Do you feel your life is at a crossroads or at a breaking point? What's the next step? In Take Charge and Change Your Life Today! author Trevor Bolin provides a roadmap for improving yourself and your life.

Based on his own rags-to-riches story, Bolin discusses a host of techniques to help you achieve success, make better decisions, and reach your goals. He shows how success is based on attitude-you determine your life's outcome based on your thoughts and actions. Take Charge and Change Your Life Today! demonstrates how to

• - change your attitude, starting today;
  
• - start the process of short-term and long-term goal setting;
• - find your "Y" in life;
• - make a plan;
• - understand the importance of gratitude;
• - realize the role vices play in your life;
• - be confident and become a winner.

You have the power to choose your path, and this guide can show you the way. Accept nothing but the best for yourself and your life.

Take Charge and Change Your Life Today!

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction....................................................xiiiChapter 1 Good vs. Evil.........................................1Chapter 2 Got Goals? You Better!................................5Chapter 3 Dirty Money!..........................................9Chapter 4 Find Your "Y".........................................13Chapter 5 Look for the Signs....................................19Chapter 6 Luck Has Nothing to Do with It!.......................25Chapter 7 Check Your Attitude!..................................27Chapter 8 Does Your Past Affect Your Goals?.....................29Chapter 9 What Are You Grateful For?............................39Chapter 10 Vices ... What Are Yours?............................43Chapter 11 Moving On ...........................................49Chapter 12 What Have You Been Reading?..........................53Chapter 13 There's No Room for Negative!........................59Chapter 14 Quitting Time........................................63Chapter 15 It's Your Weight!....................................67Chapter 16 Subconscious Harmony.................................71Chapter 17 The Power of Suggestion..............................77Chapter 18 That's Affirmative!..................................81Chapter 19 Pay Yourself First!..................................85Chapter 20 It's a Long Way to Fall..............................91Chapter 21 Have a Little Faith!.................................97Chapter 22 What Did You Do?.....................................103Chapter 23 Average or Normal?...................................107Chapter 24 By-Products..........................................111Chapter 25 Do You Want It Easy?.................................113Chapter 26 You're a Winner!.....................................117Chapter 27 Think it, Believe it, See it!........................119Chapter 28 If You Won't, Who Will?..............................123Chapter 29 If I Had a Million Dollars ..........................125Chapter 30 It's Only the Beginning!.............................127About the Author................................................129

Chapter One

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. —Jim Rohn

People often ask me what my greatest accomplishments in life are thus far. That answer is easy: teaching people to be in charge of their own lives and, more important, every aspect of their lives today, tomorrow and beyond. I have made millions of dollars in sales and investing in real estate, owning number-one real estate companies based on what I have learned about taking charge of my own life. When I look at these things that I have done and then listen to people tell me that I have had a positive effect on their lives—how they have started to turn things around for the better, or have never felt better about themselves—the answer is just that easy. It's about you, and it's about today.

I may be only thirty-one years old, but I have only lived life for the past seven years. For the majority of my life, I got up every morning, did the same routine, went to work, sat with the same thoughts and the same attitude—and guess what I got? The same results!

The late Jim Rohn, one of the greatest personal motivators in modern history (whom I had the opportunity to meet), said it best: "You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight" (The Treasury of Quotes, 1994). Over the years, I have tried to make my life the best I could with all that I knew. I woke every morning in the same life—my life. I knew if I kept going forward, I would achieve the life I was looking for, the life I knew I was destined for. It was seven years ago when I hit my breaking point and started to change my life.

You may be reading this because you are at your breaking point, or you know your breaking point is coming close. Do not be frightened; embrace it! It is going to take you from where you are today (made up of yesterday) and turn you into who you will be tomorrow. Now that's living life! Everyone has a breaking point. What you do with it is completely up to you; you will determine the outcome, based on your thoughts and actions.

All the people I have worked with—folks I have mentored, given sales seminars to and helped to build careers and personal lives—have made me who I am today.

Studies have been done on children who have experienced less than desirable (or even acceptable) circumstances throughout their lives and have turned out to be the bad apple. We hear this all the time: no wonder they turned out like they did, look at their parents or look at the way they were brought up, look at the circumstances in their lives. If you spent time researching my history and background, you would hear more than the term bad apple. Ask different teachers from my past, ask the people who are the closest to my heart if they thought I would turn out to be anything more than what my past pegged me for. The answer would be an obvious no. I know they were probably not far off; if I had kept going the way I was going, I would have ended up exactly that way, pegged for disaster and in a mess. I have seen people go from the top of their game to the bottom—and from the bottom to the top. The best research we can do is to learn how they went from the bottom to the top, and then we can focus on always being the best. The rest doesn't matter.

The purpose of this book is to prove that the theory about the bad apple is dead wrong! We all have a choice in life: to be better or to be just average. We have to choose to be the best and accept nothing but the best for ourselves and our lives—not because our parents did or did not tell us to be the best, not because we read a book or saw a TV show that told us how to make thousands of dollars a year, but because we deserve it as much today as we did yesterday.

My father used to tell me that he made the wrong choice, but that was the only choice. I love reminding him how wrong he was. There is the positive, right choice and the negative, "not so right" choice. It is not that one is bad or good. I don't live my life as bad or good; I live it by 'right' and 'not so right'.

I have made some "not so right" decisions in my life that would have taken me backward rather than forward, just as I am sure you have. I have also been fortunate enough to make the right decisions that took me to exactly where I needed to be. I do not regret the right decisions, so why regret the ones that weren't so right? I have zero regrets in my life; living with regret is like living with jealousy, fear or anger. You cannot have the life you deserve or dream of with any of those as a part of who you are.

Our oldest son reminds my mother of me as a child: he is nonstop action from sun-up to sun-down. If he can get into it, he will be into it the second we leave the room. The medicine cupboard is locked. Anything that isn't for a 3-year-old is higher than he can reach, with no possible way to climb up and help himself. For those of you who have high-spirited boys, you are in the special club and know exactly what I am talking about. When our son was wild or broke something of his mother's, my wife always told him he was being a bad boy. I, of course, put my two cents in and reminded her he is not. He is being a boy and may have made a not so right decision, and that is how he is going to learn.

I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I was told I was bad, or had an attitude problem, or was a horrible person, or was retarded. I am fortunate enough to know what the results of those words are, no matter who they came from.

I can remember being told I wasn't as smart as my sister, I wasn't as thin as my cousin, I wasn't as charming as my father ... No, I wasn't, and you know why? I wasn't those people—I was me! I was absolutely 100 percent unique, and I was not going to pretend to be something or someone I wasn't.

Chapter Two

A goal properly set is halfway reached. —Abraham Lincoln

Right now, at the beginning of our journey, I am going to ask you to make one goal and write it down on the inside cover of this book. That one goal is that you will not be in the 90 percent of people who buy a book and never make it past the first chapter. I want you to be committed to changing your life today and joining the top 10 percent who believe they can take charge of their lives; then you will take charge of your life. When I first heard the above horrifying statistic, I thought it was no wonder so many books got written, published and purchased. Most people will buy a book (that's the first step in starting to feel better), and then they either put it on the book shelf or maybe read the first chapter ... and then it is gone, never to be thought about again. (Truth be known, while reading that first chapter, they may feel the happiest they have been in days, weeks or even years.)

The first step to getting on track with anything is making up your mind that you're going to do it, committing 100 percent to finishing something and setting forth. That is why it feels so good to buy a new book or borrow one. It reminds me of getting a prescription from the doctor. You know something is wrong, so you seek the help of a professional who tells you yes, you're correct, something is definitely wrong. He prescribes what will help your body get better, and you start using it. Within three days of the five-day prescription, you start feeling a lot better, so you stop taking the prescription: the problem with not finishing it until the end is that prescription is designed to complete stages throughout the term, just as life is. Those same steps are used by millions on North Americans in everything they do. Whether it is to help them fix their health, their mind or their weight, it doesn't matter. The key to finishing is not only in the starting, but in following up and following through afterward.

Each and every book I own (and there are a lot of them) has been read cover to cover numerous times. It isn't because I am running out of books to read, because I can always find more; it's that every time I read them, I find something I missed the last time.

Take the latest movie you saw at the theatre. When it was released in the local video store, 60 percent of the folks who rented were watching it for a second time. Why? Because they missed something the first time that is crucial to the story line, the climax or the ending. Reading a good book is exactly the same.

Repetition is the key to changing the way you think. It is amazing as you start to put these different, new thoughts into your conscious and subconscious mind, and they start to filter out the negative garbage you heard today at the water cooler, the junk that they used to sell newspapers with, the chewing out you got from your boss earlier. The more you fill your mind and thoughts with life-changing, positive information, the more positive your life becomes. The rest you will not even notice. You read something, see something or hear something that makes you feel good for a moment, and then you move on. Imagine, just for a second, if you felt like that every day! If every day of your life could be like the first time you fell in love, the first time you hit a home run, the way you felt when you held your first child, the way you felt when you closed that major deal. Imagine life through those eyes! Well, I am telling you right now with 100 percent certainty-it can and it will, because you deserve the best life.

Before you move on to the next chapter, let's get that first goal in joining the top 10 percent of people living in the free world completed. Make a note to read this book from cover to cover and tell yourself this is something you are doing for yourself. You don't have to make this next step your second goal, but if you want to climb even higher inside that 10 percent, your mission is to not only read this book cover to cover for the first time, but complete it a second time, and you will be that much closer to ensuring you have taken charge and are changing your life.

Chapter Three

Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune. —Jim Rohn

I grew up in what I thought was a typical home, in a typical neighbourhood with typical parents. No, we did not have what some of the other kids in the neighbourhood had, but that only mattered when those kids were over at my house. My parents didn't get along and fought almost every time they were together. I have to give them credit, though, because they tried not to argue or fight in front of us kids. But kids can always tell what happens behind closed doors. My dad was an oil patch worker and spent the majority of his time in camps and different cities, and he was generally just not around while we were growing up. That's just the way it was and, in those times, the way it had to be. I figured we just deal with what was given to us and move on. We could complain about it and tell others how unfair it was, but that wasn't going to help us get anywhere.

Wow! Can you imagine the lives people lead and the things they have to go through, just thinking that was the hand they were dealt? Well, guess what? Life isn't a card game! Life is a series of great events full of learning experiences that we can benefit from—or be crushed under. The choice is ours and no one else's.

The people who invented a lot of the sayings we use and hear in today's world should be studied at great length and then dismissed from whatever position they hold! Phrases such as "lump it up," "money is the root of all evil," "that's just the way it is," "a fool and his money are soon parted," "money is dirty," and all the rest of those negative thoughts are unhelpful. Make a commitment to yourself that if you use those or even think of negative phrases, today is the last day you will let those words come out of your mouth, and tomorrow will be the last day they enter your mind.

A child does not have a filter for thoughts from the subconscious mind until the age of 7 or 8. Imagine what a child would believe about the world if those negative phrases are the things they hear all the time. Money is the root to all evil? It certainly is not; it is just the by-product of a job well done. Money is dirty? Explain "dirty" to me—it's not like it's the bathroom handle at the local corner store. Money is a great thing when you know what to do with it, how to treat it, when you control it and stop letting it control you ... and when you realize you have to earn it and not just make it.

One day I was trying to give advice to a friend and co-worker. It was the recession of 2008 and sales were down. He was doing a great job trying to stay positive, but I could see he was getting pretty beat up over it. He said, "You know what, Trev? I wish I would have saved some money to help me through times like these."

I said, "Aaron, I want you to write that down on something you will see every day. Do you think this will be the last time the market dips like this?" He didn't quite understand what I was getting at, so I explained it to him another way. "The market, with the huge ups and downs that we are experiencing, is a learning lesson. This down is also a learning lesson, and that's why the cycle has repeated itself continuously since the beginning of time. Experience all these great things in life and learn from them. So when times were awesome and the money was rolling in, you were spending like crazy, living an out-of-control lifestyle and not saving money. And you know what? That's okay ... this time. Now we are in a slow time, and you are struggling to make ends meet, making sacrifices you never thought you would have to make.

"And here is the clincher: it is going to be tough, but it will be all right. We are about to go through another cycle, and I can see the start of the next up period. The only thing that matters from here on out is that you learned the valuable lesson you were supposed to learn. If you do, that's fantastic, and this cycle will never affect you or your family again. If you didn't, that's unfortunate, only because the lesson is going to be even worse the second time. I have seen that cycle, and although I didn't learn everything from it the last time, I learned a lot that I put into play because I knew what I needed to do."

Now, instead of him having to go through it three times to learn everything, I learned the hard lesson for him. There are hard lessons and soft lessons in our world. Most people go through the hard ones, suffer through them, work their way out of them and come up more on top, in a better position than ever before. That's a fact! Most of those folks then learn that helping others to soften that hard lesson becomes a life calling.

A lot of people will disagree with me when I say one's past has absolutely nothing to do with one's future, unless one lets it. If this is the case and you disagree with me, it's all the more reason to keep reading and learning from what I am about to share with you. If my past was a road map for my life, you wouldn't be sitting here reading a motivational book written by me; you would be reading a biography about my short life, summed up by someone who did not know me, because it was too little, too late.

I believe your past can only have a positive or negative effect on your today and tomorrow if you let it. The difference between which affect it has is totally up to you. I chose the positive one and did whatever I could with what I had, and I used 100 percent conviction and faith to apply it every day. I applied it to everything I thought about, everything I did and everything I still do.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Take Charge and Change Your Life Today!by Trevor Bolin Copyright © 2011 by Trevor Bolin . Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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