Can You Make A Million Doing This?

How long have you been working at your job? Are you rich yet? Are you pleased as punch when you get in your car for the soul-sucking morning commute?


No. Then are you ready to breathe in a new idea? A new way to live?


If you haven't been happy for way too long, then do something about it. Make a real change. As explorer Hernan Cortes said to his crew of explorers in 1519, when they set foot ashore in South America: "Burn the Ships!"


Take a look at this offer. You could do better than Cortes. Unlike him, you might actually find your path laid with gold.


I'm serious.


You have seen these offers and "get rich in real estate" ideas in the past. So have I. Since I was a teenager. Remember Carlton Sheets? I've even ordered books and CDs to review, never to be impressed. But now I'm not a kid. As an experienced lawyer I am as skeptical as can be. And I have to say the ideas and processes Ron Legrand has to share work --- for real.


They flat out work.


Please. Let 2017 be the year you start getting rich; maybe even become rich. Be a millionaire. Be free to do what you want. Burn the ships!


I'll keep telling you about how this process is changing my life. Maybe you can tell me how it is changing yours.  Click the link above and leave a comment below, because it will make you feel great.


Jim L.

Sheep don't surf.

My 15 year-old daughter was crying and it was my fault. It was ten to seven in the morning and she had just told me to hurry up and take her to school. She was way early; and I was not ready to go. "Did you eat?" I asked.

"No, but I’ll get some cereal."

She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.

"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.

"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"

I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.

I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.

We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.

Baa. Baa. Baa.

Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.

Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.

Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.

Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.

Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they  carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.

My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.

　

　

　

　

　

Stars in the dark

Do it now. Limited time only. This deal won’t last. There has never been a better time to buy.


Why do we take this bait? Why does anyone?

There is no limit to time. There is always another opportunity coming. There will always be a time to buy, or sell, or jump, or eat or sleep, or even fall in love.

As long as you are alive there is opportunity to act. It’s okay if you don’t squeeze the juice out of every moment. Even the guys who cheat death for RedBull videos on YouTube spend countless boring hours planning, arranging and practicing for their 30-90 seconds of fame.

Often we act as mice in a maze, bouncing against walls of our own making, scrambling from event to deadline to event, until we stop, exhausted, and sometimes without ever having eaten the cheese. (Cheese, glorious cheese).

Many of us feel we have to be "productive" at home, on days off, even on vacation at the beach (Maria), anytime when we aren’t working for someone else. This is when we desperately need to slow down and live. Breathe in, breathe out. Just float in the water, catch a wave, look up at the stars and wonder just where you are, just for the sake of wondering.

Looking at the night sky is one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve found that if I can see some stars, I can focus on a point between two or three, in what appears to be dark emptiness, and just try to see as far as I can imagine seeing, then, to my delight, a pin-point of light will materialize where I am looking.

The stars are there, in what seems to be darkness. They are always there. Just like opportunities. Take a moment. Breathe. Look. See.

U.S. Congress by random draft #DraftCongress

In the service of the United States young men over the age of eighteen were at one time called to don uniforms, carry guns, and storm hills in the face of gunfire and bombshells. They were chosen from a random pool of boys who voluntarily registered their names and Social Security numbers, knowing they could be called to die for their Congress's and President's chosen path of bloodshed and disaster.


U.S. Congressmen, holed up in their cushy offices, far from gunfire or danger, called this process fair. It wasn't fair.  There were loopholes in selection that any well connected, white, college-aged man could avail himself of. See, for example, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.


Nonetheless, many good men whose impact on the planet, its people and its fortunes will never be known, answered the call. They got suited up, shipped out and got killed. True, many came home just fine. Many never left the US. But many came back, broken. Badly. 


But it was mostly fair. Fearsome, unimaginably violent, dubious in origin, but fair. There is a current and far better use of that kind of random selection process now.


The U.S. should adopt a public service draft, by Constitutional Amendment of course, for Congress. All representatives would be chosen by a staggered, random drawing from all U.S. citizens between the age of 35 and 65. The single term of service would be four years with half of Congress replaced every two years. All who served would get DC dormitory housing for when Congress was in session and would be paid a daily stipend for their attendance at Congressional gatherings, which, I would bet, would be a whole lot less often than they are now. I estimate a drafted congress might meet once every three to six months and only for a week or so at a time. They could get reimbursed for constituent communication and events too. But only out of their district's tax payments.


Lobbyists would be mostly powerless. Committee assignments would be loathed and not coveted. Nobody would be out hunting for re-election support, so no company, cabal, or Netanyahu could consistently buy influence. There would be no lavish pensions, no junkets to foreign lands, and probably no more military-industrial complex. There would be a continued need for career specialists and administrative employees and agencies, but no more elected official class and its grossly ignorant buffoonery.


It is quite possible that with regular Americans in office, some meaningful, humane and relevant policies would be adopted. I would imagine quite a few bad laws would be stricken too. A drafted Congress would be efficient. There would be little to none of the "we have to do something" nonsense we have now. That fluff would disappear. There would be no patience for being away from home, family and work to vote for spending on National Broccoli Day recognition or some such.


Imagine. Members of the governed, called to govern, without a promise of influence or power, who just want to go through an agenda of pressing items and go home. Certainly if it was fair enough a process to choose young men to face death for the whims of their leaders, it is fair enough to choose citizens to make far less fatal and final governance decisions.  #DraftCongress

Freedom is free, but you have to take it.

Happy Fourth of July! That's what we say to each other in the US today. We cheerfully mouth the words without thinking too much of another holiday. We think more about fireworks and barbeques than we do about the Revolutionaries that recaptured their lives from an oppressive British monarchy 270 years ago. This morning I was mowing my lawn, thinking of how I was not free from yard work. It struck me then that we are not free unless we forcibly take our freedom from whomever or whatever holds it. Our liberty cannot be bought on any level. It has no price. Freedom is what we are born to. No matter where we are, in which country, under which regime. A person cannot purchase it. If it has to be bought, then someone other than the buyer controls it. It isn't really freedom. That is because if one pays for liberty then the seller can always change the terms, or cancel the transaction. In the US many workers grind away for fifty weeks a year for two weeks of vacation time. For many that vacation is paid. But even then they are not free. Many work on those vacations, working during the supposed "paid time off." Even if they don't work a lick over their vacation, they are bound to return to their labor and their bills. When a person is free they are not bound to return to any state of being, good or bad. There is no elasticity in the conditions of a free person's life. That free man may turn to any direction and go without being limited by the anchors of unwanted commitment. Being committed to what you want is not the opposite of being free, it is the epitome of freedom. Freedom to chose and to direct your own life. Again, this freedom cannot be bought. It has to be taken and jealously guarded. It is a state of mind that allows one to say no to any limit or preconception. I did not want to say that someone who works for another cannot be free, but I think I must. True, a worker can be happy at their job, and love their coworkers, but they are always a servant in a master-servant relationship. It matters not how much they are paid, they are still at the beck, call and demand of another. Their lives can be turned upside down by a downsizing or new and less favorable supervisor. Is that free? Happiness and freedom go hand in hand. In bondage can anyone ever be happy? If freedom and happiness are equal, and money can't buy happiness, then it must be true that freedom can not be bought with money either. Take control of your comings and goings. Don't be at the mercy of another. Don't be a slave to debt for things that you do not need. Don't fear what your boss might say. Shed your bonds and do what makes you happy, because being happy is the same as being free.

Going Dry

I gave up recreational alcohol on July 7, 2013.  Not a drop of wine, spirits or beer crossed my lips until August 17, 2013. 
My effort at abstinence was an attempt to evaluate alcohol's effect on my health, and to determine whether I actually had a dependency problem.  At 45, I had been having a drink or two a few days a week for decades.  Some days more, some less.  Some days not at all.  But when alcohol becomes part of a regular diet,  one might start to wonder.

I wondered.

It turns out that I am not an alcoholic and that I actually prefer an alcohol free body.  There are several reasons. 

First, the sleep quality of an alcohol free body.  I have always loved a nap and my brain is fairly abrupt when calling for sleep at the end of the day.  However, even on a regular diet of good food with regular, intense exercise, two to three glasses of wine between dinner and bedtime had an effect. I was always, always, getting up to use the head two hours after going to sleep. 

I told myself it was because I had been using my Ipad, or was watching TV before bed, or had just succumbed to the inevitable changes of a forty something man.  Nope.  It was the wine.

It turns out that being dry means sleeping deeply, soundly and without disturbance.  I highly recommend not drinking just for that pleasure.

The next good reason is a state of mental clarity.  I am simply clearer and calmer in all respects.  Maybe it's the lack of alcohol, maybe it's the improved sleep.  No matter, it is a notable benefit.

A third reason is more money in your pocket.  Three bottles of wine a week, or a fifth of Royal Crown 7 every two weeks, and the diet 7Up to go with it all added up.  It is a  notable amount.

A fourth reason is better body composition with less fat.  Alcohol has a proven health benefit, so I've read.  On the other hand, it is used by your body as energy before anything else is, so if you drink and dine or snack, then you are often left with a stomach full of otherwise useful food that is turned into fat cells because the sugar in your alcohol got burned first.

If you don't have alcohol in your system, then your body burns the real food you ate, and if you are otherwise eating well, that is the desirable outcome. 

That leads to the obvious fat loss that comes from cutting the three to six hundred daily calories in the alcohol consumed.

I was on vacation in Florida with some friends when I had a drink.  I was there for three days and had a total of five cocktails.  Here it is August 30 and I can say with certainty that I've had five drinks since July 7, and that I am much better for it.

Bottom line, if you can stop drinking regularly, you will be happy that you did. I am.