I accidentally came across a way to tell whether someone is broke. It works every time.

Why would you want to know - whether someone's broke - in the first place?

Most people can easily think of a situation or two. Usually we only find out who’s swimming naked when the tide goes out. With my accidental method, no need to wait for the tide to change.

It works real simple, too. Everybody conveniently falls into one of two groups of people. You live your life either inside or outside of your comfort zone. For anyone living inside their comfort zone - the overwhelming majority of us - all you have to find out is whether the person is comfortable with his or her life.

Most people are not ... but "would like to be".  This is your hint. Anyone uncomfortable with the money in their life, yet merely wishing to be comfortable,  is broke.

It never fails. Because the truth is, success in business is not a stroll in the park.

Merely wanting to be comfortable ain't enough. Even if at first you get a head start - it won't last. If you are willing to live only inside your comfort zone, your life will be uncomfortable. Sooner or later. I know ... only too well :-)

But if you're willing to do what's uncomfortable, life will be easy.

Successful people live in fear just like everybody else, but they don't let that stop them. They don't base their decisions on what's comfortable, easy and convenient. Successful people make it a habit to "get over" their comfort zone. How else to discover what you hardly know the limits of? Successful people have learned that not doing the thing that you’re afraid will hurt you, will in the long run hurt infinitely worse than doing it.

Venturing outside your comfort zone sounds more difficult than it is. You already know this. The first time you embark on something new it usually feels uncomfortable. Correct or right? Then the more you do it, the more comfortable it becomes and your comfort zone expands. Just the way it is.

Sometimes it involves having to learn something new. If it does, keep in mind you don’t learn so that you can then do. That’s an anxiety reaction and an avoidance behavior. You learn by doing, or you’ll never learn at all. Or worse.

"Success Secrets", "The Secret of Success" and "The Secret Key to Success" - frequently seen headlines that continue to be a fascination for many. We're seemingly always on the lookout for success, believing there must be a secret to it. Yet this story shows it can be much more straightforward than that.

Clara Cannucciari, the sheroe of our story, is 94 years old. According to recent coverage by the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, click here to see the article - she has a blog, a Facebook account and an online cooking show, "Great Depression Cooking With Clara" which has become a YouTube sensation, with nearly 2 million hits and counting.

Clara Cannucciari, her drive and success, and how she did it, surely can be inspirational to people of all ages, hence my blogging about it. She "simply" took a valuable lesson from the past - from the Great Depression 80 years ago - and shared it with the world - via nicely done YouTube videos - and abracadabra, success.

No secret needed. Just approach business as you would cooking. Take the right  ingredients (required by your recipe), cook them in the right way and you will get a somewhat predictable outcome. Put differently, success is learned - and done - in the same way as cooking. You must have the right recipe, and the right ingredients, but that's as far as it goes. From there the rest of success follows, more or less naturally, very much predictably.

Clara's recipe features a cup of past (valuable lesson), a pound of present (sharing it with the world) and much help from your friends. I have a strong hunch that  Carla knows the best vitamin for making friends is B1. Other ingredients probably also included perseverance, promotion and search engine optimization, but these are standard in every recipe for online success.

"I'm too old!" - it's one of the best liked excuses around the world. If nothing more, I hope Clara Cannucciari's story makes the "I'm too old" excuse a thing of the past, where it belongs.

Bob Dylan just might be fixin' to return to the recording studio soon again - without his guitar this time. He’s contemplating satellite navigation, in talks with car companies to be the voice of their GPS systems. "I think it would be good if you're looking for directions and you heard my voice saying something like, 'take a left at the next street, no, a right, you know what, just go straight'," he said. "I probably shouldn't do it because whichever way I go, I always end up in one place - on Lonely Avenue."

Beyond its newsworthiness, reports of Dylan doing GPS begs this question: if we were looking for directions and heard your voice, where would it take us? Where is your voice taking you?

PS. If you've ever experienced Dylan in Theme Time Radio Hour - thanks to a friend I'm lucky to have the full recordings - you'd know he'd make a memorable GPS.

All of us are on a journey. On a quest to who we really are. To express our full creative potential. To discover how much love we can give and receive. On that journey, we all must face challenges. For a trailer of Louise Hay's movie, You Can Heal Your Life, click on the pic on the right, and when at healyourlife's website click on the "Play" icon.

1. A Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)
While PMA is number one among the seven magnificent of success, strictly speaking you can be successful with a negative mental attitude also. Just look around you or, if need be, catch the nooze on teevee. See the "success" of the merchants of death, hate and violence and of those who prey on the fallen and weak. Success, after all, depends on how you define it. However, a PMA is absolutely required if you want success that’s enduring, satisfying to you, the people around you and the world at large. A definition of PMA, if needed, is easily be found among the large number of books and articles out there. The importance about PMA is it  precedes success. If you wait to have success first and then acquire a PMA, you risk to be waiting forever, regardless of success happening or not. Also, just as success doesn't bring about PMA, PMA by and of itself won’t bring about success. Success requires - in addition to PMA - positive doing, too. With PMA alone, without positive doing you’d be hoping to climb a ladder that has no rungs.

2. Know What (Only) You Know
Know what success tastes, looks and feels like - to you. To be successful by other peoples’ criteria will only cause you to stress and be unhappy. If you're not sure about yourself, begin the process of getting to know yourself better by looking into a mirror and asking who you are. The only person permitted to answer is you. Then move on to ask yourself what success is in each of your main dimensions: physical/health, family, career, financial, adventure, variety, love, connection, relationships, growth, contribution - whatever may apply to you. To help with this step, a method often used is called Wheel of Life. If you need one, just google it. Many examples available on the internet for free. In knowing what only you know, remember the reason most people fail to get what they want, simply put, is they don’t know what they want. Don’t let it happen to you. Have faith. It is never too early or too late to be, or to become, who you might have been.

3. Focus On Outcomes - Always
Make it a habit of separating means from ends. Then always focus on the ends. What's the difference and why is it important? Means are about the What, How and When. Means are mostly about what you're doing. By contrast, Ends are about the Why. Ends are about how you will feel "the morning after," after the doing is done. If you focus not only on what you are doing, but also on how you are feeling,  you massively increase the chances of achieving your desired outcome.  To illustrate the point: I volunteer with an organization that delivers meals to the homes of people who cannot prepare their own. The other day the distribution center, also staffed by volunteers, was late in preparing the packages. One volunteer among us got angry at the delay. I doubt her reason to volunteer was to get angry. The reason for volunteering is to make yourself and others feel good - else, why bother?! That even a volunteer can get easily distracted from the most basic purpose of volunteering, shows the importance of always keeping in mind how you are feeling, too.

4. Learn From Every Experience
Make learning - from every experience, good and bad - a lifelong habit. The reason most people stop learning is for fear of looking ridiculous in the eyes of others. As adults, when we grab a full glass of water with nonchalance, absent-minded, automatically, we tend to forget we all learned to drink by means of two-handed, fool-proof sippy cups (or equivalent). It's a good thing we’re naturally adopting a learning attitude during the phase of our lives when we must learn everything. It's an equally good thing to maintain a learning attitude in adulthood later on in life, too. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well. Adults who remember, do well.

5. Build On Your Strengths
Much of society is about making you believe there’s something missing in your life. It’s easier to sell you something when you believe you must have it. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it's just the way it is. The point, building on your strengths is a challenge in a world where you’re constantly reminded of your weaknesses. It’s a myth to believe that as you grow, your personality changes. The opposite is true. As you grow, if you grow, you become more of who you are intended to be. To get more meaning, passion and success into your life, build on what invigorates you (indicator of your strengths), and stay away from what drains you (indicator of your weaknesses).

6. Get Outside Of Your Comfort Zone
If your goal now is to be comfortable, chances are you’ll end up very uncomfortable. By contrast, if your goal now is to be successful, chances are you’ll end up very comfortable. To be successful required preparedness to do whatever it takes - inside and outside of your comfort zone. You become successful by adopting the habit of doing the things unsuccessful people have the habit of avoid doing. You may not always like the things that need doing yourself, yet success demands getting on and doing them, regardless of how you feel. The movie Slumdog Millionaire contains a scene where, to reach his goal, a boy must jump into and get through, literally, a pile of shit. So he does. I’m not suggesting you try it at home, but if it's success you want, know clearly what success means, to you, and be prepared for ... whatever it takes.

7. Jump
Success requires the willingness to jump. Not just the ability, the willingness. Once you have your mind made up and your vision is clear, many decisions are already made. At this point there must be no more double-guessing yourself, no room for hesitation. There’s risk in letting go. Without it there’s no success. Between the fear of failing and the promise of success, fear is often the stronger of the two. In these situations, the only safety consists in deliberately jumping. Seven is not some magical number that guarantees success. However, it's a manageable number - a good number to get started. Wishing you fun and success on the journey!

Article first published in Khabar Magazine, July 2009

"This is not why I'm playing tennis, to break records" - after breaking the record for most Grand Slam singles titles in men's tennis history.

The reasons Roger Federer does not have for playing tennis go a long way in explaining why he does. With his athletic ability he could have chosen any sport. His intelligence would have allowed him to choose a career outside of sport. His ambition would have led to success in any field. Yet he chose tennis ... because he loves it.

Like for Federer, being clear about your reasons for not pursuing whatever you're pursuing can be as important as understanding your reasons for doing it. In your reasons for not pursuing things, include all those things that would bring you happiness maybe, but short-lived happiness only. Because, like Federer, what you truly want is lasting success - in your career, love, relationships, health and finances. It requires a shift of focus from what you're engaged in, to how it makes you feel, from working towards a thing to the sensation you have while working. It requires to move control over your feelings from the outside world to the inside. Lasting success demands clarity inside of how the outside is going to affect you, or not. When your vision of how you will feel is clear you are free. In an earlier interview Federer, who won his first Grand Slam at the relatively ripe age of 23, stated, "I push myself not to get upset and stay positive, and that's my biggest improvement over all these years. Under pressure I can see things very clearly." You can be positive and see things clearly only by pushing yourself. No-one else can do it for you.

PS. After his epic Wimbledon 2009 win, Federer also said, "(In a four hour match) you're always going to go through good times and bad times (and those were the bad times) but you have to be able to turn those around." Wise words from a man of any age, and certainly experience-based from the man with the 15 Grand Slam wins.

Among the things they don't teach at school is how to tell fact from fiction.

The more you depend for your information on hearsay - teevee, magazines, papers and, increasingly, the internet - the more fact and fiction become literally indistinguishable. While a majority of hearsay is honest and well intended, other times - quite often - the information conveyed is manipulated.

Governments, corporations, religions, news outlets and con artists engage in self-serving and deceptive strategies, hide or distort, and present fiction as fact. For having been a cigarette smoker for many years, and a tax payer for all my life, I know what I'm talking about.

The ability to tell fact from fiction is important because in it's absence you risk to adopt false beliefs, and false beliefs in turn can seriously impede your growth as a human being. It's been said that a hundred-foot tall oak tree, if it had a human mind, would only grow ten feet tall. While it's of course impossible to proof, most people immediately sense there's truth in it.

The ability to tell fact from fiction is dependent upon the ability to be completely honest and objective with yourselves and to see the world as it really is, not as you wished it were. It's the most important quality of leadership and allows you to deal with the facts exactly as they are, before attempting to solve a problem or make a decision.

Telling fact from fiction deals with reality and the truth, which doesn't make it easy. After all, 99 % of reality is invisible. Sometimes it's merely an illusion, other times it isn't all you imagine it to be. Reality is not always the most likely outcome, but it always has a way of intruding. Even though it is not the most comfortable of rides, I encourage you to go for it all the more so. For one thing, a love which cannot bear to be faced with reality is not a real love, so even you're ability to love yourself depends on it. On the plus side, if you love yourself and are in touch with reality, you are never disappointed. When you swap your illusions for reality, when you drop what could or should be for what is, life becomes meaningful. It's way worth the prize. Give it  try. Just do it.

The reality principle is among the most important qualities of leadership – whether you’re leading only yourself, a family, a business or a people.

The reality principle states that you must see, accept and face the world as it is, not as you wished it were. Simply stated, you must be completely honest and objective with yourselves.

If you often speak in should-haves or could-haves, the reality principle can be a challenge. How to accept what is, when you see the world mostly through the lens of how it could or should be instead?

Could-haves and should-haves are frequently employed by people opposed to the idea there exists an intelligence greater than us. If it existed, the world would be in better shape, would it not? Put differently, if they were this greater than us intelligence for just one day, the world would better a better place.

Well, while the world could be different, right now it isn't. It's hard to argue with is-ness. If you step off a high building you fall down, not up. We are all part of nature, not above it.

When we align with the reality principle, life and life energies flow smoothly. When we resist the reality principle, regardless of reason, resistance becomes the dominating force.

Your beliefs, like tobacco and obesity, can do more harm to you, than help.

"Bad" beliefs about yourself, expressed in words demeaning of you, weaken and damage you more than cigarette smoking and obesity would, if you were a smoker and over-eater. It makes no difference whether the demeaning words are spoken by yourself, in silent self-talk, or by another person, from the outside. As long as you express demeaning beliefs about yourself, you're as powerless about the damage to you as the smoker and over-eater.

A recent dinner party included a man who had lost his job. It was a good job, well paid, in a nurturing environment. Now he answers phones at a call center. Not what you'd call a great career move. A couple of dinner guests talked about the things they're doing with their lives, the dreams they're pursuing. He joined their conversation with a truly bad belief about himself. He said, "I'm too old to land a great job again."

With these words he not only joined the conversation, he ended it. What to say next? Even your best friends can't help, if you're continuously clipping your wings with demeaning beliefs about yourself.

It's not the man's age that's doing him in, it's his belief about being too old. With a more loving attitude he might have said, "I'm not sure how to get a great job at my age. Any ideas?" There would have been an outpouring of help. Instead of a show-stopper, he would have created a delightful experience for himself and the people around him.

Choose your beliefs wisely, lovingly. Your life depends on it.

There is no such thing as more time. Time is something none of us has figured out a way to manufacture. We already have all the time there is.

So how can we have more time? You can experience more time, that's how! It's the only way to have more time, and really a two-step process. Step One, begin to be intensely grateful for the time you have, or the time you're given, depending on your world view. It will change how you value the time and therefore, your experience of it. I guarantee it. Because you'll value time more, as if by magic, you'll experience it more. When people are asked what they are most grateful for in life, “time” is rarely mentioned. It's hardly a surprise then, that many people can only think of time in terms of never enough. It needn't be so. For inspiration, watch the excellent little “The Time Movie” available online for free NSA (no strings attached). Step Two, manage your time less. It's not a misprint. It might sound like an oxymoron, but you'll be amazed. To get more time, manage it less. You see, not only do we take time for granted, we also have a habit of chopping it up - into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds. We also concern ourselves with the past and future, sometimes to the point of forgetting about the present. But time only exists in the present (or rather we only exist in the present, but let's stay on track). As a result of our chopping time into pieces, and of not living in the now, we have kind of lost our sense of time itself.

Another way of valuing time more is to have less, but I don't wish this to anyone. When time runs out it's like when the cookies run out. The last remaining cookie in the jar suddenly appears more precious than it was when the jar was full. Value time more, and manage time less, starting today. Keep in mind, "time is a great teacher, but it unfortunately kills all its pupils" (Hector Berlioz).