It's Never Too Late to Become a Millionaire

This post was originally published on jackcanfield.com 

I want to reveal something about myself that I hope will inspire you in your life. The truth is that the first time I earned a check for $1,000,000 was when I was 51 years old. It's never too late to become a millionaire.

In fact, if you consider that I graduated from Harvard University when I was 21, it took me an utter 30 years to amass the knowledge, the connections, and the experience required to generate that much money.

Slow and steady won the game. How about you? What can you do in your life to develop the millionaire mindset? And I want you to realize today with everything that's available on the internet, you don't have to wait 30 years to become a millionaire.

4 Things You Need to do to Become a Millionaire

1. Develop a Millionaire Mindset

First, you must have the belief that you can easily become a millionaire.

Belief comes from making a choice. All beliefs are thoughts. They're thoughts you think over and over and over until you don't even realize it's a conscious thought anymore, it just seems like it's reality. But you have the ability to change your beliefs.

To develop your belief, practice daily affirmations like:

"I am so happy and grateful that I'm now earning $1,000,000 a year."

"I'm so happy and grateful that I am looking at my net worth and my stock account and it shows $2,000,000 or $20,000,000." (Or whatever it is.)

"I'm so happy and grateful that I'm living a millionaire lifestyle."

If you do the affirmation over and over, it becomes the new belief that becomes your reality and then everything in your unconscious mind and subconscious mind will start to organize itself to actually help you create it.

2. Know Your Purpose Behind Becoming a Millionaire

The second thing is you must decide what being a millionaire means to you. These things that will keep you focused. Is it security? Is it freedom? Power? Prestige? The ability to travel anywhere you want in the world? Philanthropy? The ability to make a difference in the lives of others? Have the money to invest? Is it the ownership of a house, two houses, or a vacation home?

Whatever that experience is for you, make sure that you write it down and get very clear what's the why behind being a millionaire.

For me, becoming a millionaire wasn't about the big house and the big car. Now I have those things, but the real purpose for me was about having the freedom to pursue my visions and to live my life purposefully.

• To have the resources.
• To be able to hire staff.
• To have the electronic, video, and sound equipment at seminars.
• To be able to rent rooms, do PR, and pay for advertising.
• To be able to support my coaches.

All those things that I wanted to do had to do with the vision of changing the world. I wanted to inspire and empower people to live their highest vision, so if everyone did, everything in the world would work.

Make sure you get really clear about what is your purpose behind becoming a millionaire. Because that's going to drive it more than the actual million dollars.

It's the feeling that you want to achieve and the impact that you want to have that is much more important.

I suggest that you create a vision board of what you want and the pictures that would represent the lifestyle and experiences you expect to have when you're a millionaire.

A vision board is simple, it could be on your door, your mirror, or your refrigerator door. It could be on paper, construction paper, or wherever you want to put it. It's simply a place where you staple, glue, tape, or however words like abundance, prosperity, freedom, travel, unlimited potential, and images.

Be sure to include images of the vacations, the things you want to own, you on a stage, your children graduating, or whatever it might be that you think having a million dollar lifestyle would give you.

3. Transform Your Financial Comfort Zone

We all have a financial set point just like the thermostat in your house.

When we get to a certain level of earnings, our thermostat turns off the furnace, just like it turns off the furnace in your house when it reaches 68 or 70 degrees.

And for some people making $75,000 a year is their comfort zone. They'll never make more than that unless they reset their thermostat. You have to reset it.

I'll share a story with you about how this financial set point works...

40 years ago I got a new job working at a training company in Los Angeles and the owner of that training company said he was going to go buy some shirts if I'd like to come along with him.

We went to a store called Allandale's in Westlake, California and the cheapest shirt in that store was around $100. The owner was buying shirts for like $150.

I had never bought a shirt for more than $38 from a place like Nordstrom's. This was way out of my comfort zone to spend that much money on a shirt.

I wanted him to think that I was successful so I bought one shirt that cost me $148. I'll never forget this. I took that shirt home and I wore it and I sent it to the cleaners.

When it came back, I noticed that it was always the first shirt I would reach for. It was a better quality shirt, it was designed better, it looked better, and it felt better.

Pretty soon my comfort zone changed from $38 shirts to $150 shirts and those are the only shirts I buy now and I've bought ever since. The act of moving into a new place shifted my entire sense of myself and made me uncomfortable wearing the lesser quality shirt.

Comfort zones are very powerful and you can change your comfort zone by visualizing, affirming, and taking actions in that new comfort zone that become a habit.

4. Decide Exactly What You Want in Life

Finally, you're going to need to decide how much money you want to have in your life. The exact annual salary, the exact net profit from your business, your total net worth, your portfolio of investments, investment income, and how much you want to have when you retire.

You have to believe it's possible to attain that. Come up with a specific number.

To stay focused on this number I want to teach you about a powerful tool which I've mentioned called affirmations. Affirmations are simply statements you repeat over and over and over affirming your new reality.

I like to use the very simple little formula, “I'm so happy and grateful that I now…”

For example, "I'm so happy and grateful that I now am looking at my bank statement of $1,000,000 a year."

Once you've created your affirmation, based on your goal and the numbers that you came up with, spend at least two to three minutes in the morning and two to three minutes at night repeating your affirmation every day. If you have three or four affirmations that's great, go through them one at a time. Close your eyes and visualize having that reality.

To help yourself develop a millionaire mindset and shift your comfort zone I want you to write several affirmations that are expressing your eventual income and lifestyle.

 “I'm so happy and grateful that I now have a $200,000 a year income or $500,000 a year income or $1,000,000 income.”

“I'm so happy and grateful that I now spend my days traveling the world, solving problems to impact investing.”

“I'm so happy and grateful that I fully funded our kid's college education expenses and have secured it in a 529 plan.”

Take a few minutes twice a day when you first wake up and right before you go to bed and repeat each affirmation. Close your eyes and see it clearly.

As long as you're intending it, even if it's vague, it works.

Make sure you visualize it as if it's already come true and then feel the feelings you would feel. Fill in all the details of where you'd be, who else is there, what's being said and as I said, most important, create the experience of the emotions you'd be feeling if you'd already achieved it. Just like an actor.

Would it be joy, gratitude, happiness, pride, feeling powerful, or generous? Whatever you think you would feel, create that feeling in your body.

Use these financial goals as your destination. Your financial goal is one of your important destinations, the affirmation and the visualization is the car you're going to drive to get there, and the emotional feeling is the fuel that's going to propel that car. Research seems to show now that the emotions are the most critical part of this process.

Take Action

Here is your millionaire mindset homework to complete after reading this blog. Pull out your checkbook and write a check payable to yourself for the amount of money that you want to make in the next year. Sign and date the check, and place it somewhere where you're going to see it every day.

Use it as a daily reminder of where you want to be, the work you want to do, and whatever is necessary to reach that goal. Put it on your mirror, your refrigerator, or under the glass on your desk at work. You could even photograph it and make it a screensaver on your computer.

Leave a comment below and share one thing you're going to do to ensure you reach your financial goal that you set for yourself within the next year.

If you want to learn more about creating a vision board and creating affirmations that will change your life, click this link to get my free success tool, 21 Ways to Make Your Vision Board More Powerful.