June 7, 2007

Is There $4.6 Million in Your Laundry Room?... Five Ways to
Stop Putting Off Your Success ... Being Careful About What
You Carry with You... and More.

** Is There $4.6 Million in Your Laundry Room?
By Adrian Newman, Founder of e-Wealth Daily

Did you hear about this?

LONDON, England (Reuters) — One of the world's greatest collections of historical letters, including a note written by Napoleon to his lover Josephine, has been found in a filing cabinet tucked away in a Swiss laundry room.

The treasure trove of almost 1,000 documents, collected over 30 years by a wealthy Austrian banker, includes letters written by Winston Churchill, Peter the Great, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Pushkin, John Donne and Queen Elizabeth I.

The letters, which cover more than 500 years and range across art, science, literature and philosophy, are to be auctioned by Christie's in London on July 3 and are expected to raise up to 2.3 million pounds ($4.6 million).

The owner, Albin Schram, began amassing the archive in the early 1970s, steadily building up one of the largest and most comprehensive collections outside a major museum.

Though an inveterate collector, Schram wasn't interested in conservation or display — the letters were kept in an old metal cabinet in the laundry room of his villa in Lausanne, Switzerland, ordered by size rather than author or date.

Mr. Schram passed away in 2005 and his family had no idea he was keeping such a valuable collection.

So I guess the question is, what kind of valuables do you have hidden inside your home?

And while making over $4 million is rare, this kind of treasure hunting happens all the time. In fact, on Saturday there was a street sale in my neighborhood.

My neighbor made $700.00 from selling other people’s old junk. Why didn’t he sell his own stuff? That’s because he sold it all the previous year and made over $900.00!

In fact, in the weeks leading up to the street sale, he walked around other neighborhoods and offered to help people clean out their garages in exchange that he can keep whatever they want to throw away.

He even tells them that he plans on selling it at a street sale! So if you need a quick infusion of cash, this time of the year is the time to get out the broom and see what you can uncover in your garage, basement... even laundry room. Who knows, you might have the next $4.6 million treasure sitting in your home.

1. Set your own performance goals. At the same time, remember that change takes time. If you are undertaking anything for the first time, go easy on yourself and learn to reset the parameters for success every time you try. Like a scientist, you have to keep experimenting, tallying your results, and trying! Set a new set of goals and rules with each attempt. If you set your sights too high, you may procrastinate to pursue more immediate payoffs.
   
   
2. Reward yourself.  Just like my son embraced getting the grades that would get him into the school he wanted, you too must reward your hard work and your commitment to your goals. Everything you do must be done for your own sake first and foremost.
   
   
3. Stop being afraid and get out there — make the rest of your life something spectacular. Start living the life of your dreams today. Don’t put off your own happiness for another minute.
   
   
4. Stop thinking your future is out of your control.  When working to achieve your goals, sometimes the unexpected will happen. As a person who approaches challenges with a passionate and scientific approach, however, your belief in yourself will give you a strong foundation in successful problem solving.
   
5. Don’t let the negative attitudes of society hold you back. A friend of mine, Kevin — an MD — rejected the thoughts of others who said that his dream of becoming a doctor was too big.  If you live your life based on other people’s expectations,
   you’ll never get what you want.
   

Individually, these ideas will get you moving in the right direction. Together, they will keep you headed squarely on the path to a new life for yourself that is fulfilling, challenging, and custom made for you.

** Being Careful About What You Carry with You
By Michael Newman, the "Money Finder"

This past weekend I paid a visit to a colleague of mine. He recently moved into a new place, and still had a room full of sealed boxes marked with such labels as "clothes, " "books," and "assorted things."

He has only been living in his new residence for a few weeks and I didn’t expect him to be completely settled in yet, so I didn’t say anything about the containers.

However, when he saw that I had noticed his room of unpacked boxes, he quickly offered up an explanation. He told me that during the move he realized he had far more "stuff" than he really needed, and couldn’t even remember when and where he got those things.

Yet, he also told me, he just couldn’t get rid of them. He knew he bought or received these items for a reason, and didn’t want to toss them or give them away because he felt a time could arise when he would need to use them again.

He told me he’d found things around the place that he hadn’t used or had even seen for almost 10 years.

Now, there are certain items you do want to keep around even though you may rarely ever use them. These things can include a working flashlight for blackouts, or extra blankets for guests on cold evenings.

But when you’re holding on to items you will probably never need again, it is time to start clearing them out of your life.

There are two ways even that you could make money in the process.

The first way is to make money selling your old items. You could take them to a consignment shop, have a garage sale, or try posting them on an online auction site like eBay.

You probably don’t think of all your stuff as being junk, and in the eyes of someone else, these things could in fact be treasure.

The second way is a little more involved on a personal level. All those items and knick-knacks you are needlessly keeping around could actually be holding you back from new moneymaking opportunities.

You see, while you’re sitting on items waiting for their time to someday come again, you are actually holding yourself back. Instead of looking for new and exciting opportunities, you’re simply just sitting back on what you have, hoping for a gap for your old ways to fill.

Granted, a gap may one day rise just as it did for baseball-card collectors in the early 1990s who turned old trading cards into fistfuls of cash. But for the most part, sitting by waiting for a need to appear out of the blue for whatever it is you have will leave you standing at the side of the road to success and not traveling along it the way you should be.

So take stock of the items and beliefs you may be hoarding away for no reason at all and take steps forward to getting them out of your life.