When I first heard about this astonishing modern day miracle back in December 2008 like most people I didn’t believe it, how could it be? Were some of my reactions.

I was reading a blog post of one of my role models Dr Joe Vitale. I have been learning from Joe for around 7 or 8 years now by reading many of his books and programs. He has one of the best writing styles around, has a very diverse range of knowledge on some really interesting topics and an awesome car collection.

To say the least I trust his recommendation. So when I first heard about Joe new book at the time Zero Limits about a doctor who healed all the patients in a criminally insane mental ward with out even seeing the patients one on one.

I have to say I was intrigued by the whole story; Joe defiantly has a way with words to make it sound convincing. But to be honest my first thought was ‘Joe, I hope you are right about this because you are about to lose all your credibility, this sounds crazy.’

As usual I ordered Joe’s new book at the time and I read about Dr Joe Vitale’s determination as he meets with Dr Hew Len to unearth what really happened and how did he really heal all those criminals insane patients and how did he do it with out even seeing them one on one.

Dr Hew Len’s response was I just cleaned and cleared using Ho’oponopono.

Ho’opono..what?? Yeah it is a strange word; it is an ancient Secret Hawaiian System for health, wealth and happiness . I don’t feel like I am authorized to explain much about how it works as I am still only a young student of Ho’oponopono however I have something much better.

After Joe Vitale published the Zero Limits book, Dr hew Len and Joe Vitale received much attention and many people asking for more information about Ho’oponopono so they put on 3 intimate workshops where Dr Hew Len went deeper into how to use Ho’oponopono to not only heal yourself and others but have more health, wealth and happiness in your life.

Just in the last few days Joe Vitale has launched a free blog with in-depth videos and Q and A reports about Zero Limits and Ho’oponopono. So if you are interested in learning more about the ancient secret Hawaiians system to enrich you life make sure to check out these free videos.

The great thing about this secret ancient therapy can be practiced by anyone, any where.

Click On Image To Visit Free Zero Limits Ho'oponopono Blog

In the last few posts I have been sharing some strategies that have been working best for me when it comes to creating lasting change, breaking limiting behaviors and creating success habits.

Today I thought I would share one of the most powerful strategies I have been implementing, not just for creating lasting change but to help me stay focused on what is important so I can reach new heights.

When we are growing up most of us had people we looked up to, admired and emulated. These role models could have been your parents, siblings, teachers, or celebrities, in fact really anyone of authority in your life at the time.

Whether you like it or not these role models have shaped the way you think, and react to the world and even the way you make decisions in your life.

When I was growing up my parents owned a video store and my older brother and I loved watching action movies, I was around 7 years old when Commando and Predator were first released staring the biggest action hero at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Swarchenegger in Commando

I used to emulate Arnold, I’d dress up in camouflage gear running around with a plastic toy M16 playing war with my friends. I admired the guy. He was like a real life cartoon character, could take on 40 men at once, he was my hero.

Like most of us I didn’t consciously choose Arnold as my role model, simply just being exposed to his movies and characters, and especially as such a young age in my mind I formed some kind of bond.

As adults we do the same thing, our minds are a sponge that absorb everything that is in your environment and end up influencing our behaviour often getting caught into patterns that may not serve us the best.

Our environment influences us much more than most of us want to admit, from the television shows you watch, the background music playing at work, the newspaper you read, your friends and colleagues, etc.

I think it was a study that suggested your income is the average amount of your 5 closest friend’s income.

I remember years ago when I first decided that I wanted to be financially free I would ask people “how do I become a millionaire?” one day someone said to me ”if you want to be a millionaire, hang out with millionaires”. This seemed like great advice, except one small problem – I didn’t know any millionaires!

While hanging out and picking the brains of the people who have already walked the path we went to travel is defiantly the best, fastest and almost 100% guaranteed way to succeed at getting what you want, it is not always possible.

This is where having specific role models can help you and makes a huge difference to guiding you directly to where you want to be.

Success leaves clues and almost no matter what results you want in this life there is a very good chance, probably about 99.99% there is someone or many people have already achieved it.

For example, if you wanted to grow a billion dollar company and be billionaire do you think Richard Branson or Bill Gates would be good role models to hang out with?

Even if you have never met Richard Branson you can still pick his brain by reading his books, watch interviews of him, study his companies and how they are structured, etc

You can choose role models to model after in any area of your life, whether it is heath related, maybe to lose weight, have more energy, build muscle, or gain spiritual awareness.

You can have different role models for buying real estate, investing, marketing, leadership, growing a business, whatever you want.

Here are my 4 tips to effectively using role models:

1. When you chose a role model you don’t have to model every aspect of the person or character you have chosen to model. Just the parts that serve you best in the area you want results, after all no one is perfect.

2. Make sure you chose a role model that you resonate with. You will be studying this person so make sure it is someone you enjoy learning about them, like and admire.

3. If they have published a biography, read it. Go to YouTube and watch any seminars or interviews they may have done. But here is the key, when you are reading about them or watching them you want to notice what they value in their life and their belief system. Notice how they how they handle different situations and make decisions, notice the language they use, and how they use their body. What habits have they acquired.

4. This is the most powerful part. As I talked about in previous posts about the limiting patterns and the rituals we do, this is where your role models becomes extremely powerful. As you learn more about them, what they value, how they act and language they use you should become more aware of your own actions, when this happens you need to ask yourself the most powerful question when it comes to working with role models which is. “What would [my role model’s name] do in this situation?” or “would my role model do this?” if the honest answer is no, then here is your chance to change your life.

“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped” ~ Anthony Robbins

By role modelling someone who has already achieved the results you want you can cut the learning curve down by months, years and sometimes even decades.

The best mistake to learn from is someone else’s

Till next episode

Sam

Someone recently asked me what is a life hacker? Depending on whom you ask and in what context you may get many differing answers.

For me when I was going up the term hacker was mostly used to reference a computer wiz kid who would hack into someone else’s computer or mainframe and take control of it. Usually a big multinational company

For me hacking is all about figuring out how something works and then influencing it to do what you want it to do. Figure out how to get the most out of something using the most effective and efficient means possible.

One way of looking at life hacking could be applying the 80/20 rule to everything in your life. The 80/20 or the Pareto principle in case you are not familiar states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

If you want better and faster results in your life, whether it is about health, building muscle, financial independence, relationships, communication, marketing, or anything else you can apply the 80/20 and be amazed with the results you get.

There have been many giants that have paved the way before us and have always stated if you want extraordinary results you need to do extraordinary things or at least out of the ordinary.

Many times when you look at how you can hack a certain part of life most of the traditional thinking doesn’t work and many times it is counter intuitive actions that bring the results.

A perfect example of this and perhaps one of the most recognised life hackers is the author of the The 4-Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss.

In Tim’s latest book The 4-Hour Body he hacks the human body, in one of the chapters Tim shows you how to lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing.

Coming from conventional wisdom this can’t be true, how can you lose weight while binging? Well you will have to read the book to find out

For me this is what hacking is all about, what small measurable actions you can take that will have the most impact.

You can apply these principles to anything in life. At the moment I am in the process of building up a new email list, I want to build it fast and with the least amount of effort.

So instead of doing what I did in the past, which was publish articles, comment on blogs, participate in forums, and upload videos to YouTube in the hope to get traffic to my landing page, I stared placing ads on adswap networks and doing adswaps with other people in my target market.

I get to grow my list by leveraging other peoples list and they get to grow their list by leveraging mine.  It is a great win win situation and it takes much less time and effort.

The world famous marketer Jay Abraham talks a lot about leveraging other people’s things like list/money/resources/customers/almost anything.

Another example of which I am focused on is eating more organic and Alkaline rich foods. You have to eat regardless so why not eat foods that will provide you better health, more energy and wellbeing.  You feel better and perform better and (hopefully) It will cut down on medical costs and suffering in the future too.

I would love to hear from you, what are some of the ways you hack your life to get better results?

As some of you know I have hired an Anthony Robbins personal coach to help me break though to new heights and guide me to the fulfilment of my desires.

One of the fundamental principals my coach takes me though is about state management and different strategies to keep you in a better state or mindset

Top athletes and anyone at the top of their game understand that when you are in an empowered state/mindset you make better decisions and take better actions.

I am sure you know and can relate to this too, we have all experienced times when you are feeling totally juiced, energised, in the moment and in a peak state. You feel like you can take on the world and conquer any task even if you don’t know how you will find a way.

And there are also those other less empowering states, feelings of struggle, stressed or ‘simply not in the mood’ which hijack us from living our full potential and rob us of our dreams.

If you have ever been exposed to any of Tony Robbins material or study NLP you know that there are 3 main keys that affect you state:

1. What you are focused on in that moment
2. How you are using your physical body or physiology
3. The language you use and the words you speak.

Simply by changing one or a combination of these things you can start to shift your state, for example if I was to ask you to describe someone who is depressed, what would you say?

How would they hold their body, would they be looking up or down? Standing straight or slouched? What do you think they would be thinking about? Do you think they would be thinking of past successes or past failures? What kind of words would they use? Do you think they would talk with passion and excitement or slow and dull? Speak positive words or negative words?

I hope you are getting the picture, in fact here is a little experiment you can try, next time you are working out, doing exercise put a really big smile on your face and notice how your focus changes and how different you begin to feel. This is a cool little trick you can use to help to push yourself that little bit further. Smiling releases endorphins in your brain that make you happy

Peace begins with a smile. ~ Mother Teresa

We all have run patterns that keep us in a certain state, for example when you first get home from work/school you run a certain pattern, for me it used to be turn on the TV, get changed and sit on the couch to unwind. Because I did this largely without thinking it became a habit, and as the saying goes the things you do habitually will determine your destiny. – I didn’t like the look of that destiny

Recently I have changed this pattern and I did it effortlessly. The new pattern or habit I wanted to install was to do some exercise as soon as I got home.

The problem was just the thought of doing exercise as soon as I got home didn’t excite me to say the least, in fact I dreaded it, even though I knew why I wanted to change.

I had to consciously use a combination of the 3 state changes above to get me into the right mood or state and remind myself WHY I wanted to create this new habit to push myself to follow though.

This was until I discovered how to make this change fun and effortless. One of the easiest ways you can influence your state is to play your favourite song or music.

For all those fans of the Rocky movies I am sure you can relate when you start to hear Eye Of The Tiger! (I know I start to get really fired up)

So this is what I did to create a new empowering success habit effortlessly

Instead of turning on the television as soon as I walked in the front door I would play my favourite music that would get me into an empowering state. The side effect of this one small change was that it kept me in an empowering state and coming from that mind set I naturally wanted to do the exercise.

It was far easier and much more enjoyable for me to change the habit turning on the stereo instead of the TV and as a result I installed a new success habit.

Simply by changing one small and seemly unrelated change I was able to create a long lasting habit that will serve me for years to come.

In order to change the direction of your life many people often get overwhelmed as to the massive changes they might need to make, instead of stressing yourself outlook for the small things you can do to maintain your peak state and you will naturally take the right action.

As the hundreds of successful people that have come before us have shared success is 80% mental and 20% practical or physical.

I would love to hear your thought and comments and what small changes you are committed to in order to break your disempowering states and creates new success habits effortlessly

Before you go I want to leave you on a high, here is a short video that I watch often to get myself into an empowering state. Enjoy

In Google’s never ending quest to take over the world, there have been many rumours floating around about when they will release their own social network and what it will be called; some suggest Google Me as a possible candidate.

Whether the rumours are true or not, Google is defiantly trying to get a hold of the social networking market and as the social element starts to affect search more and more Google want to start gathering their own data.

At the end of March Google announced they were releasing the Google +1 button. It has been compared to much like the Facebook ‘Like’ button, allowing users to +1 a piece of content to give it their stamp of approval so to speak.

The big question most markets are wondering is how this will affect search results and how easy is it going to be to game and manipulate.

Google have already publicly confirmed that the +1 button is not currently a major factor in quality score however this could change over time.

One of the interesting features is the +1 button on Google Ads; it appears Google want to start personalising their Ads much more, which will be of great interest to paid advertisers

How Google +1 will affect natural search results or paid ads I think it is too early to tell just yet, from past ventures into the social scene like Google Wave and Google Buzz that never really seemed to take off, the +1 has a lot hanging on it.

If you want to start using the Google +1 simply login with your Google Account and join the +1 experiment.