides, by owning less stuff, I have more money - and time - to spend on the activities that matter most to me.

8. Community and Compassion: I believe that each individual is an important and integral part of our world-wide community. I choose to feel and act compassionately towards others. Therefore, I am willing to work sans pay (volunteer) for the benefit of others.

When you review and revise your annual spending plan (aka budget), ignore the Joneses. Make sure that your plan reflects your personal values. By mindfully doing so, you’ll likely find that money can buy you happiness!

Important Update: Please update your blogroll with my new URL address. This blog has moved to http://millionairemommynextdoor.com. Thanks!

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If you had a million dollars and no debt, what would you do?

At age 30 I paused long enough to ask myself this question. Just ten years later, my husband and I were completely debt-free and had a million dollars in the bank.

How did this happen?

We didn’t win the lottery, inherit from a long-lost uncle, or invent the pet rock. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, either. When I was a child, my parents struggled to live paycheck to paycheck. My sister and I shamefully hid our free-lunch tickets, then spent after-school hours dumpster-diving behind our neighborhood grocery store. As a young adult, anxious to get out of the house and start making my own money, I dropped out of college… and landed the graveyard shift at Dunkin Donuts. Then I married a blue-collar construction worker.

Despite the odds, I became a work-from-home small business owner and self-taught investor, and by age 40, my husband and I were millionaires.

How did I go from free-lunch kid to millionaire mom?

My transformational journey started when I discovered an important truth: Our lives are the stories we narrate for ourselves. If you don’t like the story your life has become, tell yourself a better one. Change starts with a thought, not an action. Think about all of the things you can do instead of the things you can’t. Start a different internal conversation and you’ll become wealthy in more ways than one.

If you don’t know where you are going, there’s an excellent chance you won’t get there. You need to create a crystal clear vision of exactly what being rich is for you. Your personalized image of “rich” needs to feel so real to you that you can literally smell it, touch it, hear it, see it, taste it, FEEL it. You need to own it.

Visualizing what wealth means to you shapes the way your mind thinks about money and your life. Your mind then sets in motion the actions necessary to begin achieving your goals. By taking the time to establish what real wealth looks like to you, you direct your efforts in ways that make becoming rich, in your own terms, simple.

I created my first “Treasure Map to a Rich Life” in my early twenties. A few years later, I was living the story I had envisioned through the Treasure Map tacked upon my wall. Every few years, life experiences modify some of my aspirations and passions and my vision of wealth and happiness change, so I design a new Treasure Map. Lo and behold, my life soon morphs to fit my new vision. And it repeats over and over again.

My most recent Treasure Map (included above) reveals:

• I choose to live an enthusiastic and playful life.
• I yearn to give back and make a difference in the lives of others.
• I am opening the door to new possibilities – perhaps I’ll write a book, offer financial education, motivational speaking, mentoring, teaching.
• World travel, culture, nature and creativity continue to place very high on my list of interests.
• I will share my passion for lifelong learning with my daughter. The world is our classroom – we can homeschool as we travel.
• My heart is open. Perhaps we will adopt a second orphaned child in need of a loving family.
• I remind myself that romance and parenting is a balancing act.
• I choose happiness.

How to Create Your Own Treasure Map to a Rich Life:

1. Round up a poster board, some old magazines, scissors, glue, and colored markers.

2. Flip through magazines and cut out images, photographs, illustrations, titles, and quotes that catch your eye. Select images that evoke your feelings of happiness, phrases that put a smile on your face, and words that intrigue you.

3. Glue your cut-outs onto your poster board to create a collage.

4. Use your colored markers to add any additional words, quotes, or statements that make you feel happy.

5. Place a title on your poster board- something like, “My Treasure Map” or “My Rich Life Is…”, or “Happiness is…”.

6. Now step back and take some time to look at your collage. Do you like what you see? Do you feel happy when you look at it? If not, simply paste new images over the parts that don’t make you feel good.

7. Make a wild guesstimate. Write down how much money you think you’ll need to live the happy and rich life that you’ve just created on your Treasure Map. Don’t worry about being accurate, but do be specific. “I want to have lots of money” is not specific enough. You need to quantify how much money is “lots” for you, and include when you want it to happen. Write down some specific numbers and dates. Try something like “I want to make $100,000 next year and I want to have $1,000,000 saved by 2020”.

8. Proudly hang your Treasure Map where you will see it every single day.

9. Finally, take a photograph of your Treasure Map. Place this photo in your wallet or checkbook.

Consider your map a work in progress. As you look at it daily you’re bound to change your mind about a few things and clarify some details. Just pull out your glue stick and modify your map accordingly.

Now that you can visualize exactly what it is that you really want, you’ve taken the biggest step towards living a rich life. Your personalized image of wealth and happiness will drive your daily actions in simple and incredible ways.

Next, I’ll explore how identifying, prioritizing and living according to personal values is key to personal happiness and financial well-being.

Important Update: Please update your blogroll with my new URL address. My blog has moved to http://millionairemommynextdoor.com. Thanks!

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The unthinkable happened. My entire Google account was disabled. This means my blog, my email account, my calendar… the whole shebang… are gone.

I have followed all of the available instructions, filled out all of the forms… and all I get back from Google is this automated message: “Thank you for your report. The account in question is disabled, and we can’t provide you with access to it.” I have no idea why. I haven’t violated any of the terms of agreements, so I’m guessing that someone hacked into my account.

I was aware there was a tiny, remote risk of losing my blog because I used a blogspot domain, so thankfully I do have backups of everything I’ve written. But unfortunately, I had no idea that in the process, I could also lose everything else Google-related, too. Therefore, I didn’t have backups of my emails, contact list, documents or calendar.

I trusted Google, therefore I kept critical and important information in Google’s online applications. I made the mistake of thinking that offsite, online storage was safer than on my own PC. I was in the middle of email conversations with many people who, in many cases, I don’t know how to reach now. Over 6,000 archived emails, gone. Contact lists, gone. With my calendar wiped out, I don’t have the foggiest idea what appointments are scheduled ahead.

In retrospect, I realize how silly it was to count on Google to keep my data safe, so purdy-please-with-a-cherry-on-top, resist the urge to flog me about it!

Apparently my previous blogspot site will stay up for a few more days. The bad news is that I can’t sign in to post anything new. This means that I can’t even tell my blogspot readers what has happened and where they can find me next.

The good news is that if you’re reading this now, you managed to find me here! Welcome to my new home! And since I’m using my own url and domain hosting now, I’m here to stay.

If you tried to email me recently using my disabled gmail.com account, I haven’t been able to receive it. Please contact me again using my new email account at Jen (at) millionairemommynextdoor (dot) com (replace “at” and “dot” first — I’m trying to deter the pesky spam bots).

If you are a feed subscriber: I think (hope!) I’ve managed to reroute the feed so you shouldn’t need to re-subscribe.

If you are a blogger and a super-dooper-groovy-nice person, please update your blogroll with my new url address. In losing my blogspot hosted url, my blog lost 9,890 incoming links. This means that my new blog starts all over again at zero — with no “Google juice” — so Internet searchers won’t be able to find me. If you’ve linked to my old blog in the past, please update the link(s). If you really like me, consider telling your readers in a post that I’ve moved to http://millionairemommynextdoor.com/. Thanks for your awesomeness!!!

Things I wish I knew before this happened:

How to back up your Google Apps data

How to make a Backup Google Account

Whether you use online or offline applications, backup redundantly. For instance, I just set up each of my email accounts to forward every email received to additional backup email accounts opened specifically for this purpose. Each email account will forward a copy to a newly acquired gmail, yahoo AND self-hosted email account.

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