Millionaire Immigrant

Creating Positive Habits for a Successful Life.

One thing I found in common among successful people is that they are the people with habits. They have a system of how they operate. Just like a successful business operates with a proven system, successful people act with a proven habit. I am fully convinced that anyone can change their lives with positive habits.

What makes a habit? How to create a positive habit? I read somewhere that more than 60% of our daily lives are based on habits. Please, do not ask the credibility or source of this statistics. That was not the first thing that came to my mind when I came across it. Rather it seems to be very true to me when I analyze my own life.

Just reflect on the things you do on a daily basis. When I wake up, I go to the bathroom, get breakfast, get dressed almost without thinking, just out of habit. When I open the Internet, I almost always check the same websites I check every day. When I go to the grocery store, I follow the same path through the aisles, stopping at and picking up the same items every time. There are always a few things that are different, but most of the things we do in a situation are the same every time we are there. We don’t even have to think about it and our brain starts working the usual way, right away.

But these habits were created over time. After you repeat the same routine for a certain time, it becomes a habit. It takes practice and patience to form a positive habit. You just need to do the same task over and over until it comes automatically.

Similarly, it is as difficult if not more to break a negative habit. The best way to break a negative habit is to replace it with a positive one. Either you need to avoid the situation that promotes a negative habit or find a positive replacement for it. For example, people who smoke have an urge of smoking under certain situations. Some people smoke when they are around other people who smoke. So in order to break the habit, they should keep a packet of chewing gum or a candy with them, so when they meet their smoker friends they can start chewing the gum instead. It is certainly difficult in the beginning but if you have the will and a substitute ready, it is not impossible.

I have personally given up smoking, coffee, and soda. Keeping a packet of chewing gum handy and avoiding situations where I would normally smoke helped me to quit smoking. Drinking water in the morning and every time I needed coffee helped me quitting coffee. Drinking water instead of soda when I needed a drink helped me quitting soda. As long as you are determined, it is possible for you to break such negative habits.

But I am not perfect either. In fact, I still have so many negative habits that I want to quit. For example, I still spend endless time on the Internet not doing anything productive. I procrastinate every now and then. There is still so much unproductive time in my everyday life that I should replace with positive habits and productivity. For me productivity is not just limited to making money or learning a skill, it can be anything from spending quality time with friends and family to picking up a good book to read, going for a walk or watching an inspirational YouTube video. It can be anything that can harbor positivity in you and bring the best out of you. Just feeding garbage internet content does not count, so does sitting on the couch and watching TV all day.

So the main intention behind this post is to list all the negative habits that I have to quit and the positive habits that I would like to take. Then, I want to practice these for months and years until they come automatically to me. Bye bye Internet junk and welcome to all the early retirement blogs. Bye bye YouTube junk and welcome business interviews, audiobooks, and podcast. Bye bye lazy mornings and welcome “Miracle Morning”. Well, there are many more but just like any successful person does, I want to start with one or few habits and move on to the next one. So that I will not be overwhelmed all at once and quit prematurely.

What about you? Don’t you want to start a positive habit of your own?

Is it possible to have a school for breeding entrepreneurs from kindergarten?

This idea just popped up in my head and rather than going to bed I am starting to type on my iPad. I am a big proponent of teaching entrepreneurship to kids at an early age. In fact, I have been already planning on teaching it to my kids before I even planned on having one. I read that most entrepreneurs think the same way. They want their kids to start saving, investing and learning the power of entrepreneurship since their childhood.

But believe it or not, there are no schools that teach this skills. All these entrepreneurs are sending their kids to the same school system they dislike, albeit the better ones. All there is teaching limited to home or outside of school. A lot of these folks are capable of opening a school on their own but still have not opened one of their taste.

Kids spend most of their productive time at school unless they are homeschooled or not-schooled at all. So why not teach this knowledge right in school. After all, we think they are so valuable in life. Why just limit this teaching just to our homes? The motivation level of kids to learn something else after a tiring day at school may not be always high. Teaching these skills in school will also allow other kids, who do not have wealthy or entrepreneur parents, to have access to this education. The culture of entrepreneurship will spread even further creating more wealth and creating more jobs for the poor people.

So what is my idea? Well, why not open a school that teaches entrepreneurship at an early age. Why not start at the kindergarten and take it to 12th grade. It may be difficult to do so in the US because of regulations to open new schools and probably the requirement to maintain a certain curriculum.

But it may not be as difficult to do so in Nepal. I am sure the government will want you to maintain a certain curriculum. But they may also be willing to negotiate especially if you make this school accessible to kids who would otherwise not be in school. You may have to participate in a board exam at 10th and/or 12th grade. But by this time, kids may be able to do that anyway. We are talking about some entrepreneur kids after all.

What would you do at this school? How will you teach these kids to be entrepreneurs? You do the exact same thing you would do at home if these kids were your own. Ask them to do chores and pay them for that and teach them how to save and invest. Teach them about the importance of compound interest, teach them how to look for opportunities, teach them how to work hard and become smart. Like I said, teach them everything you would teach your kids.

You can invite local entrepreneurs to their classes and have them inspire these kids. You can include concepts of personal finance, wealth building, and positivity in their curriculum. You can introduce books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “Think and Grow Rich”. You can have a library full of such books and audiobooks. Rather than limiting them to a classroom lecture, you can give them projects or have them discover their own ways of learning. There can be many techniques to teach these kids and this can be a whole new topic of discussion in itself.

But as I am writing about this, I am even more convinced that this is actually possible and can work wonders. So why not just do it? I want to make this a goal in my life. Let’s see how far I will get. If you want to take this idea and beat me to it, by all means, you are welcome.

Giving Time for Yourself

How much time do you give yourself and what you do with it? I have heard from a few successful people about people not giving enough time for themselves. Most people have jobs, family, kids, tv, internet, phone etc. that take most of their time. But do they have time for themselves? Personal time?

It is the time to think and reflect on yourself. It is the time to learn and improve your life. It is the time to work on your goals, plans. It is the time to improve your health. It is the time to increase your knowledge. It is time for anything you enjoy doing on your own.

The first time this idea hit me on my head was when I heard a podcast in BP with Al Halrod. He is the author of the book called Miracle Morning. This guy got his life back from near death situation from a car crash and became handicapped. But instead of giving up or being depressed, he went on to become a very successful entrepreneur. How he did it was by giving an hour for himself every morning.

When you first hear such claims, it sounds too good to be true. But as I had tried it for myself for a month, I can attest that it is a very powerful technique. You allocate an hour or two or half every morning when you do this morning routine. Everyone who does this has their own routine of how they spend their personal time in the morning. But Al did a study and found out that they all fall under 6 habits. He insists on doing all six just as he does.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about his book but meditation, exercise, goal setting, reading, writing a journal, self-reflection or planning out the day are examples of such habits. There is no general rule for what to do and what not to. You should do whatever works for you.

Why in the morning? Morning is when the day starts. All these habits give you motivation and energy for rest of the day. So the earlier you start, longer the benefits. Plus, there is not a lot of distractions in the morning.

But I am not a morning person? You don’t have to be. Just wake up an hour earlier than you normally would. If you are used to waking up at noon, wake up at 11am. You can start out with half hour and wake up at 11:30 if an hour is too much. That is not too much to ask for.

Are you used to hitting the snooze button every morning and hating that you have to go to work again? Well, not anymore. Now as soon as you hear the alarm, if you even need one, you will be excited to wake up and do your morning routine. Do you ever hate to get out of your bed on Christmas day or the day you go out for vacation. No, when you wake up for something that you love, you will never have that feeling. It will be the same feeling with this habit once you get in the rhythm.

Like I said earlier, I wanted to try this for a month and I did it everyday. It was an amazing feeling. I have to be honest that it was a little difficult to wake up early in the beginning. Now, I don’t remember exactly what time, but it was sometimes between 4 and 5. I have changed my work hours so much, I don’t remember what was it then. But it was the best feeling I had in the mornings. As soon as the alarm went off, I knew I had an hour worth of free time for myself, no worries about being late for work or even going to work because all I thought about was getting up, meditation and reading and all that fun.

By the time I was done, I would be excited, pumped to begin the day. I already had a plan for the day and enthusiasm to go through it. It was fun and I was never late for work. My plans for the day included plans for the evening as well. So when I came home, I already knew what to do. It was very productive and rarely spent time doing meaningless work. For example, I would be reading books or listening to audiobooks or calling friends and family or calling real estate agents instead of just sitting on the couch and spending endless time on Internet junk.

I completed the one month goal, maybe did for couple of months but could not continue further. But I would like to get back to the habit again and continue this for life. I have not found a better habit than this, that gives you more positive energy and brings out productivity from you.

If I reflect on the time I spend everyday not being productive, I feel like I am losing so much. I want to go back to this habit again and become much more productive.

I would like to credit Kiran KC, a Nepali actor, who made me realize about this habit again. He was telling that he likes to spend 2 hours every morning for himself where he does yoga, walking, running, dancing or whatever he feels like. According to him, he has a great health because of that. For a busy person like him, finding 2 hours for him everyday is even important. Thanks to him for reminding me of this again. Who else wants to join us?

Can News be Positive?

Why is news always negative? Do we only care about what went wrong in our society or are the media just forcing that on us or are those the only newsworthy items there? Are there good news in the world that can fill up a newspaper/tv/radio routinely? Do people even care about the good news? Or is good news even a thing?

A lot of questions, right? I am very interested in the good news of the world/country/local area. I want to hear only the good news when I open newspaper or radio or tv. I do not want to know about the homicides, terrorism, corruption, wars or the fighting of the political parties. I want to hear about people making positive differences in other people’s lives. I want to hear about entrepreneurs that added values to some investments and business owners that created jobs. I want to know about only the positive thing happening in the society, big or small?

Is that even possible? Let me rephrase the question: how can we make this possible?

I put this idea to a couple of my friends recently. I think they were supportive of the idea but immediately mentioned that it would not work. Their reasoning was human psychology works a certain way. People are inherently wired the way that we care lot more about controversies and negativity than positive news. It appears to be that way if you follow what social media. One person says something controversial and the whole world is turned on. But is that the whole truth or just half the truth? Are we really wired the way we only react to negativity? May be.

Or may not be. Could it be that we are only brought up that way? Could it be that we just became used to the notion that news can only be negative?

I read a book that all the emotions we have can be grouped into either positive or negative emotion. Love, courage, happiness, optimism are positive emotions. Fear, anger, hate, frustration, pessimism fall under negative emotions. At any moment you will have a dominating emotion that could be positive or negative. What I found interesting is that it is impossible to have a negative emotion at the same time you have a positive emotion. You can not love someone and be angry at the same time. You can not be happy but fearful or you can not be optimistic while being frustrated. That is how our brain works. Again, I don’t know how true the science is but it totally makes sense to me.

So, can you be sad about a negative news and have a positive emotion at the same time? Probably not. What if all you hear on a radio/tv is good news. Will that foster positivity in you? I think it will.

This is why I am all for the good news. Maybe positivity does not appeal to us the same way as negativity but while there are hundreds and thousands of negative medias, can we have a couple of positive ones? Isn’t there enough good things happening around us to fill up a paper or tv/radio?

We don’t go out over the weekend looking for homicides or disasters. We go out looking to have a good time with our family and friends. We don’t look for negativity in our lives personally, we would rather avoid them and stay away from them as much as we can. But why are we interested in negativity/controversies in news or other people’s lives? It does not have to be that way.

Speaking of the good news, I think there are some good news media, for example, Good News Media. It is a good effort and I want to see it grow and cover every nooks and corner of the society like the negative media does.

One rule though: They should also not be propaganda driven, politically motivated or have a special/hidden motive other than spreading the good news in the world.

Honesty and Integrity in Partnerships

Are honesty and integrity a valuable skill in business partnerships? How do you prove that you have such skills? Does it make you gullible and get taken advantage of? Is it possible to remain honest and maintain integrity once you become comfortable with your partner and once you earn the trust?

If you ask for an advice regarding partnership in business from an expert, you will most likely get an answer saying, “you need to choose your partners wisely.” Partners can make or break your business. A good partner can take your business to new heights while a bad partner can give you nightmares. I have heard this many times from seasoned entrepreneurs. What makes a good partnership?

A common answer is “your partner should complement your skills/expertise.” Your partner should bring something to the table that you may lack or that you may not be good at.

What about trust? I think that trust is also an important factor in partnership. I am sure most entrepreneurs will agree. How important is it to be able to trust your partner in business fully? How do you build such trust? Hint: honesty and integrity.

So, is honesty and integrity a key ingredient to becoming a good partner? If you are fully committed to contributing to your partnership and would never try to take unfair advantage of your partner, will that count?

How about your business partner? Would he/she take unfair advantage of your commitment? Does that make you more vulnerable?

I think honesty and integrity count more than anything in business partnerships just like any other relationships. Any other skills can be learned but these two have to come from within.

I am looking forward to creating business partnerships. I am sure there are experienced/new entrepreneurs out there who are willing to form partnerships with an honest, hardworking and dedicated person. If that is you, let’s talk.

Blogs I follow: Afford Anything

I have been reading some blog posts on Paula Pant’s afford anything blog. I am in love with her blog.

Paula is a real estate investor, self-employed writer/blogger, and a traveler. Real Estate has given her financial freedom and has allowed her to travel the world and work from the comfort of her hotel/camp/kitchen etc. She also has a podcast linked to her blog, which I have yet to listen but I am sure they are good. From the comments on her blog posts, I can tell that she has a lot of fans and followers who have bought into her way of thinking.

I have known Paula since I listened to her interview on Biggerpockets podcast in 2015/16. She talked about how she and her husband made their passion of traveling the world possible through real estate investing. This was when I had just discovered bigger pockets and was eagerly learning about real estate investing. I was getting inspired by each person I listened to on the podcast and Paula was one of them.

There were a couple of things that made me connect to her story better than others. She was close to my age and she had only bought few houses at the time. The other thing that caught my attention was her last name, it is a Nepali name.

To be honest, I had no clue that she could have biological connections to Nepal when I listened to the podcast. She had mentioned that she has traveled to Nepal a few times during the interview and that it was one of her favorite places to visit. But that could be anyone who had visited Nepal.

I did search her on the internet and found her blog and started reading a few articles there. This is when I thought that she might have Nepali parent(s). Well there you go, this is how I found Paula, her blog, and her Nepali connection.

I might have followed her more curiously when I found out her Nepali connection. It is easy to look up to someone who you can connect with in some way. But her blog content, her insight on real estate investment, financial freedom and her lifestyle is the main reason I have been subscribed to her.

I listened to many interviews after I had listened to Paula’s and I had forgotten about her completely. Then one day I listened to Zeona McIntyre on BP and she mentioned that she was inspired by Paula in her real estate journey.

So, I went looking for Paula Pant again and then got hooked up to her blog. She seems to be doing very well and her blog has a very good content. I have read about goal setting, her income statements and a couple of other articles so far. I will be exploring more in the coming days.

I liked her straight forward writing style, where she is very direct and clear on her message. While I was reading the blog, I also made a decision to start writing my own blog. I am inspired by her freestyle writing. I want to write when I want to write and not worry about the feedback and results. This way I will not have to compromise with my thoughts and overcome the procrastination due to fear of negative feedback.

Thanks Paula!

Why am I blogging?

I have been thinking about creating a blog on entrepreneurship and positive thinking for a while now. There are many of these available on the internet and it can probably do without mine. I am not yet an expert on this subject. I am also not a writer and have hardly written anything before. So what gives me the credibility to create this blog?

I would like to share a little story. I got a chance to meet my two good friends and a couple in February 2015 when I was visiting Baltimore for work. They had owned a gas station in the area and I was one of their former employees. We developed a good friendship when I worked there and the relationship was still there when I eventually left them to continue my education. They sold the gas station sometimes after I left and started investing in Real Estate.

This meeting was supposed to be a dinner to catch-up with old friends. But it turned out to be a lot more than that. I was curious about their new business and what it was about. They were equally enthusiastic about introducing real estate to me. They told me about Rich Dad Poor Dad, and their successful, less than a year old journey on real estate.

I did not know much (anything) about the topic at the time but listened curiously. They gave me a hard copied Rich Dad Poor Dad book and a CD containing audiobook of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich and How to Make Friends and Influence People. I have to say that this was a turning day in my life.

For next few days, I listened to the Rich Dad Poor Dad Podcast in my car on my way to work and back. I also read the hard copy when I came back to the hotel. This opened my eyes to a whole new world of investment and financial freedom. I will write about Rich Dad Poor Dad some other day in more detail. For now, I want to say that my life goal and priorities changed after this. I decided that financial freedom is the way to go and real estate investment is a great vehicle to achieve that.

After that, I listened to the other two audiobooks they had given me. These books introduced me to a whole new world of reading. Until this day, I had no idea that there were a plethora of books on positive thinking and motivation.

I had always been a reader. But I was never attracted to fiction. When I was in Nepal, I knew of two sources of reading. Fictional books and newspaper and magazines. Fiction did not interest me. I read newspaper and magazines from to back when I got a chance. When I came to the US, I started reading on the Internet. I started reading news articles from online newspapers. Besides that, I also read personal blogs and people’s stories. I found that I am much more interested in real (personal) stories than fiction. However, I was not really satisfied with my reading sources and was always keeping my eyes open for something new and interesting.

So when I found a whole new genre of books, blogs, and podcasts on business, real estate, positive thinking, and motivation, it was like the Holy Grail to my reading apatite. This is exactly what I needed and what I had been searching for all my life. But I had no idea that there were so many of these. I was also surprised to find out how powerful a book/story can be. A story of few pages (or few hundred pages) can change many people’s lives completely. This was a very powerful realization.

The western world has written, read and known of these books for a long time. But they are still unknown to most Nepali people. There are hardly any books written in Nepali about positive thinking. I have heard of few books written by Karna Shakya in recent years but have not heard of anything else.

So through this blog, I want to introduce my fellow Nepali citizens to the idea of positive thinking. Similarly, I want to inspire them with motivational writing as well as introduce them to entrepreneurship and investment. In this day and age, all they need is a little trigger. If I can introduce the concept and convince them that this is important, I am sure they will be able to find out more by themselves.

It is also noteworthy that it is easy to be motivated by someone who you can relate closely than from someone who you think is different or out of your league. I have felt this myself and is true for a lot of people. So even in the world of internet, my little blog will probably be of some importance and relevance. In fact, I hope to see a day where such blogs and books are available in each nook and corner in Nepal (or on the Internet). I will not worry about this blog losing its relevance after that day.

Until then, I hope to see you around.

Why another blog and podcast?

I have been thinking about this idea for almost 2 years now. I started listening to podcasts, to be precise, business and investment podcasts since 2015. In the process, I have heard stories of 100s of entrepreneurs. What is amazing is that all these people have a similar story, no matter what their business is. Every entrepreneur has a great story and what I found is that everyone would be interested to share it if they get a suitable chance.

From listening to these podcasts, I have also learned that entrepreneurship is a skill that can be learned by anyone. The common belief that business skills come to only select personality type or to the children of business owners is a myth. The reason you see children of business owners being successful entrepreneurs is that their parent taught these skills throughout their childhood and beyond. But the same skills can be learned by anyone regardless of your family background. One way of learning these skills is from other entrepreneurs.

There are hundreds and thousands of business podcasts on the internet. You can learn a ton from listening to them. What exactly can you learn?

Mindset is key to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Every great idea starts with the right mindset. To be able to successfully do something, you have to believe it in your mind that you can do it. Through these podcasts, you can get into the minds of great people and learn how they think.
Like I said above, every entrepreneur has a story and a lot these stories are similar no matter what industry they are in or how large their business is. They all start somewhere, make mistakes, learn and grow. Most people start small. You will be amazed to find out that these people were in a situation similar to yours one day. This will make you realize what you are capable of and how you can get started.
You can either learn from your mistake or you can learn from other people’s mistake. The least expensive option from the two is to learn from someone other people’s mistakes. Every entrepreneur can tell you what mistakes they made and what they learned from them. They can tell you what to avoid. You don’t have to make the same mistake.
You can learn as much but if you don’t put that into action, it will not take you anywhere. Successful entrepreneurs will tell you how important is taking action. No one is perfect when they start, the circumstances will not always be perfect, everyone has fear. But if you wait for the day when you will be perfect or when the situation is perfect, you will be waiting forever. You will learn that taking action more important than just learning. Even the most successful entrepreneurs have fears and every investment has risks. You can learn how to overcome fears and how to minimize fears from listening to these podcasts.
It will make you rethink your philosophies in life. It will make you realize what things are important in life what is not. You will learn a new perspective of life.

There are hundreds of things you can learn from successful people and their story. I always enjoy when I hear a success story. It will give you positivity and motivate towards your goals.

So after listening to few of these interviews, Despite having so many of business podcasts throughout the internet, there is not a podcast for Nepali entrepreneurs. I searched the internet and found that there are hardly any business interviews available online. Most of the interviews with Nepali entrepreneurs you can find on youtube or in other places on the internet are not business interviews. Most of the time, the interviewer is only interested in the personal life and the net-worth of the entrepreneur and not their business journey. So you will hardly find a business story of a Nepali businessman/woman.

I want to change this and bring the business stories of Nepali businessmen and women. I will not just feature billionaires or multi-millionaires but anyone that has a great story to share. It can be someone just getting started. You can learn from anyone. You can learn a lot more from someone who you can relate to. I want to hear you say, “If they can do it, why can’t I?”