I am not really religious but it's the holiday season.

 

So I decided for today's Book Of The Day I would read the Bible, specifically the Book of Proverbs.

 

The wise man says in Proverbs 22:7, "...the borrower is the slave of the lender."

 

How true this is. 

 

Throughout history, the lender has always been the master over the borrower.

 

The average person in the USA is $225,238 in debt.

 

They owe $15,263 on their credit cards (at interest of around 14.95%), $147,591 on their house, $31,646 on student loans, and owe a staggering $30,738 on their car. 

 

You might be in debt too.

 

If you are in debt you have two choices. You can be like most people and blame capitalism or 'corporations.'

 

Or you can follow the old saying, "If you can't beat them, join them."

 

So become a lender. Start lending money yourself.

 

Start small.

 

Lending money will accomplish one main thing: make you sophisticated with money.

 

Nothing will make you more financially savvy then lending out a little money and losing it, then learning from your mistakes, and evolving into someone skilled in advanced financial principles.

 

Lending money will teach you:

 

1. How to read people and be discerning with money.

 

2. How to structure win-win negotiations.

 

3. How to draw up a promissory note.

 

4. How to calculate a loan repayment schedule.

 

5. How to deal with conflict from people that aren't paying you back.

 

Remember, if you want to thrive in life you have to become sophisticated with money. 

 

One of the reasons I went through the whole laborious Certified Financial Planner Program was to understand money at the deepest levels.

 

So start by lending out a $100 or $500.

 

Remember only lend out what you can afford to lose. 

 

I once lent a buddy $38,000 to renovate and flip a house. That was in 2007, right before the market dropped. I still haven't seen a penny back yet. 

 

But who cares? Gaining knowledge to me is more valuable than losing money here and there.

 

It's like anything in life, you will suck at first. But if you patiently commit to building the new skill of lending money you will get good over time - real good.

 

I don't recommend lending to family or close friends since there is always the chance of some long-term tension.

 

Lend to an acquaintance or a friend of a friend.

 

And do not just informally lend out the money. That won't teach you anything.

 

You probably have already done that in your life before. There is no real educational value from just pulling a $100 out of your pocket and giving it to a friend who is broke. 

 

Structure the deal formally so they have to pay you back on an exact lending schedule.

 

Go to Rocketlawyer.com and download a simple loan agreement.

 

Don't worry about charging interest. This is a training exercise not an attempt to become a bank or a loan shark.

 

The bonus to all this is that you will also be improving the world.

 

When I lived with the Amish I realized they have a secret weapon. Instead of only relying on big banks, they lend each other money at low interest. This allows young people who don't have much credit to get started running their own businesses.

 

Many Jewish, Lebanese, and Muslim communities do the same. It's genius.

 

By the way one of my favorite charities is Kiva.com where you can lend money to people in third world countries so they can start up their own business and rise out of poverty.

 

So stop being a servant. Become a master. I don't care if you are 18 or 85. Flip the tables on the conventional structure by becoming sophisticated with money.

For today’s Book-Of-The-Day I’m talking about “Attached” by Amir Levine & Rachel Heller, and how you can use the science of human attachment to find love and form lasting relationships.

From taking Elvis Presley on tour, to raising 1 million dollars in a day, Jerry Weintaub has done it all. He is one of the most dynamic, persuasive men there has ever been. In todays book of the day I go over how he became the man he is today. 

Want  to get some bonuses and the book from me? You can get them here: http://bit.ly/1CxyxKR

If you could snap your fingers and instantly stop your aging problem, would you? In today's book of the day "The 50 Secrets To The World's Longest Living People" I look at this great book on reversing aging. You can buy this book from me here and get some special bonuses here http://bit.ly/1z4V2Ao

This is one of the best books for getting anything you want, today I read "Total Recall" by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Get this book, my private bonus notes, and 'Smart Reading' here http://bit.ly/1sMbNnk

Today I'm talking about the book "Trump: How To Get Rich." It has a cheesy name with some very powerful insights.  You can buy this book from me and get my new 6 video smart reading course, and some bonus video notes that I don't go over in this video here: http://bit.ly/1uUe1LK

When I was seven years old I remember listening to some country western song on the radio and asking my mom, "Why do people always sing about love?"

(At that age, I would have rather listened to songs about video games instead of how some guy misses his ex-wife).

My mom answered, "Because love is important and complicated."

It turns out mom was right.

How we relate to other humans in love and friendship basically makes or breaks the quality of our life.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business at concluded:

"Conflicts in relationships - having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict. It damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless."

That's why 25% of all the books I read are about social life: romance, love, friendship, and family.

Today's book of the day is "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa

Yesterday I was talking about it on my Book-Of-The-Day TV show  check out at new episode everyday a 11:30 am PST on www.tailopez.com/tv) 

( I had to divide this into two emails so you will see part 2 tomorrow) 

This book will mesmerize you.

It's full of some of the most profound truths about life of any book I have read in years.

But first let me say:

"WARNING: THIS BOOK WILL BE TOO INTENSE FOR MOST PEOPLE!"

Don't email me complaining that I didn't warn you...

Just remember, if you read the book and still disagree, despite the mountain of evidence the authors have collected along with their appeal to plain common sense, then go ahead and leave me a comment stating your case. Just make sure you provide some real proof for your argument.


[make sure to check out my Book-Of-The-Day deal to get your own copy of “Why Beautiful People have More Daughters” and my own personal notes]...

The chapters are divided up into controversial subjects like:

-Why do beautiful parents have more daughters and wealthy parents have more sons?

-Why do men like blonde bombshells (and why do women want to look like them)?

-Why is beauty NOT in the eye of the beholder or merely skin deep?

-Why do girls of divorced parents experience puberty earlier than girls whose parents remain married?

-Why is prostitution the world’s oldest profession and pornography a billion dollar industry?

-Why are there virtually no polyandrous societies (where one woman is married to multiple husbands)?

-Why does having sons reduce the likelihood of divorce?

-Why might handsome men make bad husbands?

-Why are there so many deadbeat dads but so few deadbeat moms?

-Why are almost all violent criminals men?

-Why do politicians risk everything by having an affair (but only if they are male)?

-Why do men so often earn more money and attain higher status than women?

-Why are most neurosurgeons male and most kindergarten teachers female?

-Why are most suicide bombers Muslim?

-Why is ethnic conflict so persistent throughout the world?

-Why are single women more likely to travel abroad?

Now you might think you know the answers to these questions. But, I guarantee you this book will have you second guessing basically everything you have ever heard on life, love and how humans get along with each other.

Every time I dive into any books on evolutionary psychology I realize that literally 95% of what we have been taught about life is absolute nonsense. And what is being taught about love and human attraction is probably the subject most full of error.

I don’t know why the heck we never learn any of this in school.

It's a crime. But it’s understandable because most of what is written about love, friendship, romance and social life comes from a view of what people would LIKE to be true, NOT what is actually true. I think love is too painful a subject for most people. It’s "too true" for the average person.

Just like Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!"

This book covers many of those "too true" subjects.
The authors say the problem starts because the standard social science model says we are a blank slate, that our behaviour is environmental and comes through socialization.

We have been taught that our personality is based on our environment and what we have learned from our parents, teachers and culture.

For example, you may have heard that society created the traditional male and female gender roles.

But the authors of this book quote a Cambridge University study that proves that baby boys stare more at mechanical toys and baby girls stare at toys with faces - even babies only 24 hours old.

They say:

"In summary, we have demonstrated that at 1 day old, human neonates (babies) demonstrate sexual dimorphism (differences) in both social and mechanical perception. Male infants show a stronger interest in mechanical objects, while female infants show a stronger interest in the face.”

In this image below you can see the results of a study where scientists put different toys out for male and female vervet monkeys. When they came back in the room the male monkeys were playing with the toy cars and the female monkeys were examining the dolls. 

“Psychology Today” concludes:

"It is becoming less and less likely that ‘gender socialization’ is the reason why boys and girls prefer different toys, and more and more likely that there are some genetic, hormonal, and other biological reasons for the observed sex differences in toy preference."

Society doesn't create, gender creates society. Now this book doesn't say that one gender is superior to another, just that they are intrinsically different.

And it gets deeper, this book challenges more than just gender roles.

The authors start by saying:

"Every time we fall in love, everytime we fight with our spouse, ever time we enjoy watching our favorite TV show, every time we get scared walking at night in bad neighborhoods where tough young men loiter, every time we get upset about the influx of immigrants in our country, every time we go to church, we are - in part - behaving as a human animal with its own unique evolved nature - human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, our feelings, and behaviors are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime, but also by what happened to our ancestors... Our human nature is the cumulative product of the experiences of our ancestors in the past, and it affects how we think, feel, and behave today.

Second, because human nature is universal - sometimes shared by all humans, sometimes only shared by members of our own sex - our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all other humans beings on earth (or all other men or women).

Despite the seemingly large cultural differences in various societies, our daily experiences are essentially the same as those of people from Aberdeen, Bombay, and Cairo, to Xian, Yukon, and Zanzibar."

The authors are basically saying that much of our behavior doesn't come from free choice but is ingrained in us from birth.

Emotions like anger, rage, jealousy, racism, fear, depression, and envy are all part of the evolved human experience (of course it's important we learn to control some of these, but it's still important to know they are natural and there is nothing wrong with us for having them). 

This concept of instinct reminds me of what Steven Hawking says in "The Grand Design" about free will:

“Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals?"

We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells?

It probably never thinks, “That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there,” yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will?

Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.

Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk.

It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion."

You might not agree with Dr. Hawking. But I've learned that when super smart people disagree with me that I am better off reexamining my position versus instantly concluding they are wrong.

After all, Stephen Hawking may be the smartest person to have lived in the last 500 years (He is solving the worlds hardest physics problems while sitting paralyzed in a wheelchair for God's sakes).

But whether the universe has free choice or not is not the main point of today's article. We can argue about that another day.

When it comes to love we know that our desires are mostly hard - coded.

We have been falsely taught that beauty is only skin deep, or that what is considered attractive is different in different cultures.

Turns out beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder, cross culturally humans agree on what's attractive, from East Asians, Hispanics, Brazilians, Russians, the Ache of Paraguay, the Hiwi of Venezuela, Cruzans in Saint Croix, Chinese, Indian and English all alike.

For example, take this picture of Brad Pitt in Fight Club:


and this picture of Danny Devito:



and show it to any woman in ANY country, Tanzania, Nepal, Austria, or New Zealand and ask who is the most attractive.

Want to make a friendly wager on who they will all choose? You could go back in a time machine a thousand years and women in any country would still always prefer Brad Pitt over Danny Devito.

Some people get depressed thinking about life this way - that some people are born with much better genes.

But knowing the world has a natural order should make us excited. Because then we can know that all we have to do is line ourselves up with the laws of nature and we will be alright.

For example, when it comes to love it's a good thing that women are attracted to the looks of Brad Pitt over Danny Devito.

The fact that your great great grandma was picky about who she had kids with is the reason you are here today.

Choosy women are the whole reason humans have evolved so successfully! 

So the next time you get turned down for a date with someone you were really attracted to just think, "Thank God humans are so picky!" Easier said than done I know, haha...

And remember there is a good reason women find Brad Pitt attractive. This book says it’s not just some arbitrary thing. Brad has what's called "Bilateral Symmetry" - a fancy word for an attractive face.

Bilateral symmetry decreases with exposure to parasites, pathogens, toxins, genetic issues, and inbreeding.

The authors conclude: 

"Far from being merely in the eye of the beholder or skin-deep, beauty appears to be an indicator of genetic and developmental health and therefore of mate quality; beauty is a 'health certificate."

This is why all cultures must have similar standards of beauty.

Now you might say that it’s Hollywood or Cosmopolitan magazine that has been imposing their distorted version of beauty on the world.

That's a load of BS. Here is how we know it's wrong: research shows that newborn babies less than 7 days old prefer to look at beautiful faces.

Scientists found:

"Placed before photos of a fashion model and a plain-looking woman, a newborn will be drawn to the prettier face.

The finding undermines the theory that people develop an idea of attractiveness from the experience of mixing with different individuals.

Instead, it appears that everyone is born with a pre-programmed understanding of what makes a person attractive. Newborns were shown two images side by side, one showing an attractive face and the other a less attractive one.

The researchers say the infants spent more time looking at the attractive face than the less attractive one.

"Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the infant right from the moment of birth, and possibly before birth," said Dr Alan Slater, a psychologist at Exeter.

You can show them pair after pair of faces that are matched for everything other than attractiveness.

This leads to the conclusion that babies are born with a very detailed representation of the human face.

It helps them to recognise familiar faces - particularly that of the mother - and it helps them in learning about the social world.

Newborns manage to do this despite their comparatively blurred vision."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Patterns of human attraction are everywhere.

Men find women with a BMI (body mass index) of 18.5 most attractive.  This is a female ‘certificate' that signals health. If you are a woman that means you don’t want to be too skinny or too fat. You want to be on the low end of what’s classed ‘normal weight.’  You can calculate your BMI here.

It’s no coincidence this weight is also the weight that his healthiest for most women. It’s not just about impressing men.

Women find men with stronger jawlines more attractive (this is again a 'health certificate' that a man has passed the testosterone test).

And let me quote: "Women, on average, tend to be attracted to men who are taller than they are, display a high degree of facial symmetry, masculine facial dimorphism, and who have broad shoulders, a relatively narrow waist, and a V-shaped torso."

Again the good news is that for men working on creating your V-shaped torso by cutting your belly fat also translates into living longer as well as being attractive to women.

Some of this is not fair (like how tall you are or how pretty you were born), or even that fun to think about sometimes. But I think that life's answers begin by not being afraid of looking directly at the hard truths of life. In a way that's what today's book is all about.

The good news is that you can still have an amazing life even if you aren't born a supermodel or if you don't have the jawline of Tom Brady.

You should never for a second just give up and say "Oh well, life didn't deal me good cards." If you feel yourself feeling any self pity watch this amazing guy's video over and over 

I never want this article twisted into anything that makes people give up. This knowledge when used correctly should EMPOWER you - not discourage you.

We must use the truth about love as fuel for us to do the things that are in our power.

To stay healthy, to work out, to eat right, to learn more social skills, to become more interesting, to be more altruistic, and find a strong sense of life purpose - this is all within our control even if some thing’s aren’t.

As the great basketball coach John Wooden says, "Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. The best competition I have is against myself to become better."

Now back to that strange question, why the heck do beautiful people have more daughters and rich parents more sons???

Studies show that when the parents have above average attractiveness the odds of having daughters increases by 36%.

Mother Nature works behind the scenes in a pretty powerful way.

Back in 1973, Dr. Robert Trivers published a ground breaking article in Science magazine. He came up with the the Trivers–Willard hypothesis which showed that even though humans generally have close to 50-50% male/female babies, under certain stressful circumstances that ratio will change - sometimes a lot.

In people groups living in poverty, let's say the Gypsies in Hungary or the Mukogodo of Kenya researchers found that those poor groups "had a female-biased sex ratio at birth, were more likely to abort a child after having had one or more daughters, nursed their daughters longer, and sent their daughters to school for longer."

So why would poor parents have more daughters and wealthier parents have more sons?

It’s because God/Universe/Nature is on our side and works to our advantage and sometimes having a different gender is more advantageous to a family.

Let's illustrate with a hypothetical situation where there are 2 families each with 2 children. The rich family has Bob and Mary. The poor family has John and Susie.

Rich Family:
Bob is 25 and not very attractive but his family has given him the best business education and let him work in the family business.

Mary is 25 and is successful financially but not very attractive.

Poor Family:

John is 25 and has no financial support from his family to get an education or start a business but he is super good looking.

Susie is 25 and doesn't have much money but is gorgeous.

Which out of these four will probably have the easiest time getting married.

If you guessed Bob and Susie you would be right. The ugly man from the rich family with money and resources and the pretty woman from the poor family.

What about the other two kids?

Well Mary has financial success but since not many potential husbands care much about a woman's bank balance she's at a disadvantage (just think of the billionaire Oprah Winfrey - teenage boys don't exactly have posters of her up on their wall).

John has good looks but most women don't only look for looks in a long term mate/husband so he's at a disadvantage.

The research doesn't say only rich and beautiful people get married. Of course regular people get married every day. The point is that over 10,000 generations of humans there is a general trend of some people having more advantages than others. Remember over long periods of time even a 5% difference in advantage can change the whole end result.

Dr. Robert Trivers correctly guessed that nature will give rich parents more sons because those parents would have extra money to invest in their sons to help them be successful enough to attract a high quality wife.

The generalized theory by Dr. Trivers and Williams accurately predicts that any parents with a trait advantageous for boys will give birth to more boys and parents with any trait advantageous for women in the parents will give birth to more daughters.

He also theorized that poorer parents would have an advantage by having more daughters because the daughters could make up for their parents lack of resources by using their beauty to find a high quality husband.

Money and beauty weren’t the only predictor of gender. Tall parents have more sons and small parents have more daughters since height is more of a mating advantage for boys than girls.

Over the last 30 years study after study has shown this gender birth rate difference to be the reality.

Nature and biology is alive.

Now as I read this book the main takeaway that I got was how amazing the human body really is.

It adapts so that we can thrive.

More importantly it continues to reinforce a principle that I think most people never understand about life.

There are patterns.

Take happiness from the pattern.

If you use them right, those patterns will change your life because you can organize them into your plan.

When I teach in my mentoring program I explain it this way.

If you want an amazing life with massive rewards like a passionate romance, a long healthy life, wealth and financial abundance, love and admiration from your peers, and happiness and fulfillment, then your best bet is to start by investing in a good plan for yourself.

The happiness you want is the end result. The end result comes from an effective strategy. A good strategy is controlled by your philosophy; you put your strategy into practice through goals; and goals comprise your PLAN.

It's all about the quality of your plan. This is what separates my bank account from Bill Gates. He had a better plan. He got a better end result than me because his strategy came from a stronger philosophy and this strategy was put into action with a solid plan. And that's why he has billions and I don't.

This article is about love, not business or money but the same principles apply.

Ask yourself, "Do I want to wander through life and just take whatever relationship I can get, or do I want an amazing well designed love life?" Because it's extremely easy to get trapped.

Jim Rohn says, "One day, early in my walk, my mentor said let me see your list of goals. I was a bit surprised as I didn't have a list of goals. Mr. Shoaff said, really? I can tell you right now that if you don't have list of goals, I can guess your bank account balance within a few hundred dollars and he did. I said you mean my bank balance would change if I had a list of goals? Earl said, drastically. That changed everything for me."

After that Jim decided to make a plan.

There are 3 plans you can have for your life:

1. You can follow some other persons plan

2. You can follow your own plan

3. You can follow Natures plan (or call it God or the Universe's plan):

Most people do #1 - they follow someone else's plan. That's why TV commercials exist. They slowly change your behavior until you are living your life to benefit someone elses plan.

Think about it:

- What's McDonald’s plan for you? To buy their burgers and give them your money.

- What's your boss and employer’s plan for you? To make THEM a lot of money!

- What's NBC and Warner Brothers’ plan for you? To use your time and cash watching their TV shows and movies and buying from their advertisers.

- What's Drake and Rihanna's plan for you? To buy their music and make them rich or famous.

-What's your credit cards’ plan for you? To keep you in debt and paying them interest!

-What's American Apparel’s plan for you? To make sure you think of wearing the most fashionable clothes and buying from them.

I'm not saying these are bad people or corporations but I am saying that if you are not careful, other people who don't have your best interests at heart will run your life for their benefit and not yours.

This '"Follow some other person's plan" is the default. If you haven't consciously made a better plan for your life I can almost guarantee you are already living out someone else's plan.  

I consider this the worst way to live life. I have been caught in it myself and every time I remember it I get angry at myself for having wasted years that I will never get back.

Some people figure out that the #1 "Other person's plan" plan sucks and they evolve to #2 and follow their own plan.

This sounds like a great strategy at first and it's usually better than following someone else. But if you look closer you will realize it's not a big improvement over plan #1.

Why? Well can we be so cocky to think that we can, on our own, go out and figure out the world? This world is a pretty complex place. Doctors spend their whole lifetime just trying to understand the heart or the lungs. Engineers spend their whole life trying to make one specific type of airplane engine.

Will you or I be able to master all areas of life on our own? Has your past proven you to be a genius planner? Be honest.

Or are you like me and see that even my best laid plans often turned out to be idiotic in hindsight and that by the time I learn by experience I will be too old to enjoy the fruit of my wisdom.

Like the Dutch proverb says, “Too soon old, too late smart.”

Can you and I make 7 billion people and all the forces of nature bend to our own wishes and plan? It's one thing to make our own plan, it's another thing to get other's to play along.

I mean I would love if I could just make a plan "The world should just deposit a billion dollars tomorrow into Tai Lopez's bank account." I actually love that plan. The problem is that no one else likes that idea. I haven't found anyone yet who would willingly just take money out of their account and wire it to me for no reason.

Sounds obvious yet millions of people live with an ego centric mentality that says "I think the world should treat me a certain way". This is the "entitled" plan and it's a recipe for disaster.

The natural state of most people is to be childlike and egocentric. Psychologists call this “the theory of the mind” which means that when we are young and immature we have a hard time understanding that anything outside of our own thoughts exists. Kids under five really think they are the center of the Universe (so do some adults I know). Unfortunately most of us never fully get this out of our lives. We grow up and stay egocentric instead of becoming an observer of truth.

I think we should see ourselves like birdwatchers. We take our binoculars and we go out and see what's happening. We make ourselves quiet and less the center of attraction so we can observe clearly what is out there happening in the trees.

So if #1 and #2 plans don't work then that leaves us with what I consider the only good plan:

#3 - following Nature/God/Universe's plan. This is the non- egocentric way of the observer.

This is not a religious or spiritual point I am making. That's why I used the word Nature, God, or the Universe. Take your choice on the word you use. I don't want to get distracted now with theology or philosophy.

Joel Salatin used to tell me, "Tai, Nature always laughs last."

He meant that in the end, despite our best laid intentions, there is something more powerful than us at work. And as the old saying goes, "If you can't beat em, then join em."

And that’s just like in this book. We might not think it's fair that women are rewarded for their beauty, or that men are rewarded for their success in business, since not all women are born beautiful nor are  all men born with the ability to do well financially, but nature has set up something that we must respect and learn from.

I think of life like a giant rolling ball and you have two choices on how to deal with that ball. You can run in front of the ball out on your own, but inevitably you will stumble and that huge ball will run you over and crush you to dust.

Or you can jump inside the ball and run along with it and be safe inside.

If you can set up the 4 main areas of your life, Health, Wealth, Love, and Higher Purpose INSIDE this ball of Nature/God/Universes plan you will not only survive but you will be happy and thrive along the way.

[check out my free online seminar @ 12 pm PST on "How to Get One Million People Paying Attention to Your Idea: The New Rules of Marketing" >>CLICK HERE TO REGISTER>>]

Maybe you are wondering what I mean practically.

Well for example, if you want to be physically healthy do not impose your own made up plan on your diet. Don't say, "Well I like eating meat therefore meat must be good for me." or "I don't like the thought of eating meat so I will pretend that eating meat is bad for me."

No, go out and see what Nature set you up to eat without any judgement or bias on your part.

Jim Rohn talks about his father who lived a long, healthy life. He said he asked his Dad one night what his secret to health was. His dad said "I eat an apple every night before bed."

That was a simple plan that lines up with what research tells us about fruit and how Nature built the human body. Jim says imagine what would have happened if his dad had had his own egocentric plan and had changed one word of that sentence to "I eat a candy bar every night before bed."  That one change in the plan would have probably cut his life short by a decade.

The observer of God/Nature/Universe humbly accepts the diet plan with the apple not the candy bar. The immature egocentric person decides they like the taste of the candy bar more and ignores natural law and pays for it with an early death.

Sounds obvious in the case of an apple versus a candy bar but I challenge you to examine your life. Can you think of anything that you are doing that is ignoring the obvious Natural Laws of life?

If you want to make a lot of money do not think, "Well I think it's unfair that the top 1% have more money than me." Instead go out and figure out how the 1% think and what they do differently than you and line up your money making attempts with the Universe's plan for financial prosperity.

If you want to date or marry someone amazing don't be egocentric and say, "Well I'm a great catch, I deserve the best." That might be what your mom thinks about you, but guess what, the world is full of people who don't take your mom's advice.

So if you want to find love and romance with an amazing person than follow the Universe's plan - like attracts like. Go become amazing yourself and slowly but surely amazing people will start popping up all around you. People often ask me how I have been able to attract high level mentors. It’s because interesting people want to be around interesting people. As I improve myself by reading more and learning more and doing more I find that higher level people seek out my company.

If you want to be happy and feel fulfilled each day you can't just decide, "I deserve to be happy."

Nature, God, and the Universe don't play by those rules. They play by the rules of "To get what you want you have to deserve what you want."

If you feel depressed and unhappy that's usually Nature telling you that you are living out a pretty crappy life and that you should make a change. So go out and quit the job you hate or get out of the horrible relationship you are in.

This sounds tough. It is tough. But if there is one thing that's obvious, this world can be a pretty tough place. It's meant to be hard. To quote Tom Hanks, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."

Remember, take comfort in the fact that it's a little challenging to live a good life. Remember that there is a set plan for love and human attraction. You don't have to try to invent the formula for love and romance. It's been ingrained in your very DNA. You just have to read the obvious signs and go out and find the blueprint, the treasure map.

It's a big world, a big rolling wheel, we can't change it easily.

We can take out some of the unfairness. Somethings like racism, which is a byproduct of our fear of risk, can be eradicated with education, thank God.

But some things that are not so cut and dry will never disappear and honestly don't need to. We don't need to change some natural things, WE need to change ourselves.

It's ok that the man or women you love or want to fall in love with is attracted to healthy people like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. We don't need to change that. You and I need to just get better at exercising and eating right.

This book of the day I hope will be part of your search for #3 God/Nature/Universes plan.

It's the reason I read so much. That's why I want you to start reading more and find more and better mentors. That's a sign you are being humble. The world rewards the humble. This is what I think the saying means, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

Go out and become a seeker. Discover truth that's both easy to handle and that's hard to accept (like some of the concepts in this book).

When it comes to love, family, friendships and your whole social life the reward is high so expect a little challenge along the way.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 of this email, I couldn't fit it all in one email - it was too long haha. 
Stay strong,
Tai

P.S. I got asked to do my free online seminar again so I'm doing it @ 12 pm PST on "How to get One Million People to Pay Attention to Your Idea: The New Rules of Marketing" >>CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP>>

In todays book of the day I read the Lessons of History By Will and Ariel Durant. You can buy this book from me, and get into my private mentor program, my new smart reading course, and my in depth bonus book notes here: http://bit.ly/1qTIvSx

You must innovate if you want to change your life, your bank account, and the world.

 

Innovation is easier said than done.

 

In “Zero To One” the author, Peter Thiel, opens by saying that if you are merely following and 100% mimicking other people, you will always be one step behind. You can sign up for my VIP Club and get the book here http://bit.ly/1GvRE5B

 

Thiel says, "Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”

 

The key (as I talked about on my live TV show - tune in at 11:30am daily on TaiLopez.com) is knowing the exact balance between brand new innovation and not falling prey to "Nudist Buddhist Syndrome."

 

"Nudist Buddhist" is what one of my mentors, Allan Nation, says is the law of innovation. He told me, “You can be a nudist and people won’t think you’re super weird, because it’s just one thing weird about you. And you can be a Buddhist and people will give you a pass cause that’s only one weird thing about you. But you can’t be a nudist Buddhist. That’s too weird.”

 

So for me, it’s not just blind innovation. I don’t want to come up with the solution on how to do underwater basket weaving.

 

There’s no demand.

 

It’s too weird.

 

It’s too "Nudist Buddhist."

 

Where you want to be is that happy medium where people feel like, “Wow, this is insightful, this is something I’ve never heard before.”

 

But yet their conservative, pragmatic, risk-averse side says, “Yes, I’m willing to take a chance on this new product.”

 

How can you actually do this? Well in your career and in business, Peter Thiel says:

 

“Start small and monopolize. Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.”

 

Peter Thiel is exactly right.

 

Think about it.

 

Facebook was able to beat out the 800 lb gorilla Myspace by starting out by always erring on the side of being too small. At first Facebook was just Mark Zuckerberg in his room and his first customers were his roommates. And then he moved on to just dominating and monopolizing his one university. And once he conquered that he moved on to the next stage, which was conquering and expanding his monopoly to all universities.

 

It wasn’t until he had conquered this step-by-step that he then went on to acquire over a billion customers.

 

Not many people can say their business hit a million customers.

 

Zuckerberg was able to say he reached a billion.

 

You may not want to be a billionaire, but there’s a lesson to be learned.

 

Go "straight to the top" in what you learn.

 

Remember, the main principle that Peter Thiel believes in is that whatever your idea is,  just shrink it down.

 

In one of my VIP coaching calls I talked about the book “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath where they discussed the need to shrink a problem.

 

If your goal is to make a million dollars a day, think about it more like you need to make $80K per month. Since even that still seems like a big problem, then shrink that down so you only need to make $2-3K a day.

 

That’s a realistic goal.

 

Err on the small side like Zuckerberg and eventually you can have market share and change the world.

 

When you do this your bank account will never look the same, and neither will the impact that you have on the world.

 

Stay Strong,

 

Tai

 

P.S.  If you want to learn how to get people to pay attention to your big idea, don't miss my free online seminar @ 12 pm PST 

http://bit.ly/1GvRE5B

People say that to be happy you have to be unselfish.

 

But are they right?

 

Because we all know selfish and greedy people, who seem to have it all.

 

We have all been betrayed by someone who went on to live a seemingly perfect life.

 

Who went on with seemingly no consequences...

 

So there has to be something more to this - a more elegant explanation

of the conflicts of life.

 

A root explation of our selfishness... Of our altruism...

 

About our DNA and "Nature vs. Nurture..."

 

In today’s Book-Of-The-Day, “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins, we

examine this question of whether we are born greedy and 'evil' or if

we only learn it from our environment. You can buy it from me here http://bit.ly/16gFhPR plus get a bunch of other bonuses for free.

 

I consider this to be one of the 5 most important books that every

human should read.

 

Yesterday I was talking about it on my Book-Of-The-Day TV show (check

out a new episode everyday at 11:30 am PST on www.tailopez.com/tv) 

 

One million people have read "The Selfish Gene" since Dawkins first

wrote it in 1976.

 

He had a noble goal in writing it.

 

He explained, “My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and

altruism. Apart from its academic interest, the human importance of

this subject is obvious. It touches every aspect of our social lives,

our loving and hating, fighting and cooperating, giving and stealing,

our greed and our generosity.”

 

Dawkins was right. The question of selfishness vs. unselfishness is at

the core of every major decision you will ever make.

 

Who to marry. Who to make friends with. Who to protect. Who to ignore.

 

Get this question wrong and you will get your life wrong.

 

Most people approach the question all wrong.

 

Whether it’s people who believe in religion or atheists, the confusion

knows no boundaries between the sacred and the secular.

 

So what did the scientist Dawkins discover and explain in this book?

 

[make sure to check out my Book-Of-The-Day deal to get your own copy

of “The Selfish Gene” and my own personal notes]... http://bit.ly/16gFhPR

 

1. Although selfishness is our natural inclination, we are not always destined to follow it:

 

“Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily

compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to

learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to

be altruistic. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we

are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up

to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their

designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to”

 

I like that Dawkins recognizes that you and I have the chance for some

level of enlightenment, however little it might be. We have some

mastery over our genes. We’re not doomed to take advantage of people

or to act in a more base manner.

 

No, you see it all around you.

 

Altruism.

 

And not just the kind of natural altruism that we have towards our

family, friends, and loved ones (which in a sense isn’t really charity

at all because of the possibility that we can be paid back).

 

You see people giving to people that have no chance to give back to them.

 

There is still hope.

 

2. The secret is to become a simulation machine, not just a

robotically programmed automaton:

 

Read the rest at TaiLopez.com

 

If you're in financial scarcity now, or if you're making decent money but you know you should be making a lot more,  @ 12 pm PST on "10 Rules to living the Entrepreneurial Lifestyle: The New Rules of Money"   http://bit.ly/1GvRE5B

Almost everyone thinks they’re an expert when it comes to food and diet.

In fact, we all know people that have crossed the line, and it’s almost become a religious conversation.

In today’s Book-Of-The-Day, “Diet Cults” by Matt Fitzgerald, we delve deep to try to find the truth.

Get the Book-Of-The-Day Deal here: http://bit.ly/1skG9xa

What is the diet that we should all be following?

I talked about this a few days ago on my new live Book-of-the-Day TV show that airs every day at 11:30am PST on TaiLopez.com.

When I was at Joel Salatin’s, it was fascinating. Thousands of people would come in from all around the world, each of them with their own opinion on diet -  whether they were Vegan, Paleo, Low-Carb or Atkins.

And most of them came there extremely confident in their beliefs.

The interesting thing about a farm is that you’re so close to the earth that you actually get insight on biological processes that the average city person never gets.

If you ask most people in the city how many grams of protein, sugar, or carbohydrates they should be getting every day, they have no idea.  

But a farmer knows exactly how much protein a one- week-old chicken should have, and how much they should be eating at six and eight weeks as well.

It becomes a science. And of course, you’re experimenting on the best testing ground possible (the livestock you’re raising, because there’s no placebo effect).

There is no one diet that works for everyone:

Adaptability is the hallmark of man as eater. For us, many diets are good while none is perfect.

We know this to be true. It would be an impossible environment for humans to live in without adaptability. The problem with something like the Paleo diet is that in Paleolithic times, not all people lived in the same part of the planet. Some people lived in rainforests, some lived in savannahs. Even though there is truth that there is a genetic predisposition that some foods are probably more nutrient dense than others, it’s not an absolute black and white fact.

"Scientists are discovering that the extreme responsiveness of gut flora to changes in diet are a major contributor to humans’ dietary adaptability."

You must search for disconfirming evidence:

“My friend Richard did a lot of reading on the science of veganism and came away believing that veganism was the correct way to eat. But this happened only after he had already given up animal foods. And, of course, he cherry-picked his sources, ignoring experts like Walter Willett at the Harvard School of Public Health and going straight to gurus like Caldwell Esselstyn, a man who could never get a job at the Harvard School of Public Health.”

You see, you have to disprove your own theory.

Because whether you’re Vegan, Paleo, Atkins or Macrobiotic, there’s evidence to the contrary of what you believe if you’re willing to open up your eyes and not see this as such a black and white conversation.

Agnostic healthy eating is the plan Fitzgerald recommends.

"I claim only that you will find agnostic healthy eating to be the easiest way to eat for maximum health if you’re turned off by diets that claim to be the One True Way."

Fitzgerald says that what we need to do is have an agnostic approach, meaning whatever works is what we should gravitate towards, instead of trying to be a part of a certain group and getting our identity from that group. 

So it's up to you to “ask, seek, and knock” for that diet that's adaptable to not only the environment in which you live (which is different if you live in the North Pole compared to if you live in Africa), but once you do this search, set up a series of experiments and do it at the same time with top experts and doctors.

Stay Strong,

Tai

Join me on tomorrow's free online business seminar: 

http://bit.ly/1BENytX

If you're not careful, the 25 cognitive biases of your brain will destroy your life.

As Friedrich Nietzsche says in today's Book-Of-The-Day "Man Alone With Himself"

"Many people are obstinate about the path once it's taken, few people about the destination."

 

Get the Book-Of-The-Day deal here: http://bit.ly/1BwZ5vj

He means we are stubborn about the wrong thing.

Earlier today on my new TV show [Every day at 11:30am PST on TaiLopez.com] I talked about how stubbornness can be a powerful tool.

But the devil's in the details.

It depends on how you define stubbornness.

If you are stubborn about the methods you’re using you will usually lose your way - it will be fatal.

You should only be stubborn about one thing: Getting the end goal you wanted.

Everything else should be flexible - up for discussion.

I had someone in my family decide he was going to become a Fruitarian.

He ate bananas all day.

But he didn't set it up as an experiment.

The Fruitarian diet experiment became his god.

He became the servant of his brain and the cognitive biases called "commitment consistency & mis-weighting bias" that many great scientists and psychologists like Cialdini have written on.

He shouldn't have cared about which diet plan he adopted - only about which diet plan worked.

If you read the book "Diet Cults" you will see how millions of people blindly follow their diet cult: Vegan, Paleo, Macrobiotic, Atkins, Vegetarian, etc.

But who cares about the diet??

You should only care about looking in the mirror and being lean and healthy.

That's all the matters.

If eating cardboard accomplished that, then eat cardboard.

People love to elevate the experiment into the goal.

The experiment is never the goal.

My Fruitarian relative forgot to look in the mirror to see his muscle mass and health deteriorating before his eyes.

He forgot to listen to the doctor that said that every Fruitarian he had ever met and treated in his clinic had always had serious health problems.

You should never love the path.

Love the results. 

You see this bias in business too. You see business owners with a goal to make net profit. 

But they try to use their intuition and immediately decide upon the product and strategy to get them the net profit.

They guess. And stick to their first guess - even when it's losing money.

Brandon Routh, who played Superman in the big Warner Brothers movie, was at my house yesterday. He told me about a friend who moved to Hollywood to get in the entertainment business.

He had no acting potential.

But he wanted to act. He was stubborn about his imaginary acting skills.

He could have been a great writer or producer. But he was so intent on the one path/experiment of acting that he ended up with nothing.

Just a nasty Pareto inefficiency.

A lose-lose situation.

No acting. And no writing or producing.

That's most people's life. One nothing after another.

You might have noticed this tendency in your love life.

You dated someone with the goal of living happily ever after - finding your soul mate.

But then you realized, "Hey, this person I'm dating, I don't think there is anything long term here."

But you stay committed to the relationship anyway (and kick yourself for it later).

Don't be that person. The one trapped in the cycle.

Life's too short for deadly mistakes.

The simplest way to overcome the biases is to always ask yourself 2 questions:

1. "What's my end goal?"

2. "Is this current experiment getting me efficiently towards that end goal?"

If the answer is "No", ditch the experiment (NOT the goal).

Just iterate and modify the experiment slightly.

At first this will seem like it's too slow of a strategy. It's not.

Like Munger says: "Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve."

Stay Strong
Tai

Join me on tomorrow's free online business seminar: 
http://bit.ly/1wXQm3C

 

 

In today's Book-Of-The-Day we look at "Where Good Ideas Come From" by Steven Johnson. If you want to buy this book and get the 'Smart Reading Course', the ‘67 Steps Video Series', and Tai’s personal book notes check it out here http://bit.ly/1yx4Is6

Also check out Tai’s new TV show every day at 11:30 am PST on TaiLopez.com 

If you want to sign up for the next LIVE online seminar you can do that here: http://bit.ly/1wvWD6S

There may be no better skill to possess in the world than the ability to come up with good ideas. Think about it. The reward for good ideas is massive.

Mark Zuckerberg definitely knows the value of a great idea.

For him it’s roughly $33.3 billion dollars. 

Now, you might not need a billion dollars.

But according to Daniel Kahneman and his research, you definitely need at least $75,000 a year.

Good ideas have the potential to change your bank account.

Good ideas also have the potential to change your health. 

Tai’s dad caught scarlet fever when he was a baby, and doctors said he wouldn’t live past age 12. 

He was a pretty sickly kid. 

His life changed the day he picked up a magazine about weight lifting. 

The article said "Forget everything you've heard, lift weights."

And he went from a sickly kid who should have died to Mr. Puerto Rico, Mr. Canada, and one of the first bodybuilders in the world. 

You see at the root of every revolution is one idea. 

In "Where Good Ideas Come From" one fascinating story was about the scientist that came up with a law that governs the rate of growth of animals, cities and ideas - it's called Kleiber’s law.

Kleiber's law is about something called "positive power scaling"

But why should that research matter to you?

Simple. 

"A city that is ten times larger than its neighbor isn't ten times more innovative; it's seventeen times more innovative. A metropolis fifty times bigger than a town is 130 times more innovative than the town."

The pace of innovation and good ideas that are going to come out of your brain are directly related to the size of the pool of information that you’re drawing from. 

The more books you read (an eclectic mix), the more masterminds you study, the more mentors and advisors you surround yourself with, the more exponential growth you'll experience. 

If your only source of good ideas is one book in the last year, you’re like someone living in a small town. 

Your “pool” to draw inspiration from is tiny. 

BUT if you’ve read 50 books instead, according to Kleiber’s Law you wouldn't just get 50 times smarter, you would get 130 times smarter.

The more knowledge you absorb, the more great ideas you will come up with.

Stay smart.

 

Today's book-of-the-day is "Folks, This Ain't Normal - A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World" by Joel Salatin, if you want to order this book from me click here: http://bit.ly/12BAhE0

 

When I was still a teenager my mentor Joel Salatin used to tell me, "Tai, nature always laughs last."

 

For you to live the good life you're going to have to understand nature and biology.

 

I don't care if you live in a high-rise in Manhattan or one of the hundred million dollar condos I saw in London last month. The laws of nature still apply as much to you today as they did 10,000 years ago.

 

If you don't know who Joel is (besides the fact that he was my first mentor), he's a famous international speaker, who’s done two Ted talks, and has written 10 books. 

 

But most importantly, he's known for pioneering grass-fed beef and pastured eggs. His Virginia Polyface Farms has had everyone (from celebrities, presidents, even prime ministers) coming to learn from his wisdom.

 

I was actually just visiting Joel and his family for Thanksgiving last week and I recorded some special videos for you. 

 

Enable your images to see me interview Joel Salatin

 

The point of his book, “Folks,This Ain’t Normal” is simple. You and I in the modern world are so far removed from biological reality that 80% of the problems we face have nothing to do with flaws in us, per se, but more to do with flaws in the system.

 

It's like the Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman talks about in “The Story of the Human Body.” The quickest way to change your physical health (weight, waistline, etc.) is not to rely on willpower, but to change the system and environment in which you find yourself. 

 

So what is Joel saying is wrong with our system?

 

 

 

Why Unconventional Works

 

 

 

1. We grow our food with pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones:

 

"Our animals don't do drugs. Instead, we move them almost daily in a tightly choreographed ballet from pasture spot to pasture spot."

 

Joel figured out that you don't have to be locked into the conventional ways to grow food by using chemicals. For example, if you mimic natural systems with your beef cows by moving them around in rotated pastures not only do you get healthier cows but the fertility of the soil increases. That's a true Pareto efficiency.

 

 

2. We’ve become detached from our food and the land that grows our food:

 

"A farmer friend of mine told me recently about a busload of middle school children who came to his farm for a tour. The first two boys off the bus asked, 'Where is the salsa tree?' They thought they could go pick salsa, like apples and peaches. Oh my. What do they put on SAT tests to measure this? Does anybody care? How little can a person know about food and still make educated decisions about it? Is this knowledge going to change before they enter the voting booth? Now that's a scary thought."

 

The average child hardly even realizes eggs don't come from the grocery store. Or that Velveeta cheese doesn't come from a can.

 

The only true path to food security is to know where your food comes from - have a relationship with the farmer who grows your food.

 

Get the rest of the lessons here: http://bit.ly/12BAhE0