Tomorrow is 100 percent based on the negotiations you do today. 


Constantly study yourself, the negotiations you’ve done, and try to improve so you don’t experience the terrible effects of bad negotiations.

One key point to remember;

Make Sure Your List is Bigger Than Theirs 


Let’s say you are negotiating a book advance. They offer a $10,000 advance and they can’t budge higher. That’s fine. Now make your list of other things: how much social media marketing will they do? What bookstores will they get you into? Who has control over book design? What percentage of foreign rights, of digital rights, can you get? Do royalties go up after a certain number of copies are sold? Will they pay for better book placement in key stores? Will they hire a publicist? And so on.

Make a list before every negotiation. Make the list as long as possible. If your list is bigger than theirs (size matters), then you can give up “the nickels for the dimes.” This is not just about negotiation. This is to make sure that later you are not disappointed because there is something you forgot. Always prepare. Then you can have faith that because you prepared well, the outcome will also go well.

Make sure you know all of your numbers. All of your lists of wants. All of the other side’s numbers. All similar deals in your industry. All similar deals that the other negotiator has done. As many examples of negotiation, particularly in this arena, that you can find.

Then make sure you are negotiating from a position of strength. People usually think that means, “I have more power than you.” But this is not what strength is. That will only result in a bad negotiation that will satisfy nobody in the long run. Strength simply means physical health (you’re well slept, you’ve eaten well, you feel energy), emotional health (you are dealing with people you like), mental health (you have done your preparation), and spiritual health (you feel fully deserving of the abundance and gratitude that is coming your way).

Having faith in your strength is all you need to bring to the table. Nothing else. Once you do your preparation, have faith that the right negotiation will happen.


The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

Being a leader doesn’t mean you are the guy who runs things. Being a leader doesn’t mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority. Being a leader happens right now, today. It’s something you can do without money, without authority, and without anybody. But first, you have to lead yourself. It’s a mind-set.

Desire More Success for Others Than for Yourself 

Most important by far is that you be able to care about others’ success more than your own. Everyone around you needs to ultimately become better than you. That’s how you lead. The light is in front of you and you take them to the light and then go back.

Say “Yes, and…” I just wrote a book called The Power of No. Buy it because your life will be better (and I am not ashamed of plugging it). But now I’m about to tell you to say yes.

Constructive criticism works like this: You say, “Yes, and…” List what’s good about the person’s idea. Describe how you would improve it even more.

Figure out the vision that is the base of the idea that you are talking about. Connect the “why” of what you are suggesting to the initial vision. Does it work better than the initial idea? Always be open to the fact that you might be wrong.

Show Gratitude 

Yesterday I was talking to Lewis Howes, an athlete turned multimillion-dollar webinar and LinkedIn expert who was on my podcast a few months ago. Lewis told me that his outgoing voice mail says, “Before you leave me a message, tell me one thing you are grateful for.” He says the messages people leave blow him away.

Follow The “30-150” Rule (AKA The Vision Rule) An organization with less than thirty people is a tribe. There is evidence from 70,000 years ago that if a tribe got bigger than thirty people, it would split into two tribes. A tribe is like a family—that is, you learn personally whom to trust and not to trust. You learn to care for their individual problems. You know everything about the people in your tribe. Having just thirty people in the tribe allows a leader to spend time with each person in the tribe and to listen to their issues.

Be OK with Change 

Everyone has pain they don’t want to feel. For instance, I might feel pain if someone makes fun of my looks. I used to feel pain if someone questioned my net worth, which I equated with self-worth. If I’m a CEO, I might have pain if the “numbers” go down.

A leader is always prepared for change, and realizes that pain is just an opportunity to live in a bigger and more abundant world. This is the secret that most people forget when they build their brick houses and hide inside from the outside world so pain doesn’t seek them out.

Know The Importance of Dignity

If I don’t treat my own projects with respect, then how can I expect others to? If I don’t treat myself with dignity, then how can I expect the people around me to treat me, or even one another, with dignity?

Know There’s Always a Good Reason and a Real Reason for Everything, and Share It 

When you are a leader, people come to you with problems every day. The problems are usually very good problems. “The client is asking for too much.” Or “Jill didn’t do her job right,” or “My car broke down.”

A leader listens to the good reason closely to try and figure out what the real reason is, and then comes up with a solution. And there is always a real reason. Listen for that and see if you can help. A good solution solves one problem. A real solution solves a hundred problems.

Care About Your Health 

A sick leader is not a great leader. A leader who is spending time with people not good for them is not a good leader. A leader who doesn’t constantly practice creativity is not a good leader. A leader who is not grateful for the abundance already in his or her life will never lead his vision into abundance. He won’t know how.
There’s no such thing as instant health. There’s only such thing as practice and progress. All you have to do is check the box on progress. Progress compounds every day into enormous abundance.

Love What You Do

Don’t do something just for the money. Money is a side effect of persistence. You persist in things you are interested in. Explore your interests. Then persist. Then enjoy all the side effects.

Know How To Lead Yourself 

You don’t need to be leading anyone. Before I can lead anyone I have to lead myself. I have to read. I have to try and improve one percent a week. I have a handful of interests and I have a lot of experience. I have to get better at the things I’m interested in. I have to understand more deeply the painful experiences I’ve had. I have to every day practice the health—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—that I suggest to everyone else. Sometimes I don’t. And I feel it. But that’s OK. Don’t regret. Today is a new day. Today is the only day.


The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

By and large you are what you do. At least in terms of your identity being externally expressed, what you do defines who you are to those around you in a big way. Conversely, if what you are doing now does not feel like an accurate representation of who you are and what you want to be, then it’s time to focus on acting more in-line with how you feel inside and beginning to update some of your internal identity drivers to support a more accurate external expression through your actions day to day.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same,


If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that is in it, And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son. — Rudyard Kipling

Thoughts are discrete packets of energy that flow from your belief system and are the precursor to all conscious action. As those thoughts move from the formless realm of the mind to impact the world we live in they are felt as emotions, or energy in motion.

“Just as no one can be forced into a belief, No one can be forced to unbelieve.” — Sigmund Freud

Creative Constructs are temporary lifestyle changes that draw on your interests and passions to shuffle the deck in the game of life. Whether this means traveling for the summer, living abroad for half a year, participating in an intensive learning program or going off the grid and working on an organic farm for a season, creative constructs are an integral part of a dream lifestyle. Creative Constructs consist of setting parameters that let you work, learn and play; meet new people, relax and have an experience that is long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that you’re committing to a whole different lifestyle long-term or indefinitely.

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in The World

When you are walking along a path leading into a village, you can practice mindfulness. Walking along a dirt path, surrounded by patches of green grass, if you practice mindfulness you will experience that path, the path leading into the village. You practice by keeping this one thought alive: “I’m walking along the path leading into the village.” Whether it’s sunny or rainy, whether the path is dry or wet, you keep that one thought, but not just repeating it like a machine, over and over again.

Machine thinking is the opposite of mindfulness. If we’re really engaged in mindfulness while walking along the path to the village, then we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.


The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation