The Limousine: Setting Better Priorities, Part One

A set of better priorities will make your ride towards self-actualization so smooth, you’ll think that a professional chauffer is competently and confidently in charge of getting you over the potholes and through the traffic jams. Better priorities are the limousine that will take you where you want to go.

With a productive, realistic set of priorities that accurately reflect your unique dreams and abilities, that accurately reflect where you find the most satisfaction and fulfillment in life, you’ll feel like you’re making all of the green lights, riding along towards happiness in a swank limousine, with a glass of your preferred carbonated beverage in hand.

Alright, I’ll be honest: that's not true. There is no limousine to happiness.

But better priorities are as close to a limousine as you can get.

If you can learn to set better priorities, you'll find yourself catapulted towards greater daily satisfaction, and greater success on the road to your long term goals, because you’ll always know where you’re going, how to get there, and how to have fun on the way.

It isn't always easy to learn to set priorities that will work for you, instead of against you. In this five part series, I’ll be looking at the good that priorities can do, and the harm. I’ll be looking at how and why the bulk of personal development culture comes up short when it comes to priorities. And I’ll be looking at the link between priorities and self knowledge, including a smattering of practical, actionable techniques that will help you start setting better priorities, priorities that come from the true core of who you are.

Before you can start setting better priorities, it’s crucial that you start to re-examine what a shift in priorities could do to help you reach your potential. For me, setting better priorities was the first big step I made on the road to making more money and having more fun. Setting better priorities is often the first big step towards reaching a goal.

I’ll be talking more about why that first step is so important, and how you can make it, in my next post, What Good Priorities Do.

More Posts On Priorities:

Priorities That Stop You In Your Tracks: Setting Better Priorities, Part Three
Different People, Different Methods, Different Priorities: Setting Better Priorities, Part Four

Three Ways To Turn A Good Mood Into A Great Mood

A good mood is one of the simple pleasures of life, and a great mood is even better. A good mood can happen for any number of reasons, and sometimes for no good reason at all.

The bad news is that a good mood can disappear as quickly as it comes, and you won't always know why it slips away. The good news is that, with a tiny bit of effort, you can make a good mood last longer. You can even turn it into a great mood! When you get lucky enough to have a good mood, here are three techniques that will help you keep the buzz going and turn it into a great mood.

Add An Extra Blast Of Happiness
Doing something you enjoy while you're already in a good mood can skyrocket it into a great mood. The next time you've got a few moments to spare, try jotting down a few fun things that you can do for free at any time of day, no matter where you are. These can be something simple like "think about a favorite birthday present," or even "jump for joy." The next time you're in a good mood, do one thing from this list. The added blast of fun will put you in a great mood!

Make It A Memory
The next time you're in a good mood, try recording it for posterity. Take a photo, or jot down a few lines about how you're feeling. If you've got the time, you could even make a quick vocal or video recording to capture the moment. This will help you keep a memory of your good mood so that you'll always remember feeling awesome. Immortalizing your good mood will help your feelings linger, because the process of making a memory is always fun. Plus, the sense of accomplishment you'll get when you look at what you've made will help catapult you into a truly great mood.


Share With Others
One of the best ways to boost yourself into a great mood is by helping make another person's day better. When you're in a naturally good mood already, try sharing the happiness by giving someone a compliment, doing someone a favor, or just flashing them a big, genuine smile. They'll get a boost of warmth, and you'll find yourself in an even better mood than you were before.

There are lots of ways to turn a good mood into a great mood. Once you've got the hang of these techniques, I'm sure you'll come up with plenty of your own!

Open One New Door Every Day

Open one new door every day, and you'll be amazed at how quickly your opportunities grow. Diversification is the key to everything from a successful investment portfolio to a successful team of co-workers, but too few of us apply this simple idea to our working lives, or to our search for fun. When was the last time you opened a new door to money, or to happiness?

Think about what could you accomplish if you learned to open one new door every day. You could change your life radically for the better, but the path to success would be so gentle that you wouldn't even have to set aside any extra time, or setting any big plans in motion. One of the most difficult things about finding ways to make more money or have more fun is that it isn't always feasible to try to achieve success in new goals on top of everything that you already have to do. Chances are, you have to do a lot. If you open one new door every day, you won't have to struggle under more pressure, and you won't have to deal with a whole crop of new tasks that are laying the foundation for your future success. Instead, you'll just try one thing each day to make your life a little better. That's a schedule anyone can keep.

The concept is basic. The more different kinds of revenue possibilities you're pursuing, the greater the chance is that one of them will catch fire and start making you the kind of income that you want. The more different ways you're trying to have fun, the greater the chance is that you'll find a new source of joy or passion in your life. The implementation is as basic as the concept: just open one new door every day.

How do you open one new door every day? There are lots of ways to do it. Here are a few examples of how you can open a new door right now:

Open A New Door To Income:

*Hit an online job board and bookmark three jobs that are better than the work you have now.

*Sit in on a meeting in another department at work, and see if there's anything you can do to make yourself valuable to that department as well as your own.

*Drop an email or make a quick call to a past client who you enjoyed working with, let them know that the experience was positive for you, and ask them what projects are on their horizon. There just might be a place in that plan for you, especially now that your name is in the air.

Open A New Door To Fun:

*Go see a movie that you've never heard of, and know nothing about.

*Get back in touch with a friend who you haven't seen in a few months. Make plans to get together for a cup of tea, or go for an early evening walk.

*Do a google search for your childhood nickname, and see where it takes you.

See how easy it is to open a new door? Now, take a moment and visualize all of the doors that you could open for yourself. Imagine how many great opportunities might come from those simple actions. Promise yourself you'll take the time to open one new door every day.

It won't take very long, it probably won't cost you a dime, and it just might make you a fortune, or give you the chance to discover a new source of deep satisfaction. Why not open one new door right now?

Five Ways To Beat A Bad Mood

A bad mood squelches any possibility of having fun, and often gets in the way of making more money. After all, you're not going to be savoring the moment if you'd rather be home in bed with the covers over your face. As for making more money, you're sure as heck not going to be succesful on the phone practicing your latest "sell, sell, sell" strategy, at a cafe brainstorming your next venture, or in a meeting strengthening your client relationships if you'd rather be. . . well, at home in bed with the covers over your face.

It sounds obvious to say that bad moods are bad for you, but all too often we get stuck in a funk and forget to get ourselves out of it. Without a set strategy to help us out of the swamp, it's easy to get trapped in a bad mood for hours, or even days. That's a real waste, especially since with the right tools you can fight your way out of a bad mood pretty quickly.

Here are five ways to get rid of a terrible mood fast so that you're free to enjoy your day.

1. Wash yourself.
When you feel like you look good, you're more likely to feel good. No matter whether you're a librarian or a metro guy or a lumberjack or a prom queen, you're probably at least a little bit vain. That's bad news for your moral character, but it's great news if you're in a bad mood, because it means that taking a shower and putting on a nice pair of slacks will probably soothe your angst.

2. Distract yourself.
Turn on a favorite movie, album, tv show. Open a favorite magazine. Get a friend to tell you really terrible jokes. Jump up and down a hundred times. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you shake it up: if you can focus on the task at hand, you'll forget all about your bad mood.

3. Eat something.
Now, I'm not advocating grabbing three dozen donuts to drown your sorrows in, but I am advocating keeping your blood sugar steady. Often, a bad mood is the result of a blood sugar crash from going too long without food. Have a piece of whole wheat toast, and you may discover that the demons torturing you were just plain old hunger. Don't be embarassed if this turns out to be the case: a lot of grownups are surprisingly un-adept at knowing when to break for snacktime.

4. Research more fixes.
Finding new and better ways to trick yourself out of the gloom is a positive, decisive action that can in and of itself help you start to feel better. If you feel warm towards my writing, or too lazy to find something better, you could start your quest with this article of mine, which features some very Fast Fixes For A Bad Mood

5. Pass the buck.
When all else fails, blame someone who is far, far away and can't defend themselves. If you can convince yourself that you're not to blame for feeling bad, it will be easier to cheer up. Once you're in a better mood, you can forgive your "villain."

By the time you've worked through one or two of the ideas in this toolkit of instant fixes, you'll be out of your bad mood and ready to have a better rest of your day.

Ten Ways To Use Monopoly Money: Almost As Good As The Real Thing

Monopoly Money isn't real money, but that doesn't mean you don't want tons of it. I know I do, especially because it's free. The best thing about playing with Monopoly Money is that if you can make it fun just by using it in a new way, you've created real, genuine value out of something that is, by definition, worth nothing. Take that, irony!

Ten Ways To Turn Monopoly Money Into Fun:

1. Prank a co-worker by packing lots and lots of rainbow faux-cash into his or her wallet. And pockets. And desk drawers. And cubicle. And office. And any items in the office refridgerator. And spouse/children.

2. Use it to tip really bad waitstaff at restaurants.

3. Wallpaper your apartment.

4. Print out a whole, whole bunch and stage a stick up where your lover steals it from you in a complicated heist. Then, have your lover show up at your door begging forgiveness. Forgive him or her, then roll around together in all the loot. This is safer than rolling around in real cash because, unlike real money, you know where Monopoly Money has been. Nowhere.

5. Play Monopoly.

6. Pretend that it's real money, and that it's only colorful because it's from Canada.

7. Use it around giftcards, gift certificates, or checks for creative giftwrapping.

8. Teach a kid how to make change, or origami cranes.

9. Write on the backs of monopoly money instead of index cards for your Hipster PDA.

10. Sneak into a friend's place and fill their bathtub with Monopoly Money. Disturb nothing else.

You get the idea.

Have More Fun In Your First Ten Minutes

The first ten minutes of the day can feel sluggish, slow, or, depending on the activities of the previous evening, even a little bit painful. If you wince through your morning, you're not just missing the chance to feel decent-- you're missing the chance to feel great. With just a tiny bit of effort, you can use the first ten minutes of the day to have more fun. If you plan a fun treat for the first ten minutes you'll be awake, you'll suddenly feel much more inclined to jump out of bed and get started on your day.

I myself am a confirmed night owl, and refuse to reform my ways and head to bed at a "reasonable" hour. But that doesn't mean that I don't make my mornings productive, useful, and even enjoyable. The key is getting the day started right by having something fun to look forward to doing right away. If you're raring to get to the good stuff you've got planned for your first ten minutes, suddenly you won't mind the fact that you're a little drowsy, because you'll be concentrating on the treat at hand.

Here are a few examples of A.M. treats that can put a smile on your face even before your first cup of coffee has kicked in:

Watch cartoons while you eat your breakfast.
Wash up by candlelight to add some romance to your routine.
Get a book just for mornings, and read a few pages a day. The trashier the better!

These kinds of tiny pleasures can help turn the first ten minutes of your morning from a torturous ordeal into a springboard for a great day.

What, Why, How, Who, And Welcome

Make More Money, Have More Fun.

What does that mean? Why does it matter? How can we do it?
And, who am I to have any say about any of this?

Let's start with why I began this project.

Over the past few months, as the year came to a close, it seemed natural to start thinking about what had been good and bad about my life in 2006. In many ways, this had been a great year: I widened my portfolio and my client roster as a freelance writer, I lost over twenty pounds, and I was in the best physical shape I'd been in since I was a teenager.

But as I looked more closely at my experiences, I realized that the best moments of my year weren't the moments when I'd landed a new client, or gotten published. They weren't the ones when I'd achieved a weight loss goal, a fitness goal, or any goal at all for that matter. The best moments were the ones when I'd had the most real, vibrant, satisfying fun.

My favorite events of the year were the moments when I'd shared meals with loved ones, shared conversations with friends, and shared ideas with other people who were interested in the things that I found the most compelling. The best parts of 2006 happened when I was free to enjoy myself. As soon as I realized this, I resolved to pursue a very simple idea for the next twelve months. I pledged that no matter what, in 2007, I would have more fun.

When I started to assess how I could make that goal a reality, I realized that, on far too many occasions, my ability to have a great time had been clouded by one problem: money. This year, I worked long hours, but the time I spent working was only part of the issue. The truth was that even when I wasn't actually at my desk earning income, I was still thinking about my financial situation. I was constantly worried about spending too much, anxious that I wasn't saving enough, or feeling guilty that I was doing anything other than focusing on my career. Time after time, I passed up a chance to have fun, or went through the motions without fully enjoying something, because I was preoccupied by money.

As I looked at the year to come, I saw that in 2007, in order to have more fun, I'd have to find a way to make more money.

I also knew that I couldn't be the only one with this desire.
And that brings us to the what and the how of this blog.

As I find ways to make more money and have more fun, I'd like to share what I discover. As I make my way through this year, I'll be posting practical, actionable ideas for increasing income and increasing quality of life. I don't know yet all the places that this search will take me, but I do know a little bit about what you can expect to find here.

At MakeMoreHaveMore, you can expect to find information about money-making opportunities, including a first-person perspective on how well they work. You can expect to find tips, tricks, and creative solutions for living well on a budget. You can expect that every post here will offer you a fresh, practical way to make more money, have more fun, or do both at the same time!

So, who am I to weigh in on such topics? Well, I'm not a financial expert, a self-improvement guru, or a motivational speaker. I'm just a writer who wants to live better, and live happier, and make more money, and have more fun. I'm out to find ways to make that happen, and I hope you'll come with me.

Welcome to MakeMoreHaveMore. Please stay awhile. Browse through the posts and find some fresh ideas for living well. If you've got a suggestion or two that other readers might appreciate, email me, and add a few of your own ideas to the mix.

This year, let's make more money, and have more fun, together.